Chapter 10

Chapter 10

The musky smell filled the room. Wiping away the tears, I looked around at where he left me. It was once a guest bedroom. A large bed filled the majority of the space. A vial of ink was leaking out across the desk. It must have been what I tried to throw at him. Picking up one of the discarded sheets, I dabbed it on the black ink, soaking up the mess. The growing black stain reminded me of the fog we traveled through to get there.

The room really was extremely dusty, but it was a room. I wasn’t being left to rot in a dungeon or left to sleep in the woods. He at least offered that kindness. It was by no means luxurious, but it was better than what he could have done to me. Walking to the side of the bed, I grabbed the edges of the quilt that lay atop. I pulled it off with a grunt and walked back to the hallway, dragging it behind me. Cautiously opening the door, I looked around to see if he was hovering around, lurking in the darkness.

The hall was empty. Pulling the large quilt with me, I draped it over the edge of the railing that looked over the garden. With a flail of my arms, I whipped it across the rail, letting the dust explode off of it and into the night air. There was a slight breeze in the open courtyard that was pulling the dust away from me. At least I wouldn’t sneeze my sleep away now.

There’s only so much I could do to clean up the sheets. I let them drape over the railing as I leaned into them, looking at the depressing mess of a garden below. The layout from above showed that it had a walking path built through the middle. There was even a fountain nestled underneath all the brush. It made me wonder why he let this castle fall into such a state.

My mind jumped back to what he had said before, that he wasn’t going to let another person die that he was responsible for. What did he mean? I looked around at the broken stone, the dusty rails, and the overgrown garden. At one time this place had to have been illustrious and beautiful. Now? Now it was just as empty as my soul, just as hollow.

I pulled the quilt back into the room. Its size was too cumbersome, so it drug on the floor behind me. With too many grunts and groans, I managed to get it back onto the large bed. I was pulling it tight and tucking it back in when the door creaked open. Altyr stood with an arm full of something and a sheepish look on his face. He wouldn’t make eye contact with me as he set something down on the writing desk.

“I found some dried fruit and some dried meat from when Orrin and Lenora were here last. I don’t have anything else for you right now.” He set them down and turned away, still avoiding looking at me.

I quickly moved to step in front of him. My hands were on my hips. The way he treated me earlier wasn’t going to happen again. I wasn’t going to let him make me cower in fear. No man was going to do that to me again. If I had to spend an eternity with this one, he wasn’t going to make me cower in fear. Raising his head with more pride, he finally looked me in the eye. My act of defiance pulled him back into his normal behavior.

“Move. I have things to do.”

“I need to know more about this whole situation.”

His lip snarled up in irritation. “We’ve already told you what you need to know.”

“Please, all you’ve done is nearly kill me or get me killed and then leave me in a dusty old room to rot. I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know where I am, I don’t even know who you even are. As far as I know, you’re some weird baby-eating monster.”

“I don’t eat babies.”

“I don’t know that!” I threw my hands up. “I don’t even know how you kept an entire castle secret from the Lightkeepers! I would have heard about a castle within a day’s ride from home!”

He rolled his head around in frustration. “I don’t have time for this!”

“Make time!”

I felt his hands wrap around my shoulders. I winced, thinking he was about to hurt me again. With little effort, he pushed me out of the way instead and walked right out of the room. The heat was bubbling inside me. How dare he just push me out of the way. “Do I scare you? Does the fact that I existed frighten you? Is that why you’re running away and hiding?”

Silence as he continued out the door. He was scared. Too scared to answer any question or to even face me. I slammed the door closed in frustration. I’ll never get any answers. He wasn’t going to talk to me any time soon. Making my way to the bed, I threw myself atop it in anger, arms sprawled. Frustration rumbled around in me until I let out a scream and pounded my fists into the bed. I laid there after my outburst, alone and cold. The echoes of the past were the only thing to keep me company.

A warm tingling sensation sent shivers down my body as it sparked inside my mind, pushing the cold down.

“I’m not frightened by you.”

Lifting my head and turning it toward his voice, the warmth grew. He was leaning against the desk. I squinted my eyes in a glare before pulling myself into a sitting position. How he got back in without me hearing him was a mystery.

“I’m just not used to humans.”

I groaned. “As if I am used to vampires? We both aren’t used to the other. If you keep acting so flippantly, this whole ordeal is going to be miserable for both of us.”

“It’s not like I never see humans. I have to deal with them occasionally, like Lenora. I just thought I’d have a little more time to prepare for them before the ritual.”

“What even is this ritual?”

In a smooth move, he pulled up the chair that was tucked under the desk and sat down. “It’s a party, really. It happens monthly. We cycle it between each other so one family doesn’t completely control it. There are a lot of families. Not all of them rule over nations, some are just very, very rich. I’ve managed to get myself out of the cycle for a few times now, but it’ll be here the next full moon.”

“So you lot just party every month at the full moon and make hollows?”

He scoffed. “Basically, yeah. We make lightened hollows, not darkened. That’s what happens if you don’t go to the ritual. We’re not required to go to them, but it’s socially frowned upon if one doesn’t go.”

“Let me guess,” I waved my hand to the dusty room, “you haven’t gone in a long time.”

I watched as a knowing smile crawled on his face. “It’s been a bit, yeah.”

“So you’re hosting it this time?”

“Yeah, I don’t really have the staff to prepare for it like most of the others so that’s what we’ll be doing this next month,” he stood up and dusted his pants off from whatever filth still existed in this room. “I hope you’ll help. It’ll give you something to do, you might enjoy that.”

I squinted my eyes. “So I’m your maid now?”

He rolled his head and let out his own groan. “No. I am just asking if you’d help me prepare for visitors. What else are you going to do?”

“What happened to your staff?”

I watched his jaw flex, his teeth gritting. He let out a sharp breath and the warm spark was severed. There was only the cold empty air filling the space between us. He gave a forced smile. “You need to rest. I’ll have more edible food for you tomorrow. The original shipments of human food aren’t supposed to arrive for another few weeks so I will need to get you something in the meantime.”

“So we’re just going to avoid that question then?”

He started walking to the door. “Yes.”

“What happened to them?”

“I will see you later tonight.”

“Was it something tragic?”

He slammed the door behind him as he left. I bet it was something tragic.

There was no sneaking involved this time, he was gone. Silence filled the air, worming its way through the room while crawling over me. The pull was completely absent. The hollow hole in my soul ached. Resting my hand on my chest, I squeezed my fingers over my heart, trying to grasp at anything that would fill it. When he was near, the ache wasn’t as noticeable. It could only be the connection they had mentioned that existed between us now. I let out a ragged sigh as I tried to control my emotions.

He hadn’t provided too many answers and he openly avoided a big one. At least he had come back and explained more about the ritual. I still had no idea what would happen at it. At least he explained something, though. Maybe he wasn’t as horrid as I thought. It was a small step, but I was determined to get him to tell me more about this world I was now part of. He seemed willing to try as long as I called him out on his behavior.

The artwork on the wall in front of me was just as dusty as the rest of the room. It was a still-life painting of a vase of roses, frozen in time like the rest of the castle. My eyes glazed over it as thoughts mulled in my head. Roses were all over the room. They were built into the bed frame, painted on the desk, and even woven into the sheets. At one point, this place was full of people using all the rose-covered furniture. Something had happened to them.

It was something tragic, it had to have been.