“Valeria.” He started to plead and then stopped, face twisting in disgust. His lips curled into a snarl. “If I am a monster, then what does that make you? You came in here practically throwing yourself onto me, and you claim me to be the monster.”
“You—you—”
My chest threw itself into a coughing fit of blood spurting from my lips and onto his blouse.
Silas launched into action, sweeping me up and biting his flesh. “Drink.”
I pushed his hand away, struggling to get my feet under me.
I hated the effect he had on me, hated the fact I wasted my opportunity to kill him—to be of use to the people in the village. To not be the selfish woman I am.
I needed to give my life to the greater good. If I was to die soon, I didn’t have the time to be selfish.
“Perhaps it is best that I am reminded of what you are,” I whispered.
I was nearly out of the door when Silas gripped my shoulder and spun me around, my face meeting his chest. Power surged from him, nails biting into my flesh. Iridescent gold cast down upon me, fury and rage bubbling between the surface.
“Would you like to guess my name?”
“I think beast suits you best,” I said, keeping the knife close under the folds of my skirt.
Excerpt fromillegible journal:
—evening of death and destruction. Father is dead, and I cannot even bring myself to write about her. Narcisa believes it to be a message between our two countries, but I believe it to be a ploy to start a war that no one wants. I am to be crowned in mere days and then after marrying Narcisa to seal our alliance. I fear I must start at the beginning if I am to understand how this could have gone so wrong in so many ways.
The troubles started nearly a decade ago when I was all but a boy. Father was embroiled in a costly war with an empire that no longer exists. He never gave many details, but he had several magic folk employed to temper the defenses. Magic to fight magic he said, but it was at a cost, a high cost. Amaris is broke, too broke to feed its own people with too many upheavals and epidemics have broken out. Father never saw the devastation in those villages, the smell of death lingering even among the living. I walked those villages as soon as I was able to comprehend the damage, but even then, it was too late.
The war had taken much from us—it had taken much from me. I still remember the taste of her lips in which there can beno other. No matter the state of our countries—I will not let them decide our fate, but now, it’s too late.
All of this was too late.
I was a dutiful son and stood ready to do anything to protect my country and the lives that inhabit it. I knew that I had little choice of the matter—that I could change my fate. I was to be crowned King with Narcisa as my queen, yet I was unsure of what I wanted.
It wasn’t until I met her that I finally understood what it means to want—to desire a life you could not have. I write this—
HE
Twelve
Isquinted at the writing underneath the candlelight, rubbing my tired eyes. Anxiety knotted through my stomach, and shame burned in my cheek.
I kissed him. In return, he had bitten me, partaking in my own blood. My fingers touched the bandage. Ebony patched me up after the stunt in the dining room, insisting I’d get blood all over the fine fabrics.
“This is not a hospital,” she said, her ghostly fingers applying the adhesive to the spot. “But this should do. Try not to get hurt too often here. We don’t have many medical supplies, seeing as the inhabitants are dead orundead.” She chuckled.
Ebony had been diligent in wrapping me up, being the only source of comfort.
“How did you ever become trapped here?” I said, trying to divert my attention away from the fading warmth and the faint ghostly touches not coming from the spirit dressing my wounds.
“I was a nurse sometime in the summer of 1806, taking care of down-and-out folks of the village. I am not sure what it is like where you are from, but those streets are not kind to those whose luck has run out.” She cut another strip of tape, cold fingers pressing down on the spot of my neck. “There seemed to be a lot of mangled children that came in, blood in every which way. I lost a few of them to their injuries and a few others to infection.”
“So, when did you come to the castle? I thought that this place would be older than a few decades,” I asked in place of the question burning through my head.
She thought for a moment. “Silas picked me up from the back alley after I had been jumped by a patient I’d treated. Patched me up and everything, insisted I drink from him, but I refused. I came here when the fever set in from the infection and I knew I was on death’s doorstep.”
I contemplated for a moment, lost in thought, and held my tongue as questions swirled. “You died here?”
Ebony finished patching my neck, her dark eyes heavy with sorrow. “Master is kind and not the villain that you claim him to be, nor the bloodthirsty vampire the town believes. He is simply a man. A man who haslost everything.”
