Page 62 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

“What?”

“I only ever dream about you.”

Kaladin came and grabbed Hector by the shoulders just as Arawn snatched me from behind again. We were torn apart from each other with such swift violence that I felt as though I’d lost a limb. I was bleeding. I had to be bleeding. But when I looked down, I saw nothing, felt nothing but a pressure, sharp and instantaneous, expanding from the side of my neck.

Then the world closed over me, shapes fading to black.

24

Hector

Iwas not sure who said first that our world was a sacred one, only that it was true in a way humans could never fully understand. We were one part reverence, one part hunger—this unquenchable thirst for the elixir of life. Blood. Our divine substance, our greatest agony, our darkest desire. Everything else was order, structure, honor. Our world had to be built upon the stones of civility and loyalty because our human ancestors and their first act of betrayal were the reason why our world could not beonlysacred.

Tonight these stones crumbled. Tonight our world descended into bleak, perverse chaos.

Will you fight with honor, Aventine?Kaladin had asked, and I could not deprive myself of this last dignity. I would step out of the Castle, my sanctuary, my home, my armor, and I would fight with my hands and my hands alone, as honor would have it.

They would act in honor too. They would not interfere. They would accept the outcome of this battle no matter what this might be. If I lost, they would bury me in my family’s crypt. If I won, they would give me their oath and support my reign till my very last day.

If I won.I did not think I would win. I was a decent fighter—quick as an arrow,Father used to say—but not an exceptionalone, for all the strongest, greatest, brightest parts of me were not made of violence. They were made of love and loyalty and a girl who was not here anymore.

I was glad about that, at least. Thea was a creature of light, and I wished nothing more than for her life to reflect the bright wonder of her soul. I never got the chance to tell her how much I loved her, but I was reconciled with that now, for saying the words seemed meaningless, even cruel, in the face of death. To have the opportunity to show her… Now, that would have been a completely different story.

I hope you and your pride are happy, I imagined her saying, her hands hooked on the curve of her hips,considering you’re about to die together.

How could I ever explain to her that when you were forced to live amongst creatures so much stronger than you, pride was the only armor you had? Even so, I was not doing this out of petty pride alone. I was simply doing what Esperida Aventine would have done. She would have died rather than surrender her castle in the sky. She would have died because this place was something worth dying for.

When Dain and I stepped outside, I found myself starkly unafraid of death or pain or even the indignity of being coerced out of my family home. I only thought how unfair it was that I was to die on a night the stars had forsaken their duties. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a more desolate sky. Even the air was flat and desert-dry, almost unbreathable.

The Castle let down its stairs, the last stone step grazing the patch of soft grass right before the glade unraveled into clusters of wildflowers and towering birch trees.

When our feet touched land, Dain’s eyes lifted to the Castle, a man seeking god. “I can’t believe we’ve come to this,” he whispered to himself. The rest, who had gathered on the landing, wouldn’t have been able to hear him utter these words.Everyone was there but Lance and Alexandria, who had very wisely decided to take their children inside.

“Ah,” I sighed mockingly. “So this is notyourambition. It’s your father’s.”

Dain didn’t meet my gaze. His eyes, green as fresh moss, were pinned on the largest of the trees surrounding the glade, its trunk thick as a giant’s backbone and silver with winter decay.There,I realized.He’s going to corner me there so he can crush my skull against it.

“What can you do?” he murmured, the knuckles of his fists shining pure white. “We are all but prisoners to our family’s wishes.”

My lips quirked, offering something like a smile. “I think I’ve heard that before.”

The first strike I landed on Dain’s abdomen filled his stomach with blood, which he coughed out violently while Dahlia’s spine-chilling cries of protest echoed like a mournful song in the night. But the first strikehemanaged at the side of my ribs didn’t just give me a taste of blood. It sent me rocketing through the air, my limbs falling numb.

For a second, I was hung between land and sky, just like the Castle, until my back collided with that giant birch tree, the impact so brutal its roots ripped off the soil.

The fall left me pain-stunned, my mind so empty that I barely managed to roll my body away before the tree collapsed on the underbrush with a crack akin to thunder, dust and moss and dirt flying over me in a detonating haze.

It was a miracle how I mustered the strength to get up and even charge first. But Dain was fast too. One moment he was reeling backward, half-crouched behind the shield of his raised arm, and the next he was grabbing me around the waist. His head beat against my abdomen and knocked me down breathless.

We rolled on the ground, scrabbling for advantage, fighting not only each other but the eyes that seared upon us through the dark, the destinies neither of us had asked for.

He punched madly in the air, flipping blows at my face, which I avoided on instinct alone. There was no skill, no elegance to any of it. Each punch, each throw across the glade, each time the ground beneath us shuddered from the preternatural force of our impacts was nothing more than a mindless, chaotic whirl of limbs colliding with limbs.

After a while, everything became a red blur. My skin was chilled with sweat and crusted with blood. My knuckles were stripped down to the bones, and although the wounds seemed to skirl against every hiss of air, I could no longer feel the pain every time I moved, every time he hit me. There was only a roaring buzz of activity, my body carrying out movements in a trance.

Nothing seemed to hurt him enough. His pale face, hovering like a death spirit over me, was a mere paste of torn flesh. His left hand, the one I was resisting as he kept pushing it down, trying to dig into my chest and claw out my heart, was broken around the elbow, the bone jutting out, craggy and sleek with blood. There was so much blood on him, both his and mine, shining black and thick like oil. But he would not stop.

I was immobilized under him, his knees digging deep into my stomach while I could only focus on keeping his hand from getting any closer. It was already too close. Too close to ripping my chest open. Too close to claiming everything that was my birthright and honor to defend.

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