Page 40 of Hunt the Dusk
Every time I look in the mirror.
Loneliness.
The kind that comes with the knowledge that there is no one else like you. No one to truly understand or empathize. “You thought you could keep me as your infected buddy, didn’t you?”
She shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know.” Her gaze darts away. “But even after all this time, the desire to cure is strong in me. As much as my alter ego wants to destroy, the core of me, the part that is still Harriet Jacq wishes to preserve and save.”
But there is no cure in these books. No clue. No fucking hints.
My heart sinks. “What now?”
“More transfusions until they become ineffective or…” She looks across at the nearest cell. “We let nature take its course and work with what develops.”
“What about Orina’s blood?” Edwin asks. “Can that help her?”
“No. A transfusion needs to be with compatible blood. Miss Lighthart’s blood would likely kill Padma.”
Silence stretches for long seconds, pregnant with the knowledge that I’m royally fucked. In that moment, all I want more than anything else is to be home with my parents, maybe in the kitchen with Ma as she kneads the dough to make my favorite meat-filled parathas, or playing backgammon with my father by the fire. I miss them with an ache so deep it brings tears to my eyes, but I can never go home. Not now. Not like this.
There’s nothing left to do here. “I’ll be back in a few days for my transfusion.”
“Don’t forget to bring payment,” she calls after me. “Either the usual or a vial of your friend’s blood.”
I head for the door, wanting to be away from her, from this room and the cell that looks like it might be my ultimate fate.
“Do you think Orina knows she’s…different?” Edwin asks as we head out the front door of the mansion.
“I don’t think so.”
“Should we tell her?”
“Undoubtedly.”
It isn’t until we’re back in the carriage on the way to the chapter house that it hits me that Harriet never did tell us what her affliction was.
Chapter 14
ORINA
Ezekiel was gone by the time we got back to Branwood Castle. Annoying as hell because I’d prepared myself for a confrontation where I’d make it clear he wasn’t to leave the castle without me and the guys.
My confrontation would have to wait till he returned, which would probably be sometime before dawn, which meant I’d have to stay awake, and I’d be shattered for work tomorrow. Something would have to change. I’d speak to Padma and adjust my hours to come in at noon maybe. That way I could be on Ezekiel watch, do my Order job, and still get some sleep.
I didn’t have the mental and emotional battery to join the guys for dinner, so I took a packed lunch, courtesy of Ingrid, and shut myself in Ezekiel’s memory room.
There were paintings and line sketches obviously penned by Ezekiel when he was a child. I found a leather ball, ragged and worn, and a clay cast of a paw print with the name Lance etched into it. There was a small box with baby teeth in it wrapped in a purple ribbon and a wedding dress carefully packed in a box. So many things from the time before. From his life.
He‘d been a man once. A husband and a father. A brother, although there was no evidence of that in this room. But he’d had a life before his curse.
The sketches of the woman I’d found the other night told me that Ezekiel had loved once. But the vampire king was not this man. Not anymore, and I doubted that I could ever make him so.
I’d just taken a huge bite of my crusty roll sandwich when the door slammed open, and a gust of air blew through the room, extinguishing the candlelight.
Ezekiel loomed in the doorway, his shoulders high and defensive.
I chewed fast.
“What are you doing in here?” His tone was low and lethally soft.
