By the time I send Winnie to bed after our midnight dinner beside the fire, the ballroom is empty and the castle is bedecked with tapestries. I wander the halls that were once bare, cold stone, enjoying the way they now glitter with threads of gold.
I try to see my work through her eyes, to feel wonder when I look at these pieces instead of shame.
Then I think of what my mother will say when she sees my work hanging in the castle, and of Winnie leaving in four weeks, and the blood in my cold veins feels as though it is made of razor blades.
I don’t want Winnie to leave. I want her laughter and her infuriating attempts to get inside my head and the way her cheeks redden sometimes when she looks at me. I want the joy she brings to this cold castle.
I want to kiss her again.
I want things no vampire should ever want from a human. I want things that will crumble my whole world to ashes.
It’s best that she leaves.
She’s safer back in London, far away from monsters who lurk in the shadows.
But perhaps … perhaps I can hold on to this feeling after she’s gone. My fingers itch to create. I settle at the desk in my now-tidy office, pulling out a freshly stretched canvas. Reginald appears from the shadows as I begin a sketch.
“My lord, I’ve prepared the car for you.”
“Why? I’m not leaving the house.”
“You must, my lord.” Reginald regards me with his stoic gaze. “You are suffering. You need blood, and the vintage in our cellar isn’t cutting it. I’ve made us an appointment at a feeding club. Winifred will be fine in the castle for a few hours while you?—”
“I’m not going to a feeding club.”
The thought of it makes me shudder. Sinkingmy teeth into the neck of a stranger, giving them that pleasure when there’s something much closer to home that I want …
“But—”
“I saidno.”
Reginald purses his lips. “Is this because of Winifred, my lord?”
“It’s not your concern.”
“You kissed her.”
“I said I don’t want to discuss it!”
Reginald’s sigh is so quiet, it would be imperceptible if I weren’t possessed of supernatural hearing. “You wish for a nightcap, my lord?”
“Thank you, Reginald. The French aristocrat tonight, I feel.” I turn away, setting out my palette knives and brushes, not wanting him to read anything in my face. “You have checked on Winifred?”
“For now, she sleeps.”
“Please inform me if that changes.”
“As you wish, my lord.”
Reginald fades into the shadows to go about his business. I return to the canvas on my easel, allowing my mind to fill in the garish white space with a vision. This is the challenge with painting, the reason it infuriates and enraptures me. When I begin, I hold a picture in my head of what I want the finished painting to look like, but as I work, that vision becomes blurry, and I can never bring back the crispness of my original idea.
This time, I’m certain my subject will remain sharp.
But before I can begin … I search my desk, trying to remember where Winnie put my phone. She left it in a tray on the corner, along with my set of castle keys. What an odd place for them to be. That woman is infuriating.
It takes me a few tries to remember how to make a call. Gideon answers on the first ring.
“Alaric Valerian himself?” He sounds amused. I hear the noise of construction in the background. “I usually hear from your dogsbody. I didn’t know you knew how to use a phone. Have you called to apologise for yourcruelty earlier?”
