9. Alaric

CHAPTER NINE

ALARIC

Callista: Alaric Valerian, answer your phone! We have important matters to discuss prior to my visit. Word has reached me about a murder in your village – the body has been husked. You may have chosen to shut yourself away from the world, but you represent the Nightshade Court and this is a violation on your watch. If you don’t do something to find this aberration and bring them to justice, I will.

Gideon tells me that you hired a human to prepare the castle for my visit. A human woman. I suppose it will look good for our more progressive guests for us to demonstrate our willingness to integrate, but did you have to invite her to live with you? After years of cloistering yourself like a foolish monk! You risk exposing us, unless your plan is for her to be on the menu at the ball?

At least you have your absurd oath about not marrying, or I would think you were attempting to wed her just to frighten me from your castle. Don’t even dare such a stunt. Need I remind you that our laws are clear on vampire/human relations outside of feeding, and I will not hesitate to carry out any justice required to bring you back in line. We cannot afford for anything to go wrong at this ball.

W inifred’s head slumps against her shoulder. She must have been tired from her day, as it is well past normal human bedtime. Mirabelle leaps down from my chair and prods Winifred’s eye with a white-socked paw.

“Don’t do that,” I caution her, pushing her off Winifred’s slumbering form. “Winifred doesn’t want to play with you right now. She needs her sleep.”

Poor Winifred. I have asked so much of her. She is here, in my castle, even though she is afraid. I can smell the fear in her blood, mingled with other scents that make me struggle to focus. She is helping me, even though I fled from her in the pub and say things that make her sigh and curse under her breath. She is touching my things, bringing order to the chaos of my mind.

She has no clue of the danger she’s in. At least she will be long gone before my mother arrives.

I stare down at her as she slumps in the chair, her hand flopping over the arm and her sleek, impossibly straight and perfectly arranged copper hair falling over her face like a silken veil. She may wake shortly – humans don’t sleep as soundly as vampires, for ours is a dreamless sleep of the dead. She will regret slumbering with her neck on that angle.

Before I can remind myself how wrong this is, how I cannot allow myself to become more intoxicated by this woman than I already am, I slide my hands beneath her and lift her into my arms.

She is warm. So warm. Her blood pumps beneath her skin, coursing against me where I hold her, beckoning me. She smells like sunshine, like strawberries. Like things that are not for me.

I cradle her head against my chest, her ear right against where my beating heart would be if I still possessed one, and I begin the long walk to the tower.

Mirabelle trails behind me, keeping a steady cat chatter about our new houseguest. I trudge through room after messy room, a wave of mortification hitting me. Winifred has been so kind about my mess, but she must think me an animal, the way I live.

She’s not wrong. I live like what I am – a dread creature, a monster.

I only allowed Reginald to employ the Clutter Queens because my mother will make my life miserable if the castle looked like this for her ball. But now that Winnie is here, singing along to her horrible music under her breath as she dances around my study, treating my distractions as though they are precious, as though I am precious…

I find that I want her to love Black Crag as much as I do.

And the thought of her leaving after her work is done makes me rage.

You are sick. Too much exposure to humans is addling your mind.

I hold her head against my chest as I climb the narrow stairs to the tower room. Sometimes her feet scrape against the stone, but she doesn’t wake up. When I enter her room, a wave of heat engulfs me. Reginald has lit the fire here, too, knowing that Winifred will feel the bite of Black Crag’s chill. I’m pleased that one of us remembers what is required to keep a human alive.

I lay Winifred on her bed. Her shirt has come untucked from the purple trousers that hug her hips in a way that makes my undead heart clench beneath my ribs. I catch a glimpse of the flesh of her stomach and a whiff of her sunshine scent. I have to look away as I pull the blankets up to her chin.

I whirl around and race for the stairs. I must get as far from her as possible before the monster inside me takes over.

I pace in front of the fire, my nerves are taut as bowstrings, straining my superior hearing towards the north tower in case I might pick up a snatch of her thoughts. And I hate myself for it.

A book lies open on my chair – a history of the laws of the Three Courts. I thought that reminding myself of the shackles that bind me would stop this pulsing, keening want , but it’s only made the hunger worse.

