Page 73 of Black Castle

He tries to smile at her but fails the moment his eyes flicker to her hands and catch a plate of food.

No.

This is the final blow.

This won’t end well tonight.

“Since you refused to have dinner with us, I brought it up to you.” So unassuming and innocent, she explores further into the room, ready to drag him out of his darkness, food in hand, ready to hand feed him, perhaps.

He tries to rise from the leather couch and almost staggers, his bones suddenly too weak to hold his weight.

“Take it away,” he says, his voice hoarse.

She scoffs, quite dismissive of his sentiment and unable to see the imminence of danger roaring in his eyes. “Nice try, soldier. But you are not just going to eat this, you are gonna ask for more.”

She is standing in front of him now, the plate literally being shoved into his nose, yet she can’t see the plea in his eyes for her to take it away from him. She can’t see that she’s haunting him.

The smell—possibly delectable—nauseates him, the sight; probably inviting, makes him recoil. Memories that he never truly buried come rushing back, coiling tight in his gut like a barbed wire.

Still unaware of his distress, she pushes him back down onto the couch, twisting just enough to face him.

And all of a sudden, that playful smile on her face fades into something darker, sharper. A wicked sneer. Her bejeweled eyes, now a haunting cocktail of vice.

“Please have some.” What is supposed to sound like a soothing plea reaches his ears like a grating taunt.

“Take it away.” He barely touches the plate as he attempts to push it aside. “Please, Vivienne.”

He hears himself whimper.

“Snow white?” She blurs out of his visual line. “Are you—”

Before she can finish her sentence, Lucan is on his feet, covering the distance between the chair they are sitting on and the door to his room.

He heads for the bathroom, bending over the toilet bowl in a second. Series of gurgling sounds intermingle into the air as he empties his gut out.

“It’s okay.” He feels her hand rest daintily on his back, rubbing soothing circles. “It’s okay.”

There she is, unlocking something new. He has always gone through his crisis alone. Now she is here, next to him, trying to offer a form of comfort, something he has never experienced before.

It suddenly upsets him. Her presence angers him.

“Leave.” He doesn’t expect the word to come out as harsh as they do, but they do, and he can’t take it back.

“Are you…”

Her question is interrupted by the sound of rushing water as he turns on the faucet, scooping water into his mouth for a thorough rinse, scrubbing his face, hoping the coolness will have a little effect on calming the sudden chaos in his head.

But it doesn’t work. He is not okay.

He is yet again being haunted by the undying memories of his mother’s last days.

Starved to death, he had watched her body decay, day by day, until the skin split and peeled, until the air reeked of rot. Maggots wriggled through her flesh, burrowing into the softness of what remained, and he had crushed them between his fingers, confused. What were those little creatures? Why were they nesting inside his mother’s body? And why wasn’t she brushing them off? She only lay there, still and silent, until all that was left were brittle bones and the whisper of who she had been.

The villagers wouldn’t even bury her. There was hardly anything left to bury. Instead, they set the house ablaze, muttering of curses, of bad blood that needed to burn. If he hadn’t been watching from the branch of a tree where he perched, cradling the infant his mother had left behind, he was sure they would have thrown him into the fire too.

How could he feast when his mother died starving?

“Hey, are you alright?” When her voice suddenly sounds distant, he knows his brother is clawing out. He is in misery, and Zev likes to set out when he catches him being too vulnerable and helpless.

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