Page 80 of Bewitched By a Vampire

He feared that this distance that separated them would never go away, not even if she paced closer to him. It wasn’t a physical space between them. It was an emotional void, a perilous crevasse that had him feeling as if every hope he’d had of a brighter future was gradually crumbling into it as the void grew.

Devouring him from the inside.

“I deserve your anger after what I did to you in that cell…” Before he could continue, she shook her head.

Making her tears fall.

He ached to go to her as they slipped down her cheeks, diamond drops that trembled on her jaw as she cast him a bleak look.

“It’s not that.” She sucked down a shuddering breath and scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.

He could sense her pain. It ran deep. Fathomless. It echoed inside him and tore at him. He frowned at the black bedclothes beneath him, trying to remember everything that had happened, but it was hazy. Things came and went. He recalled biting her in that cell. He recalled not wanting to bite her, even though he had been drawn to her. He remembered the bastard who had tortured him. He remembered the way his blood had burned when he had realised she was a witch.

Night focused harder, sure the reason she was so upset was hidden somewhere in his memories. The haziest patches came after the guard had left. Had they thrust Lilian into his cell? Yes. Yes, they had. He lowered his hands to the bedsheets and clutched them as he inched forwards from there, wracking his brain and piecing together fragmented moments.

The answer hit him.

Her coven had turned on her because they believed she had betrayed them.

He had been resisting his urge to bite her, fighting the need for her blood, and she had been desperately trying to get away from him. The guards had refused to let her out and they had said something to her, and then he had scented magic and it had been a blur after that.

He growled as he realised why.

They had cast a spell on him.

They had pushed her into his cell intending for him to kill her and when he hadn’t, they had used magic to make him do it.

Gods, he couldn’t imagine what she was going through. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to suddenly lose his family in the way she had or have them try to kill him.

Lilian rubbed her dirty arm and stared at the floor. She looked small like that. Vulnerable. Roused a fierce and undeniable need to gather her into his arms and shield her from the cruelty of this world.

He despised her coven.

He despised witches.

He frowned. That wasn’t quite true. Not anymore. He didn’t despise all witches. As much as he hated them, he couldn’t bring himself to hate her.

“I’m sorry they did that to you.” He tracked her with his gaze as she began to pace again, her expression drawn and gaze still downcast.

Her pain grew stronger and he wanted to apologise to her again, because he hadn’t intended to make her feel worse. He had been hoping to make her feel better. He scrubbed a hand over his matted hair and sank back against the pillows, searching for something he could say that would ease her pain. Maybe admitting he wasn’t angry with her anymore would be a start.

“You should rest,” she whispered, the softness of her voice enchanting him, making him aware of how tired he was.

Not a spell. Just an effect she somehow had on him. Her words were magic. Anything she said in that soft, tender tone had him wanting to obey her, because she always sounded as if his doing it would mean the world to her and would ease her mind.

“I know,” he murmured, gaze still following her even as his eyelids grew heavier. Sleep urged him into her waiting arms, but he resisted, needing to know that Lilian would be safe before he closed his eyes and allowed it to take him. “I don’t want you wandering around the theatre. I saw how Antoine looked at you. Did my cousin scare you?”

Her cheeks paled and her eyes slipped shut, and he had never seen her looking so tired. His fault. He had taken too much blood from her.

She gave a small nod and her voice was quiet as she said, “If I had known your cousin owned this place, I might have asked Elissa to meet me elsewhere.”

“Elissa?” He canted his head to his right as his eyebrows knitted.

“The witch who was here. She used to be with my coven. When the guards… When you… I didn’t know who else to take you to and I didn’t know how to remove the poison myself. Elissa was the only witch I knew I could trust and who might be able to help me save you.”

“Poison?” He swallowed thickly. “I was poisoned?”

It would certainly explain the chilling cold and how he had been constantly losing strength despite having fed from Lilian, and the bizarre and surreal things he had seen. How out of his head had he been? Maybe that fire-breathing dragon he vaguely recalled saving Lilian from had been a hallucination after all. He had wondered at the time how a dragon had come to be in the mortal world without perishing.

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