Page 77 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

The sword was leaning next to the fireplace, with its wide hilt and curvy blade.

I picked it up in a trance, watching my distorted, firelit reflection upon its polished surface—polished save a tiny dot of red just around the blade’s edge.

“Thea, put this down. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

I veered furiously, my fingers clamping around the sword’s hilt.

Arawn, still standing by the door, stared back at me, a crease between his brows.

It was a horrible, impossible thing to think, but so many horrible, impossible things had happened lately my mind did not hesitate to wonder. Where were Calix and Esther? What was the name of the place they’d gone to after Hector appointed Arawn Lord of the North? Why couldn’t I remember?

And then another quick, disturbing thought. The words welled up my throat like bile. “What really happened to Margaret?”

Arawn’s face changed, a shadow moving across his darting eyes, making them still. His lips curled back slightly, and for the first time, I noticed his fangs. How long they were. How white. How lethal.

“I drank her up,” he said and locked the door behind him.

31

Thea

The air was sodden with horror. It seeped into my skin and wreathed between my bones, making me still. I had no idea how long I stood there, numb and desolate, cut off from my thoughts completely.

“You know,” said Arawn after an eternity of him watching me through cold, calculating eyes. “I tried to save you. Time and time again, I tried to get you out of here.”

The words rang through me like a wraith’s call, distant and bereft of meaning, their only purpose to ensnare me.

I felt the sting of tears in my eyes, a raw ache in my throat, but I was so disconnected from myself that no sob escaped me in the end, only a shuddering breath.

“You poisoned me,” I whispered. “When I went to the door to welcome the Ravenors into the room, you put the nightshade in the teapot. Youpoisonedme.”

His voice came so loud compared to my own that it was a shock to my senses. I flinched back against the mantel, the heat of the flames licking the back of my calves.

“To scare you. To chase you out of here. To knock some sense into that thick skull of yours.”

“You killed Camilla,” I choked out, the sword clattering in my fist.

Arawn squared his shoulders, reaching to fix the cuffs of his shirt with the unperturbed serenity of Death himself. “I had to. She saw me slip the nightshade into the teapot. Not that she cared.” His passionless blue eyes snapped on mine, twin blades stabbing through my heart. “That viper cornered me instead and tried to blackmail me into an alliance with her and Kaladin. To overthrow Hector. So later that night, I sneaked into her bedroom and cut off her head.”

“You could have gone to Hector… You could have… I don’t understand… Why? Why would you do something so…”

“So… what?” Arawn prodded, his fair brows raised. As he swayed toward my direction, I flung the sword before me, filled with this terrible, boundless fear. Not for the things he’d done. But for the things he meant to do.

Arawn moved past me, and standing before the window, he gazed out into the vast, new-moon night, his steady breathing fogging the windowpane. “I needed them all in here and you out there. Safe. As you should be.” He turned to me again slowly.Slowly. Like a predator being careful as to not startle its prey. “The last thing I wanted was for you to get caught up in this, to have to hurt another innocent.”

I shook my head, floundering in bouts of numb shock and blazing rage. “This? What isthis?”

For a second I saw the bleak future in his eyes.

No, not afuture.

In his dull, passionless gaze, there was no tomorrow at all.

“The basket you found in the kitchen?” he ventured calmly. “Mother did not arrange it. I did.Iwas going to make the ceremonial wine, you see. A Thalorian custom, of course, and a token of appreciation for my new sovereign.”

I listened with rising dismay, unable to make any sense of what he was trying to imply. “The blueberries?”

His whole face darkened, his eyes shifting into the indigo of midnight. “Only the first layer was blueberries.”

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