“Joshua, leave before I change my mind,” Karson snapped.
“Right, sorry.” He gave a salute.
“Tell me why you changed that boy?” Monique asked, scowling at his retreating back. “If you needed warriors, he is not it.”
Karson leaned back and spread his arm on the couch behind me. “I have my reasons.”
“Yes.” Monique rose. “And some of them are stupid.” Her eyes hooked on me for a second.
“The moment I let you lecture me about stupid choices, Monique, is the moment I can no longer draw air,” Karson responded dismissively. “Now I suggest you feed and get some sleep before I change my mind about letting you stay home as well.”
Monique’s eyes glinted with annoyance, before she too saluted him and she left the room.
“I think I too shall rest for a few hours before I go out.” Michael stood, stretching his shoulders back. “Good night.”
“How many vampires do you have out there usually at night?” I asked when it was just the two of us alone.
“A dozen or so.” His thumb brushed my shoulder, sending a fluttery warmth through my veins. A dozen seemed like a lot and somehow not enough against Sarah. “I highly doubt Sarah would be stupid enough to try to harm you again now that her diabolical plan has failed. My guess is she’s somewhere far away, wondering how to get herself out of the mess she’s in.”
“Then why the guards, why keep us here?”
“Because Sarah may very well be intelligent, but never underestimate the power anger and revenge can have over common sense.”
“We can’t be stuck in this house forever, Karson.”
He was up and striding over to the whiskey cabinet and pouring himself a drink, before I even noticed he’d risen. The space his touch left felt empty, cold.
“It won’t be forever, Amelia.” He spoke over his shoulder. “I just need you to trust me and have a little more patience.”
He had been alive way longer than I had, and he was skilled in the art of war, in the art of vampires. I knew very little outside of what I had witnessed, and I did trust him.
“It’ll be tough being stuck here with you, but I’ll try.”
His lips curved up in the corners as he moved to stand in front of the warm glow of the fireplace. Even deathly pale, evenwith dark rims under his eyes, he was striking. “Patience is not one of your strongest points.”
“That makes two of us.”
His smile lit up the room, and yet my heart felt as if it were gasping for his love. Did he mean it when he told me he loved me? It was an easy lie when someone was taking their last breath. I knew what I wanted, his face to be the last thing I saw every night and the first thing I saw every morning. My fingers wanted to thread through his hair, to pull him flush against me. My lips wanted to taste his. My body wanted to shelter against his warmth.
It seemed utterly cruel to need someone so badly, and he was standing so close and yet all I could do was stare.
I picked at a chip in my painted nails. “Why do you care about me?”
He blinked as if the question had caught him off guard, and he hesitated to respond. I could see him churning it over in his head—almost as if he didn’t know himself. Almost as if he didn’t care.
“Or if not,” I hated how weak, how desperate I sounded, “why are you keeping me safe?”
His brow flickered. “Where is this coming from?”
He had more important issues, I couldn’t be a priority for him. I knew that, but still, all the broken pieces left behind by everyone who should care and didn’t scraped against my chest, making it hard to breathe.
He studied my face, and I felt a tingle against my scalp and deeper to my brain. He was trying to read my mind. I stood up and paced to the window, staring at my reflection bouncing against the pane, pale, ghost like.
“I don’t know, maybe because my world is a little fucked up right now, Georgie is tense around me, Monique hates me, and the man who told me he …” I swallowed, unable to bring myselfto sayloved, “cared about me, hasn’t touched me since that night, and he also despises witches, and I’m just wondering why he cares if I die or not.” I took a deep, shuddering breath and turned back to face him.
He was silent for a long moment, his eyes warm and steady and confused. “I care because you are important to me.”
“Because I’m one of the witches prophesied to help save the waters?” I didn’t know why I kept pushing to find out how he felt. Because the answer could destroy me. Maybe because a brutal, fast heartbreak was better than the torture of the slow death of hope.
