Page 68 of A Dream of Stars and Curses

‘I asked you a question! Did he ever tell you how delicious you are?’

I just about manage to shake my head. My insides constrict when I do what she says, but I don’t see any other option.

She laughs and lets go. I fall to the floor and don’t try to get up again—I’ve a feeling she won’t take well to me doing anything she hasn’t told me to do. My hands fly to my neck, my heart racing at the thought that they’ll come away slick with blood, but there’s only a tiny amount. Her saliva must have sealed the wound. Which means she could literally keep me alive and hurting for... well, I don’t know. Whatever her plans are, she can and will make it work.

There has got to be a way out of here, besides the door she came through. If there isn’t, maybe I’ll find something to...

I swallow. No. I’ll fight until she kills me or someone finds me. The longer I keep going, the more chance there is of Kate or Leverett tracking me down. I want to say the longer I resist, but I’m not sure that applies. If Chiara wants information from me, she can use her vampire magic to make me tell her anything. If I resist too much, she’ll simply kill me since there isn’t really anything in this for her. There’s a very thin line I need to walk, except it’s dark and I can’t see a thing.

‘He didn’t bite you?’ Chiara asks. ‘Not once?’ I shake my head again. She scoffs. ‘He really has grown pathetic.’ Her lips curl into a smile I’m quickly starting to hate. If I get out of here, I’ll be seeing this in my nightmares for the rest of my life. ‘So, am I the first to taste you?’

I glare at her. How many vampires does she think I know? What does she think my friends do—pass me around so they can each have a bite? I shiver. That’s probably exactly what she’d do, actually.

She genuinely looks surprised that Leverett hasn’t bitten me. Not sure if this gives me an advantage somehow, but I’m sure she’ll spin it against me.

‘Perhaps he doesn’t like you all that much after all, then,’ she says. For a second, she looks like she’s considering options I’m not aware of.

Then she disappears in a huff of fog, reappears right in front of me, and shoves me into the floor. One hand grabs my hair and pulls my head back. It’s all happening too fast for me to make sense of. One second, she’s over there, the next she’s pinning me down—

Chiara rams her teeth into my neck. A strangled scream escapes me, but it flexes my neck muscles against her fangs, and it hurts.

I imagined this many times, with Leverett. It was nothing like this. Chiara doesn’t try to make it hurt less—if anything, I’m pretty sure she’s making it hurt more just because she can. The sudden brutality of it has me frozen in terror. My whole body goes limp. All I can feel is a searing pain where her mouth is, where it feels like she’s tearing a gaping hole into my neck. In one swift strike, Chiara has drained all strength from me, and all I can do is let it happen.

A tear runs down my cheek. I hate myself for it.

Finally, Chiara sits up. She looks down at me, lips and chin smeared with my blood. One finger strokes away the tear.

‘Don’t cry, Estelle. I can’t have broken you already, can I? I wonder how few days you will last as my plaything. Or will it be mere hours before your weak little mortal heart gives out?’ She lowers herself back down. For a second, I’m afraid she’ll bite me again, but she merely whispers, ‘Or might it be that you weren’t all that brave to begin with? Here I thought you had to be something special for him to care about you, but we’ve already established that he doesn’t like you all that much, haven’t we? You’re nothing, just as I said.’

She vanishes in a sigh of fog again. I don’t see her reappear because I can’t turn my head, but I barely make out a shadow from the corner of my eyes.

‘You are nothing,’ she hisses.

Then the door slams shut, and I’m lying alone with my head in a pool of my blood.

My whole neck feels hot and mangled. I tried to get up once my legs felt up to it, but it hurts so much that I can’t even sit, let alone stand and move around the room.

---