Chapter 25

Supper arrived with a light knock on my door and a tray on the doorstep. No sign of who left it.

Ghosts.

It had to be.

Ghosts that delivered supper and cleaned castles? It reminded me of the stories that Babs would tell Nyx and me when we were kids. Tales of castles and princesses and ghosts, stuff I’d poopooed but Nyx had lapped up.

I made a point to ask Ezekiel about his spectral helpers when I saw him.

Supper consisted of cold cuts of meat, some kind of vegetable soup, and a bread roll, all washed down with a choice of wine or water. I missed Haiden’s cooking.

By the time I’d eaten, it was barely seven, and there was a whole night of nothing ahead of me. I’d expected to speak to Ezekiel tonight or hang out with Ordell, but with those options off the table, it left me with Hemlock or Matthew, and neither was an appealing option.

Luckily, I’d become accustomed to my own company over the years and could entertain myself just fine. I shrugged on a jacket because it was chilly in the halls, grabbed a lantern, and headed out to explore what would be my new home for the next year.

I went back the way Matthew had brought us, to the main staircase, then the opposite way, up a flight of steps onto what had to be the third floor. There were no drapes on the windows here, and the panes were frosted and speckled with condensation. The damp air smelled of mildew. My breath plumed in front of me, and I held the lantern higher, hugging my jacket closer.

I should go back. It was dismal here. Lonely, forlorn, and lost. The words filtered through my mind along with a stab of unease and a dim warning bell urging me to turn around. I imagined the brush of fingers on my nape. A whisper of breath on my cheek.

No. Don’t.

My step slowed. Were those my thoughts? Had I heard a voice in my head?

I made to turn back, but light flared to illuminate the way forward. Light cast by a lantern set on a shelf.

Who’d lit it? Oh…a door. I would have missed it if not for the lantern. Part of me knew investigating the room was dumb, but the other part, the part in the grip of this dreamlike state, couldn’t help but continue, leaving the whispers of caution behind.

Was it locked? I tried the handle, and at first it stuck, but then there was a soft click followed by the door swinging open. The passage beyond was lit by wall sconces burning low.

My boots left footprints on the checked floor, and the air tasted thick and dusty. If there were ghosts that cleaned the castle, then they certainly hadn’t made it to this part of the building. The passage opened onto a circular room. Was this part of a tower? Thick drapes covered the windows to block out the natural light, but candles burned in candelabras on a large oak table.

Who’d lit them?

A shiver danced up my spine, warning me that maybe I shouldn’t be here.

Yes, you can. Yes, you should look.

My feet drew me forward into the chamber where the walls between each window held a portrait in a gilded frame—the golden hue muted by an age of dust.

Closer, look closer.

Yes, who was that in the paintings? I held the lantern up to get a better look. A woman with hair as dark as midnight looked back at me with wide gray eyes, but her face was obscured by a slash of crimson paint, brushed across it in one deep stroke to ruin her visage. The next painting showed another woman with hair like autumn leaves and smiling gray eyes. But once again her face was ruined, this time by a crimson cross. The third painting showed a woman in profile, and this time her eyes were painted out and her mouth left exposed—full lips lifting in an almost smile.

Six paintings, each of different women with the same eyes.

Do you see? Can you see?

Wicked laughter echoed around me. What was that? Who was here with me?

I turned in a slow circle, lantern held aloft to light up the shadowy fringes of the room.

Not long now.

Not long at all.

Do it now. Show us. Show it to us.

What the?—

Spectral fingers plucked at my hair and pinched my arm, my cheek. “Get off!” I slapped at the air and made a dash for the exit.

The door slammed, and the lock engaged with a click.

Terror pooled in my belly, ice and sleet rushing through my veins. I turned to the room, chest heaving as I focused on controlling my terror. “Open the fucking door. Now!”

A gust of air blew around me, lifting my hair and scraping icy talons across my cheek.

Show us. Let it out.

We want to taste it.

Feel it.

The voices surrounded me, too loud. Desperate. A ball of anger grew spikes inside me, pricking at my senses.

Yes, there…give it to us. We yearn for it.

And suddenly it was impossible to breathe past the tightness in my chest, past the burgeoning rage that made my ears burn and my eyes water. I wanted to hurt someone. To smash and burn. To kill.

I wanted to kill.

Do it. Make him pay. Make him suffer.

A low, pain-drenched moan echoed in my ear, almost blocking out the slam of wood on stone.

“Dammit, woman!”

Ezekiel?

He grabbed the lantern then threw me over his shoulder.

The last thing I heard before the door slammed behind us was the wrathful screams of vengeful spirits.

Ezekiel threwme on my bed and stood over me. “Are you deaf, Miss Lighthart, or simply stupidly defiant?”

I pushed up on my palms. “What?”

“I expressly told you that the east wing was out of bounds.”

He had? Oh shit, he had. “I forgot.”

