Page 26 of House of Lilith

I just blink at him for a second. Then my eyebrows pull down in a sudden burst of anger. “What the… Shouldn’t you be more worried about your uncle?”

He frowns. “What the hell’sthatsupposed to mean?”

“Remember, Nick,” Hilde cuts in, “I heard that girl say he must have tampered with the Box.”

“As if,” my brother replies with a scoff. “The Box can’t betamperedwith.”

“Nikolay,” I start, catching his eye as I lean a little forward. “There are people in the hospital and everything’s been put on pause. This is serious.”

He just looks at me for a second. “Yeah,” he says in that voice he uses when he thinks I’m being thick, “but it’s Uncle.”

I just blink at him. I open my mouth to say something, but all of a sudden, it all sounds ridiculous.

“Actually,” Nikolay continues with a laugh, his eyes sweeping over all three of us, “it being Uncle, that would be the best possible scenario. We’d just get Mother to slap some sense into him.”

Hilde laughs and I see Max’s lips tug into a smile, but I just can’t bring myself to find any of it funny. They’re all getting on my nerves.

Strangely empty and disoriented, I just get up and wave my hand in a tired greeting.

“Where’re you going?” I hear Max ask, sounding surprised.

I turn to look at him, finding his eyebrows raised at me slightly, almost instantly realizing I’ve gotten mad at him for no reason whatsoever. It’sNikolaywho always interrupts me. I can’t be taking it out onMax.

Feeling myself softening, I lean a little forward to whisper in his ear, “Give me an hour and come up to my room. We’ll order food from the kitchens and I’ll do that thing with my mouth that you love.”

And I give him a peck on the cheek and I pull away to look at him.

Smiling and with one eyebrow quirked at me, he says, “I think we have a deal,” grabs my hand and squeezes it tight, only letting go once I completely pull away.

*

That disorienting emptiness keeps following me out of the Common Room and up the stairs to my bedroom.

So when I find myself in front of my door, despite privacy and silence waiting on the other side, I realize it’s another room I’m in need of.

Without a moment of hesitation, I walk back to the stairs and keep climbing, the tower becoming less crowded the higher I go.

Right at the top is my favorite room of all time. And it’s all because of the painting. Becoming relaxed just thinking about it, I make my way past windows with lattice arches, the view of the world outside becoming more and more isolating. People out on the grounds turning into mere dots, trees into colorful, highly realistic toys, the Wall surrounding the castle a white snake winding its way through the deep, dark forest.

And just as the height becomes dizzying, I find myself at the very top. It looks like a regular rookery of ages past, back when the shifters still used the ravens they bonded with for sending letters.

I guess that’s why students nowadays only ever use it to have sex, old condoms littering the weathered wooden floorboards.

But if you know what you’re looking for…

I approach the space between two arched windows and I knock three times, lightly. There’s a soft, but sudden sound of something unlocking within the stone and a door appears, retreating back to let me into a room the size of a shoebox.

It always makes me remember how I first discovered this. Back when my father died and my mother sent me to visit my aunt here at the Academy. I spent my days running around the grounds and getting in trouble, furious at the world without even knowing it.

Thinking of myself being so lost and vulnerable, I let out a soft scoff and I step inside. I close the door behind me and I let my body slide down its length, all the way to the floor.

And I fix my eyes on the painting, the very sight making my breathing calmer. It’s just a very old portrait of a plain-looking vampire noblewoman posing in a lush green garden. Lady X, I call her. If it were now that I saw it for the very first time, I know I would’ve hated it. The way she’s cinched into the tightest corset ever, making me wonder how she could even breathe. The way she has one hand outstretched and a handkerchief falling from it, as if she’s about to ask for her smelling salts. But it’s the way she looks at me that bothers me the most. That meek, subservient look in her eyes.

Although, sometimes, I do feel as if that’s the way she is only when I’m looking. As if, sometimes, I can catch a fleeting change in her expression that makes me stop and wonder if I’m losing my mind.

But despite it all, she still has that effect on me. It was the first thing, after my father’s death, that I came across that could make me stop and just… be.

For a second, I just remain sitting there, staring at the portrait as the emptiness grows inside me. And then, as soon as my mind rushes to the conversation I just had with the three of them, it turns sharp and red hot.

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