I raise my hand to my mouth and nick my index finger with my fang.
A pearl of blood pools from the cut – crimson and perfect. I pull open her cold, pale lips and smear the blood across her tongue just as Reginald rushes from the castle behind me.
“My lord, what are you doing?!”
“Winnie …” I reach for her, but the sun burns away my despair. “Drink. Please …”
Everything goes black.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WINNIE
Mum: Winnie, if Ken tries to talk to you about the dolls, don’t listen to him. He’s overreacting as usual. He told the council I was terrifying local children. Can you imagine anything so absurd? I got an amazing deal at Savemart – cans of peaches for 30p each! I got two boxes. Remember when we stayed on that farm during the holidays and you were obsessed with climbing that peach tree? I’ll save a box for when you get back.
Iwake with a cry and a deeply unsettling sensation in my body. I reach down to slap at the imaginary bugs crawling over my legs, the dream memory ofrealbugs that had plagued my childhood. But as I slap my skin, I realise it’s cold and clammy, and the sensation that woke me up is a pounding headache and a burning in my lungs like the air is made of razor blades.
My eyes adjust and I look around me. I’m not in my bedroom but slumped in my usual chair beside the roaring fire. I shiver despite the blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Alaric’s chair is empty.
I jump as Reginald appears at my side. He holds out a silver tray containing a steaming mug. “Hot chocolate, ma’am. It will help warm you up. You gave us a nasty scare.”
As I reach out to take the hot chocolate, I gasp.
The water.
It all comes back. I was playing with Mirabelle around the fountain and I fell in. Too late, I realised that the fountain is more like an enormous fucking subterranean crater.
Who has a fountain that deep?
I remember falling down, down, down into the darkness, the panic clawing at my skin, and two strong, cool hands grasping me, holding me steady. I remember a deep, rich voice calling for me in the darkness …
Alaric saved me.
I glance over at his empty chair, the cushion hollowed by the ghost of his body as my own chest feels hollowed out.
He saved me. Again.
I choke back the sob swelling my throat closed. All those years growing up with my mother’s hoarding, I wished for some knight in shining armour to ride in and take me far away to live in his castle. But the knight never came, and I had to get myself out. And ever since, I’ve had to clench my fists and keep a tight grip on my life to keep myself safe …
And all the time, the knight in the castle washere… and he’s saved me, again.
I swipe at my eyes, determined not to cry.
“Can I see Alaric?” I ask Reginald.
“Lord Valerian is resting. He may not wake for some days.”
Oh no.
“Is he okay?”
The butler shakes his head. “He has a condition. He cannot be in the sun for long. He is very ill.”
Wait, what?
My heart stutters.
That explains why he does everything at night, and why the castle windows are tinted and the drapes are always drawn.
