Page 8 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

I decided it was better to forget the whole Hector-pinning-me-to-the-bed incident and focus on the matter at hand. Reviving the Castle and its drunken wanker of a master.

I settled myself into the room nearest Hector’s lest he needed something—perhaps a reminder to drink less wine and more blood—then I washed, changed into a muslin dress, and went on a mission to find some firewood for the stove, because not even a cranky old castle was going to keep me from having my morning tea.

In the lemon-bright light of day, things didn’t seem so dreadful. The Castle still kept the majority of its rooms and corridors clean of dirt and dust, and there was nothing a little fresh air and some tidying up couldn’t fix.

But first: heat.

Something about all of this chill and somberness felt wrong. It wasn’t just that the Castle was in mourning. It was missing presence, sentience. It was missing its soul. Or, perhaps, since the Castle was a direct reflection of its master’s emotional and mental state, this was how Hector felt on the inside now. Cold and dark and bereft of all essence.

If I were being honest, I wished I had the luxury of breaking down myself, especially after what Hector said last night.Everyone always leaves me.

To be left was inevitable. It was pointless to fight it. But how do you move onafteryou’ve been left? How do you put one foot in front of the other and arrange yourself a new path?

This sounded like the kind of question Esperida would know how to answer. She would put her hand on your shoulder or take your chin between her fingers and tell you in that gentle but firm manner of hers something simple, something you could easily understand, and insist on it until you gave yourself the answer you’ve been looking for all along.

She had visited me in Thaloria only six months ago, and if I closed my eyes now and concentrated hard enough, I could conjure the feeling of her warm touch on my shoulder, her wise voice in my ear.

A part of me still refused to believe that she was gone. She had to be somewhere around here. In her study. In the observatory. Down in the kitchen baking her awful cookies.

Yes, shehad tobe there.

But when I rushed downstairs, I found the kitchen lightless and empty. No warmth. No laughter. No Esperida covered in flour and no Eron pretending that her foul concoctions were the best things he’d ever tasted.

Wiping tears from the corners of my eyes, I gathered the firewood that was stacked in a corner and got the stove going. I only saved a couple of logs so I could light the hearth in Hector’s room. Back at my parents’ house, I used to think it was drudgery to get the fireplaces going. Now I was glad to have my hands full, to be preoccupied with dull, mundane tasks.

So, I busied myself with brewing a cup of tea using the dried mint leaves I found hanging from a string over the arched window of the kitchen. The tea, of course, did not taste like mint. Every sip came with new depth and complexity, spices and herbs mingling in unexpected bursts of sweetness. Esperida believed that the Castle was conjuring things, including food and refreshments, from the Fey Realm, but not even she had discovered the full extent of the Castle’s magic. For all we knew, it fed us the very substance of the gods.

Regardless, I enjoyed my mysterious, ever-changing tea crouched over the stove to keep myself warm, and after I was done and felt a bit more composed, I grabbed the two logs and trailed upstairs.

I had left Hector’s door only a bit ajar, and since my hands were full now, I had to use my back to push it fully open. As I stepped inside, I was alarmed to find the floor clean, the bed empty, and the tangle of sheets and covers perfectly made.

For a moment, I merely stared, questioning the reality of last night. Perhaps I’d gotten sick, and it had all been the productof a wild fever dream. Or even worse, some kind of illusion a fairy had forced on me after capturing me in the forest. My mind jumped from one dreadful scenario to another until a sudden creak snapped me out of it.

Tendrils of steam crawled out of the narrow door of the adjoining room as if it were the mouth of a very angry dragon—or the chamber of a freshly bathed vampire.

A second later, Hector emerged from the haze.

Naked.

Naked like the day he was born, with only a small towel thrown over his head. His long-limbed body glistened with droplets of water, and his cock simply…hungthere for the world to see.

And by the gods, there was somuchof it.

The logs fell from my arms and hit my left foot. I shrieked, hopping around, which earned me another surge of pain as I lost my balance and hit my hip against the handle of the door.

Hector looked up and screamed too, the towel on his head flying away.

“Why are you naked?” I squealed.

“Why are you here?” he growled, and in a second, he was on me, his strong hands seizing my arms.

I groaned, pinning my eyes to the ceiling. “And it’s touching my thigh. Your cock is touching my thigh.”

He swayed back, attempting to cover himself with his hands. “Don’t say cock. Since when do you say cock?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, please put the proverbial basilisk away before I cut off its head,” I snarled, feeling the skin of my face going from hot to blazing.

He moved around the room with the speed of a fallen star, and before I knew it, he was dressed in a pair of simple black trousers and a billowy white shirt. His hair had dried from the remarkable velocity and was left in a perfect jumble of ravenstrands, framing a face so striking it could make even a god envious.

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