His eyes narrowed to slits. “I don’t believe you. Not for one moment.” He leaned in, his lips a thin sneer. “You see, I think you’re a snoop. A nasty, sneaky little snoop who thinks that she can find out all my little secrets and use them to control me.”

“I’m not a snoop, but hell yes, I will use whatever I can in my arsenal to control you.”

He raked me over, breath coming faster, nostrils flaring. “What about your cunt?”

Heat flooded my cheeks. “What?”

“Your fragrant, soft, tight cunt, Miss Lighthart. Would you let me have that if it would keep me on a leash, hmmm? Let me fuck you? Taste you? Bury my fangs into the soft peachy skin of your inner thigh and suck until you scream?”

He was trying to get a rise out of me, that was all. Trying to frazzle me, and it was fucking working because his words were now in my head, and that meant they were in my mind, doing things to my body, almost as if he was doing the things that he was suggesting he wanted to do.

He advanced around the bed, and I shuffled across to the other side and leapt to my feet. “Don’t touch me.”

“Why not? Do you like it? Do you like it a little too much?”

“No. You disgust me.”

His smile was wickedly seductive, and my breath snagged in my throat. “Come now, aren’t you watchers meant to be the epitome of truth and justice?”

“The only justice would be if you didn’t exist.”

“And yet you fed me your delicious blood.” His pink tongue licked the corner of his mouth. “Sweet and potent as it slid down my throat. I admit, I would like another taste.” His dulcet tone deepened to a feral growl, and terror spiked my pulse.

“No.” I backed up, sidestepping toward the door, my insides vibrating with fear.

“Take off your amulet, Orina. Take it off and give in to me.” His words had resonance that pressed against me like a command.

The bastard was trying to compel me. “You can’t control me, Tepes.” The amulet protected me from that.

“Take. It. Off.” Needles sliced through my head.

I gritted my teeth and bore the pain to bite back, “No.”

I ran for the door, and he lunged, grabbing me by the nape and hauling me back against his body. He wrapped a steely arm around my waist and curled the other around my throat, caressing my rabid pulse with his thumb.

“Take it off…” he crooned, breath hot on my cheek. “I know it hurt last time, but this time it will feel good. I can make you feel good, Orina.”

The way he said my name…Oh God, I wanted him to make me feel good.

The steel band around my waist softened, and his hand slid up to cup my breast. I closed my eyes, waiting for the delicious squeeze of his palm that would culminate in his fingers pinching my nipple. I wanted that sweet ache to shoot to the apex of my thighs and settle there, wanted his mouth on me there.

“That’s right, Orina. I can make you feel…” His voice was thick with desire, but there was a rasp to it too, a sound that my ordained ass recognized as hunger. I was in the arms of one of the most ancient, seductive predators in the world, and he wanted my blood.

Focus. Breathe. Say it. Fucking say it. “Let me go.” The words came out as an uncertain whisper.

“You don’t mean that.” He pinched my nipple, and I moaned. I fucking moaned like a hussy.

Fuck. I pushed back against him, my ass rubbing the base of his cock, long and thick against my spine.

His growl reverberated through me, and primal fear tightened my lungs, desire warring with the innate need to flee.

This wasn’t me. This was him. He was making me feel these things. An icy fist formed in my chest. I had to fight it. Fight him, but it was as if I was drowning in him, in the echo of his words and the sensations of his body pressed to mine, and all I could do was claw at the air to try and get to the surface.

“No…I said no. I do not consent, and where I come from, that’s all that matters.”

“You’re in my world now, Orina. In my castle, and I’m fucking hungry so take. It. Off.”

My hand went to the amulet, trembling with the effort of fighting his command. I was losing, too weak to resist him. He’d have me, my blood and my body, and I’d let him. I’d let him take my blessing, and then I’d be done. Used up. Useless. Everything I’d worked for lost.

“Are you afraid, little silver? Finally…” He ran his nose up my neck, taking long drags of my scent. “The blood is sweeter this way. Always…”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“No…you’re afraid of yourself. Of your dark desires. Of what you’ll allow me to do to you. So many things…anything I want…” He licked me, and my pussy throbbed while my mind screamed in horror.

No! I couldn’t have this. Wouldn’t allow this. Gathering the final vestiges of my will, I took a deep breath and let it out in a scream. “Hemlock!”

My fingers closed on the chain of my amulet, ready to yank it off, lips ready to give consent, just as my door flew open.

Hemlock stood framed in the doorway, bare chest heaving as he took in the scene.

Ezekiel tensed, his grip on me so tight I was sure it would bruise. “Mine,” he hissed, the voice bestial and guttural.

Oh God. He was going to kill me. Right here. Right now, in front of Hemlock.

Hemlock glanced at my hand, wrapped around my chain as I fought against the urge to pull it off, then slowly lifted his gaze to my tormentor.

“Ezekiel Tepes.” He walked farther into the room. “I invoke the rite of sanctuary within your walls. For myself, my brother, and our charge Miss Orina Lighthart.”

Ezekiel let out an inhuman snarl and released me as if he’d been burned. I sagged like a puppet whose strings had been cut, but Hemlock caught me, tucking me under his arm, tight against his side.

