Page 12 of A Heart of Ice and Shadow

“There’s no need to apologize,” Sirus told her. “Death is a natural part of the life cycle. Even for vampires.” It was the truth, but her apology mattered more to him than she could know. It was as if she, too, could sense the emptiness within the room, even if she didn’t fully understand it.

As their numbers had dwindled and the castle had emptied, this room had become their clan’s gathering place. The chessboard sat exactly as his mentor and previous clan leader, Kane, had left it. Annoyed and amused when he’d realized that Sirus was only six moves away from beating him, Kane had risen, leaving the board and the pieces as they were, to pour them both a drink while lamenting that he’d taught Sirus too well. It was the last time they spoke before Kane left Volkov. The last conversation they had before Kane found his end. A soft pressure on his arm startled him, and he tensed.

“Sirus,” Gwendolyn said with concern laced in her voice. His eyes darted to where her hand lay delicately over his arm. He’d not realized he’d drawn the shadows in until they dissipated all at once, casting Gwendolyn in sudden light. Her face was twisted with worry, not at all bothered by the fact that he’d shrouded them both in darkness with his sudden black mood. His skin sizzled under her touch, and he savored the tenderness while it lasted.

“We are fewer,” he told her, forcing his voice cool, “because no vampires have been reborn in over a hundred years. Few were sired in the several hundred before.”

Her expression became puzzled. “Why?” she asked him, her voice a touch hollow. Her hand still lingered mindlessly on his arm. He dared not move an inch and risk her pulling away.

“The magick that fuels our creation is gone. No more can be made.”

“None? Ever?”

“No,” he replied, his head tilting slightly as he took her in. Gwendolyn turned to look over the room, and his cool gaze softened on her crinkled brows and crescent-shaped scar. His fingers twitched to smooth the lines of worry over her face. To tell her he didn’t deserve her concern or care. That it was not such a terrible thing that it was this way.

She ran her fingers over the small ruby pendant that hung on the gold chain around her neck. “You miss them,” she observed, peering up into his face. “They were your family.”

Family. The word sent a shiver coursing down his spine. Vampires were dark abominations forged of death and magick, thought to be soulless, driven only by an insatiable hunger to devour and kill. To think them capable of having a family was beyond comprehendible to most. Even he’d never given it much thought. Could a group of reborn killers who were the stuff of dark and terrible nightmares be a family?

His jaw tightened, the muscles tensing under his beard. His eyes shifted over the room once more, to that place he’d sat with Kane, who had been as close to a father as he could’ve known. To the history books his brother Carlyle used to enjoy. To the table where Lenora would take her tea. To the crack in the mantel from when Jael and Deckland had gotten into a drunken brawl and Jael took out a chunk of the stone with his sword. There were countless memories. Each one blurred into the next like an endless volume of flipped pages. They had been a family in their own way.

“They’re at peace,” he told her, knowing it would be hard for her to understand. After living lifetimes, the idea of death became less daunting. There was a comfort in it, actually. A finality. Sirus did miss his clan, but he knew there was no way he could bring them back. He knew none of them would have wished to return to this mortal plane, even if he’d had the power to resurrect them again.

He turned to face Gwendolyn when she slid her hand from his arm. He immediately missed her soft touch. There was a raw sadness in her expression that pricked him.

Her fingers fiddled with the ruby pendant again. “My mother died when I was little,” she told him, the emotion in her voice enough to send a ripple through him. “In a car accident…I don’t even remember her, really.” She dropped her necklace, her eyes drifting into the void of memory, and ran her index finger over the little crescent moon scar at her brow. “But…” Her eyes grew glassy. “I still miss her.”

He knew she was orphaned, but he didn’t know the details of her circumstance. Sirus did not need keen instincts to recognize the pain that losing her mother had inflicted upon her. That night in Abigail’s garden, he’d sensed the turmoil lurking within her. The disappointment. It dawned on him now that she might have been hoping the witch could tell her more about her parents not because of her magicks, but because she’d simply never known them.

Before Sirus even recognized what he was doing, he gently cupped his hand at her elbow to turn her toward him. “I am sorry, Gwendolyn, for your mother. I am sorry Abigail could not tell you more.”

Her breath stuttered as the threatening tears seemed to evaporate, and her eyes locked on his. Those wide, deep pools of green seemed to swirl with a tempest of emotions before her brows scrunched. She suddenly cleared her throat, looking away, pulling her arm from his touch. The withdrawal was stark, and the rejection struck like a blade. “It’s fine,” she told him, crossing her arms over herself tightly before turning away from the room. From him.

Sirus cursed himself for overstepping. He shouldn’t have touched her. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she spoke before he could.

“So you’ve been living here? Alone?” she asked to his surprise, her back still to him, a sharp emotion laced in her words.

He took in a steadying breath and let it out before he replied, “Not alone. With Rath.”

“That scary—guy?” she stumbled, seemingly at a loss for how to describe him.

Sirus nodded, holding back his thin amusement at her struggle. Rath was a looming presence, with dark-purple-hued skin, crimson eyes, and wide-ridged horns that curled behind his high, pointed ears. “He is a gul.”

“A what?” she asked, glancing back at him.

He explained a little bit about the Shadow Dark, the realm beyond their own from which Rath hailed. She listened intently, but her shifting expression told him she was more than a little overwhelmed by the details, even if he knew it wasn’t the first time she’d heard of the realms beyond the mortal plane. Levian had mentioned them several times already, though he knew seeing a creature from another realm made it far more real than merely talking about one. He felt it best not to mention that Rath’s kind were actually some of the least jarring creatures by appearance and temperament to come from the Shadow Dark.

“So it was just the two of you?” she clarified eventually. “And Niah?”

“And our brother, Deckland. Though he and Niah chose to leave several decades ago.”

Her nose crinkled at the mention of decades, and his breath caught in his lungs. He was growing too fond of that little expression. “Wasn’t that—lonely?” she asked.

He took a moment before answering. “It was at times,” he admitted. He wasn’t even sure he’d realized how lonely he’d been until he went back into the folds of the world. Until he’d found her.

She exhaled deeply through her nose and pushed the sleeve of her green sweater up beyond her elbows. Her slight forearm was wrapped in white linen. Sirus’s teeth ground. Having her in his home was doing things to him, but it didn’t change the reality of their circumstance. The reality of all that he’d taken.

“I am sorry, Gwendolyn,” he said at long last, willing himself steady, hoping he sounded as earnest as he felt. “For what happened. For what I did. Truly.”

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