Page 25 of When Bones Whisper
Sighing relief, she pulled the skirt of one to her nose, breathing in the faint scent of perfume. While she was happy to have her clothes returned, she would rather have had Duke.
Biting her lip, she picked out a dusty-blue tea gown. She was not yet out of deep mourning, but the entire charade of dressing in black was supposed to signal her respect for the deceased.Wearing Alice’s dresses was more of a display of her grief than anything else could be and who was going to judge her? The vampires? Or a society that wouldn’t see her?
Neither mattered.
With a long sigh, she decided to go and find Nathaniel. There was no more putting it off. She not only needed to know how much he saw while he was in her mind but persuade him, or Alexander, to retrieve Duke and her grimoires.
After dressing, she faced the window with a hard swallow. A brush of lavender painted the horizon, and the scattered stars faded into the indigo canvas above the most magnificent gardens that stretched on forever. She wished she could go outside, but before she could ask for a single thing, she needed to confront the vampire.
She looked at her outfit in the reflection of the window, as she’d quickly found out there were no looking glasses in any of the rooms, not even a hand-mirror. Her fingers traced the delicate, hand-stitched petals of the flowers tracing over the skirt. It was the last outfit Alice had made for her before she died. Of her sister’s many skills, dressmaking was what she excelled at most, not that their father would have ever let her pursue such an occupation.
Despite all the horrible things about being trapped there, she found one small positive aspect to be away from the expectations of her uncle, staff, and society. She didn’t have to worry about the remarks about her untamed curls and let them cascade down her chest and back. The vampires surely didn’t care what she lookedlike, or that she was presentable. Hell, Nathaniel had carried her out in her chemise.
She grabbed a candlestick and walked into the corridor, turning left toward the sound of music. The oil-painted eyes followed her down the winding hallways. She turned into the candlelit darkness, following the sound of the piano into a large room with tall, vaulted ceilings all arching down toward a beautiful crystal chandelier.
If she didn’t know him any better, she would have assumed he was heartbroken from the way he played. Except, he was a vampire who had no regard for human life and tracked them like food. By the way he acted, he didn’t act as if he had a heart at all, much less one that could be broken.
Yet, while she hadn’t heard the song before, it felt so familiar. She crossed over the threshold and slid down the side of the paneled wall, her eyes fixed on Nathaniel hunched over the mahogany piano, his fingers dancing effortlessly across the keys.
His shoulders tensed with each note, as if he were reaching into the deepest recesses of his soul. If he had much of one left.
The candlelight caught the angles of his face, highlighting the way he squeezed his eyes shut at certain notes. As the song faded into the stillness of the room, her breath hitched, and he whipped his head around to look at her.
Their gazes locked for a heartbeat, and in that fleeting moment, she saw the flicker of something unspoken—a glimmer of connection that shifted his expression into one of ruthless carnage.
“Leave,” he commanded with a deepening frown, his eyebrows slanting downward. “Now.”
“I just wanted to—”
“I do not have time to talk.”
She wasn’t sure what she expected, but that reception was not it. “I am not leaving until we speak.”
He turned to face her, their eyes clashing across the room. “What is it you want?” he deadpanned, his lips pulling into a grimace.
Be nice. You need him,she reminded herself. She searched his eyes for a hint of humanity that she could appeal to, but there was nothing there.
She chewed on the inside of her lip, breathing heavily as she stared at him. “I have a few questions.”
His eyes blazed to life when his gaze fell on her neck, lingering there for longer than she liked. After trailing his gaze over her body, he stated gruffly, “Find Alexander. He can answer any questions you have.”
“I want to talk to you, not him.”
“Why?”
Her chest heaved, shoulders tightening when she crossed her arms over her chest. “It must be because of your approachable demeanor,” she said with a feigned smile, her stomach swirling when she caught the corner of his lip twitch upward. “I want to know if you got all the information you needed when you violated my mind?”
“Is that how you feel?” he asked, standing to face her. “Violated?”
“How could I not? You made me feel things I didn’t want to.”
His eyes blazed as if she’d lit a monochrome flame. “What did I make you feel, little lamb?”
There was that name again.
“Terrible things,” she bit out far too quickly. “You made me revisit memories I would have rather left in the past.”
“I was nothing but a spectator. Your mind went there on its own.”