Ezekiel stood at the door, his back to us. “Well played, Mr. Singer.” He sounded normal now, tone clipped and cool and…relieved? “Good night, Miss Lighthart.”

He vanished, and the sob that had been trapped in my throat broke free as the full potential of what could have happened hit me like a fist to the gut. I exhaled then gasped, choking on another sob.

Hemlock held me, stroking my back and whispering soothing words that I could barely hear over the pounding of blood in my head. When I finally calmed down, he led me to the bed and asked me to sit before crouching in front of me.

“He can’t hurt you now. You’ll be safe. We should have invoked the rite the last time we were here, but neither Ordell nor I considered that he might become…fixated on you. But tasting your blood seems to have done just that.”

He’d tried to coerce me. To make me want him. He might as well have tried to drug me. “I hate him. He’s disgusting.”

“I know, but hating him is a waste of time. Would you hate a panther or a shark for craving the hunt? Ezekiel is a predator, no matter the pretty packaging, and predators don’t ask permission before taking what they need. In this case blood.”

“He wanted more than blood. He said…” I couldn’t bring myself to repeat the disgusting things he’d said because the shame of how those words had affected me was too much. “He wanted to have sex with me.”

Hemlock blinked sharply. “He said that?”

I couldn’t bring myself to look at Hemlock, keeping my eyes downcast in case he saw the truth, the fact that in the moment I’d wanted it. “Yes, but not as politely.”

He lightly touched the amulet around my neck, the twin to the one hanging around his. “You were about to remove it?”

“He was making me. His voice in my head.”

“He’s getting stronger much faster than anticipated, considering…”

“Considering what?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m staying with you tonight…if that’s all right. I’ll bring my things and sleep on the floor.”

The panic that had ebbed spiked again. “I thought you said I was safe now.”

“I did. And you are, but…Ezekiel isn’t himself right now. The attack on him, the dead man’s blood…He obviously hasn’t fully recovered, and the rite is only as strong as the honor of the being it’s invoked on.”

“You mean he can disregard it?”

“He could, if he completely lost his mind.”

“I’m not sure he has much of a grip on his mind to start with.”

Hemlock sighed. “Enough of a grip to acknowledge the rite, so we have to hope that he’ll honor it, but to be safe, I’m staying here tonight.”

I didn’t want Hemlock sleeping in my room, but I didn’t want Ezekiel sneaking back for a round two either. “Thank you.”

He dropped me a nod and headed for the door. “I’ll be right back.”

I caught sight of his bare back then, the silver lines and recent scabs crisscrossed with fresh welts, then he was gone.

He’d been whipping himself again. Probably when I’d called him.

I’d interrupted him and…and I was glad of that.

Maybe Ezekiel’s visit tonight had been a blessing.

“Ghosts?”Hemlock looked up at me from the floor.

He’d made a bed with his duvet and pillows and was lying on it without a blanket, just loose black pants and a black tee, and there was no denying that his pantherine form looked good on my floor. His features seemed softer when caressed by moonlight, less guarded.

He’d asked to crack open a window too, saying he was hot. The Singer brothers obviously had a temperature regulation issue.

“Did you see these ghosts?” he asked.

“No. But I heard them, and they were pissed. I could feel their anger as if it was mine. Then Ezekiel grabbed me and went all feral.”

But there was no denying that having Hemlock in the room with me made me feel better. The fear was gone for now, but there was no doubt that it had saved my life tonight, allowing me to stave off his compulsion and fight my body’s traitorous reactions.

“Why did you go there, to the east wing?” Hemlock asked. His eyes gleamed silver in the moonlight, and I suppressed a shiver. “Did you really forget it was off-limits?”

“I’m flattered that you all seem to think I have some kind of super memory, but I’m only human, and a lot has happened in a very short space of time. And to be honest, even if I did remember, I wouldn’t have had a clue I was in the east wing. It’s not like it’s signposted.” I pulled the covers up to cover my shoulders. “There were these portraits of women. But they all had the same eyes.”

“Maybe Ezekiel has a type,” Hemlock said flatly.

A low, mournful howl filtered into the room through the window, and I could have sworn that Hemlock tensed up.

“Please don’t tell me we have wolves nearby.”

He was silent for several seconds, jaw tight, eyelids at half-mast, and I was beginning to think he’d fallen asleep with his eyes half open when he spoke. “Dracul territory is dangerous. Best to stay inside the castle after sundown. Unless you’re with me or Ordell.”

Speaking of Ordell… “Is he okay? Ordell, I mean…He seemed…distracted today.”

“You’ll have to ask him. I’m not his keeper,” he said gruffly.

Wow, someone had a mood swing problem. “I’ll let you get some sleep.”

Silence.

O-kay. I rolled onto my side, away from him, and closed my eyes.

The howl came again, closer this time, and icy fingers crept up my spine. How I hated Dracul territory. This year couldn’t be over fast enough.