Thou shall not lie with a human or invite them to share your life, outside of the bonds of the blood rite. This is to prevent the begetting of the corrupted Dhampir. Thou shall not reveal the secrets of the Immortal Upyr to humans, except as required from the blood rites. A betrothal between a human and vampire is forbidden. A vampire may petition their court for permission to turn a human, but only if ? —

“My lord.”

I whip my head to the doorway. Reginald stands rigid, his forehead furrowed with concern.

Reginald should not be worried for me. I’m not the one in danger here. “She has settled?”

“She is sleeping soundly, my lord. The fire is warm and Mirabelle has snuggled on her pillow.”

I slump back into my chair, the hunger burning.

This whole evening has been…taxing. Winifred is the first human I’ve been around in decades apart from Reginald, and as we are tied by the blood rites, he doesn’t count. I thought with my trainings in the village, I’d be able to spend long periods with her without my hunger making a beast of me. I thought I’d been doing well. I’d even managed to tear myself away from that arresting woman at the pub, though I hated leaving her alone without explanation.

But that was before the same arresting, delicious-smelling woman moved into my castle. Before she began to sift through my stuff, placing her delectable scent upon everything that I hold dear. Before I got close enough to hear the blood rushing in her veins or that damned moan issuing from her perfect lips.

Before I started to imagine all the forbidden things I’d like to do to her…

“You wish to say something,” I say to Reginald.

“I believe that you should tell her the truth, my lord.”

“I haven’t lied to her.” I’ve not hidden my nocturnal proclivities or the centuries of distractions scattered about my castle. I’ve even allowed her to share a drink with me. Callista would say that I am tempting the gods, but I don’t care. I cannot lie to her.

But nor can I break our laws and tell her the truth.

“She is going to be living in the castle for three weeks,” Reginald says. “We have never had to hide ourselves around a human for this long. She’ll figure out the truth.”

“I don’t see how. She has accepted everything so far with her human logic. She thinks I’m…what’s the word she used?” I screw up my face. “Odd.”

“She will become suspicious when you do not eat, and when you refuse to leave the castle during daylight. She will discover what you hide in the dining room. Or you will succumb to the hunger and…”

“I will not .”

Reginald lurches away. I incline my head in remorse, my fangs sliding back into place. I rarely lose my temper with him.

I sigh and hold out my glass. “I cannot reveal myself to a human.”

“The laws are wrong.” Reginald shifts uneasily as he moves to refill my drink. “But you can reveal yourself under certain circumstances. I think she would agree if you?—”

“I will not ask that of her. I have hired Ms. Preston to organise the house for my mother. That is all .”

The hunger rages.

“As you say, my lord.” Reginald kneels on the rug at my feet, his fingers trembling as they grip his knees. His knuckles are white. “But you need to keep your strength up. You appear even paler than usual.”

“I’ve told you before, I won’t take from you. That is the end of this discussion.”

Through the haze of strawberry, I smell something else – his hunger, his desperation .

I hate it, but it’s necessary.

I need Reginald as much as he has come to need me.

I draw back my cuff as my fangs slide down again. I slice a small hole in my wrist, squeezing until three droplets of blood bead on the surface of my skin. Reginald’s eyes blow out, his tongue snaking out of his lips at the anticipation of his reward.

Reginald takes my arm in his, bringing my wrist to his mouth. He sucks and licks, drinking his full of my blood, tasting immortality on his tongue as he kneels in thrall.

I allow it, this curse, this violation, because it is what we have always done. To be a monster is to make a choice – I had a choice forced on me the night I allowed my mother to gift me the Kiss, and another the night I fled the Nightshade Court for this lonely, crumbling castle.

I’ve come to understand that I cannot survive here without Reginald, and thanks to the poison in my veins, he now cannot survive without me.

My veins pulse as I turn over my mother’s latest text message and the news article I’d briefly glanced at while Winifred was in the bathroom. Out there is another vampire, hunting and killing on my territory, one who has made a different choice. One who does not hide away as I do but instead has embraced the monster within. Husking . All that separates him and me is my high walls and my thin veneer of control.

And Winnie Preston has proven that she can shatter my defences with a single, intoxicating moan.