Page 7 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

“Hector!” I shrieked, writhing against him as he seized both of my wrists and pinned them high above my head.

“How dare you invade my Castle?” he roared with the wrath of a thousand gods. The whole room shuddered. The bottles on the floor rolled around clattering. The windowpane across the bed rattled, threatening to burst open.

“For the love of the sky, you drunken brute! It’s me, Thea!”

How much could he have drunk to render himself unable to recognize his own best friend? Fine, perhaps not hisbestfriend, but still.

“Oh…” he mumbled.

Gradually, like moving through a dream, his grip on my wrists relaxed, the red in his eyes dissolving into a familiar hazel-grey. Amber around the edges and pure woodsmoke in the center, a reverse sunburst that eased my fear only to fill me with nostalgia.

It sawed at me—the surge of memories that these eyes brought me. I often called what happened between Hector and me a fight. But it hadn’t been a fight. It had been a rupture. A shared destiny split down the middle.

Recognition had yet to grace his face, though. He looked at me through glassy, half-lidded eyes, the rise and fall of his shoulders slowing.

I yanked my hands free and brought them against his chest to push him back. But he was solid, impenetrable. Nothing gave way beneath my fingers. The bow of his lips seemed to rest a ribbon’s breadth from mine. We were so close I could smell nothing but him. Incense and soap and sweet cherry wine. And something else that was only his. Something I didn’t have the words to describe. Sometimes, when we were kids, I would pick fights and wrestle with him just to have this smell on my own skin later.

“Oh, I see now,” he murmured groggily. “I’m dreaming again. I’m dreaming of her.” A soft sigh escaped me as I felt the warmth of his fingers in my hair. “Her dark curls.” Slowly, he brought them lower to trace the arch of my brow. “Her lovely eyes.” Then, with a look of utter despair, he cupped my jaw and passed his thumb over the curve of my mouth. “Her lips. Gods, her lips. A holy man’s undoing.”

I watched him, dazed, as he used his thumb to nudge my lips apart, his face lowering to mine. For a heart-stopping second, I thought he was going to kiss me, and I was paralyzed from shock—shock and disbelief and a hint of the most unexpected sense of desire.

My whole body seemed to grow both taut and liquid with anticipation, my skin blazing as he moved closer. Closer. But then his lips brushed past my cheek, and he caved into the crook of my neck, his hands slipping down to grip my waist and pullme up on the bed so that his hips were aligned with mine and he could hold me against him as firmly as he wished.

“You smell so good,” he rasped, and to my further astonishment, his tongue darted out and traced a circle over the sensitive skin of my throat.

A strange feeling of suspense sloshed in my stomach as his fangs scraped the base of my neck, for a vampire’s bite was not as dreadful or deadly as some wanted to believe. It didn’t turn you like them unless their blood was already in your system, and it didn’t kill you if it was done properly. In fact, the vampire venom was famed to be the sweetest, most euphoric of intoxicants, the bite itself often described as something akin to fairy wine—a quick and thrilling way to lose all sense of reason. And of course, the stronger the vampire, the more potent the venom, and Hector… Well, he was the son of Esperida. I could only imagine how powerful his venom would be.

“I swear to the gods, Hector, if you bite me, Iwilldefang you,” I grunted.

But Hector wasn’t listening. He was lost in a fever dream, chasing after his mystery woman. “That scent,” he groaned again, burying his nose in my hair. “Like honey and roses and magic.”

I couldn’t help the whimper that leapt from my lips. I would trust Hector with my life, but I was still painfully aware of my vulnerability, the strength of his body against the softness of my own.

Suddenly, as if he’d sensed my apprehension—and knowing him, he probably had on some subconscious level—he pulled back and just… stared at me, with pinched brows and eyes full of tears, cupping gently the side of my face.

“How lucky that dreams exist,” he said. “I wish to dream of you every night. I wish to go mad from it.”

“Hector,” I sighed, stunned by his delirium and fervor, this utterly unfamiliar side of him.

Who was he talking about with such heartbreaking longing in his voice? What manner of woman was haunting his dreams? The boy I knew cared nothing for romance, nothing for love. But I was starting to fear that this boy was forever lost.

He made a desperate sound deep in his throat as he rolled off me, falling on his back on the bed.

I lay there for a moment, numbed from adrenaline and revelation.

Then he turned, eyes closed, and took my hand in his. “Don’t leave me,” he whispered. “Everyone always leaves me.”

In the mournful silence of the Castle, my heart strained with something I could not name. Grief and hope and memory all at once.

3

Thea

Dawn arrived with the remnants of a strange dream lingering in the forefront of my consciousness. Even in dream form, it was a shock to see Esperida. That was how arresting she was. Her radiance. Her imposing presence. The feral, unpredictable quality of her smile, down to the way she moved, swift and graceful like a marsh bird.

In the dream, she was in a mirror or perhaps watching methrougha mirror, the glass as sleek and trembling as a puddle of rain. I stood before it, dreading to gaze directly at her, as if to look upon her face was to violate the very laws that separated the world of the living from the one of the dead. And just as I mustered the courage, just as I was about to lift my eyes to hers, a white vapor rolled between us, and I woke up.

Despite the eerie feeling the dream left me, I was determined to make the most of today. When the first strips of light branched into the bedroom and glazed over the armchair in which I’d found my rest yesterday, I got up at once, checked on Hector, who was still very much knocked out, and then headed downstairs to retrieve my suitcase.

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