Page 69 of When Bones Whisper
Again, not answering her question, he opened the ballroom doors. A flood of violin and piano chatter spilled into thecourtyard when he, Zachariah, Katherine and Irene walked inside, leaving Charlotte and Alexander alone.
Chapter Twenty
Charlotte sat beside a statue of a woman weeping into her arms, lying over the side of a bed of roses. “Will you tell me?” she asked. “Nathaniel always evades my questions.”
“Only because he does not wish to see your face when you discover the truth.”
“What could be worse than the things I already know?”
Alexander huffed out a breath. “Nathaniel is the one who killed her.”
“His mother?” she clarified, her lips falling open.
He nodded.
She placed her hand over her stomach, kneading the area under her ribs with her fist as bile crept into her throat. A shiver slid its way up her spine, raising goosebumps at the nape.
With a glance around the statues, all posed in grotesque statements of the people he’d murdered. They weren’t justvictims, but self-portraits of his bloodlust and staples of his existence. That’s when she spotted the woman she assumed was Gertude. Scars covered her wrinkled face, her neck hanging at an unnatural angle, layers of necklaces around her neck.
“Why did he do it?” she asked, brows creasing. “There had to be a good reason.”
With a head tilt and a scoff, his tongue ran over his bottom lip before dragging it between his teeth. “How quickly you jump to justify his actions.”
Muscles flickered across her face. “I am not trying…I just think he wouldn’t do something like that without a just cause.”
“Yes, he would,” Alexander said with an arched brow. “However, you are right on this account, but you of all people should know what he is capable of.”
“What do you mean?”
“Thebond,” he intoned. “His obsession with you grows stronger each day. He yearns for you. I’ve heard him from my bedroom, muttering your name in his sleep.”
“Heyearnsfor me?” she asked, ignoring everything else he said.
“Your question confirms my suspicion. You are falling for him.”
“I am not.”
“Good,” he said, drumming his fingers against the stone-pillared frame of the doors. “Becausethatwould be a mistake.”
With a tentative step forward, her next words came out in a whisper. “Why?”
I mean, she knew why. Yet, the question spilled unbidden from her lips anyway.
Alexander’s expression hardened. “Obsession is not the same as true feeling. It’s dangerous and I do not wish to see you end up dead after everything you have done to survive.”
“You don’t?” she asked softly.
“No,” he said, brows creased. “We are friends and more than that, you and I are the same. We have both brushed against death more than once and felt the sting of being dealt an unfair hand. Like you, I too know the pain of broken family bonds and being the recipient of someone else’s rage. What Nathaniel is exhibiting begins and ends with the blood bond created when he drank from you. Do not let your passions ruin your life.”
Her heart stuttered. “My passions are also a result of the bond. It’s just desire. Nothing more than a physical reaction.”
His brows knitted together. “That’s impossible.”
She brushed her fingers against her throat. “It must be.”
“Desire has no part in it. Think of it as a pull to finish what we started. We feed not just on a person’s blood but on their soul too. Memories and emotions are devoured, shared, and we become a part of our victims for that short time. The tether breaks upon death, but when someone does not die, the need to consume what is left of them, to break that bond, becomes insatiable. That is what Nathaniel feels. He yearns for your death, to break the bond and it is wrapped in a desperate lust to drink from you and yes, maybe there is some attraction on his part,” he added, wetting his lips, “but I have known him for centuries.Nathaniel does not want intimacy, and he certainly has never come close to falling in love. Any lust he might have for you is nothing compared to the bloodlust.”
Disappointment slid into her stomach like a heavy weight. She couldn’t assume she knew him better than his closest friend, but she swore she saw that desire in him, that he wanted something more.
