‘By the by, Clara,’ he said with a lilting smile, ‘you need silver to kill a vampire.’
With that, he was gone, and I was once again powerless to defend myself.
Five
ISPENT THE REST OFthe night drifting in a restless state, never really asleep but not alert enough to be awake.It was impossible to relax knowing that the very monster who haunted my nightmares was prowling within the same walls that held me, and not even the lock on my door could keep him from claiming anything he desired.
Was this how Mother felt on the last night of her life?Father tried his best to shelter me from the details of her death, but I had pieced together enough to map out her final days.To the best of my knowledge, Raleigh had visited her three times.Each night she grew weaker, and on the third he finished the job.I always wondered how she must have felt, knowing he would come, unable to do anything to save herself.Had she been awake when he slipped into her bedroom?When he put his lips to her throat?
Father must have known what was happening too.So why hadn’t he done more to save her?In the days following the festival he wouldn’t let me see her.I’d whiled away the time in her library, combing through history books far above my reading level forinformation on the Rostenburg princes.None held any record of a reigning prince from the last three hundred years.The imperial records had a patchy family tree full of Leopolds and Huberts spaced suspiciously evenly apart, but the cathedral in Triz had no records to match.There had been no christenings, no ascensions, no funerals.There were no portraits commissioned nor palaces built in their honour.The last prince to leave any mark on history was Prince Raleigh Linford von Rostenburg.
The prince who had vanished.
I must have drifted to sleep, because the memory of that day suddenly felt as real as it had when I was a child – slamming shut the history book, heart racing at what I had read.A storm raged outside the window, trapping me inside where I could share my discovery with no one.Father would only tell me off again for filling my head with the ideas in unsavoury books, and Johanna would report straight back to Father.Mother might have another explanation – they were her books after all – but for the second day in a row she hadn’t emerged from her room, and Father had forbidden me from disturbing her.
I’d ignored him, snuck into her room and found her in bed with the curtains drawn, the fire burning too hot in the hearth.Mother was already pale; she rarely had the energy to leave the house in the months leading up to Raleigh’s return.But in the course of one day, what little colour remaining in her cheeks had vanished, and the way the firelight cast dancing shadows on her features made her look hollow, empty.When she creaked open her eyes, they were bloodshot and unfocused.
‘Clara,’ she whispered, her voice hoarse.‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘Why not?’I’d asked.‘Are you sick?’
I wish that’s all she had been.If she’d simply been sick, she might have recovered.
Mother sighed heavily and closed her eyes.For a moment I thought she had fallen asleep.‘Your father … will explain.’
‘Explain what?’
‘It isn’t his fault.’
‘What isn’t?’
Her hand ran down my cheek.She was trembling.‘I’m so sorry, Clara.You’ll understand one day.Forgive him.’
‘Forgive Father for what?’But there was nothing else I could get out of her.Mother’s energy was spent.She scratched at two wounds blooming angrily at her neck, then lolled her head on the pillow, breathing heavily.I didn’t see Raleigh’s letter then.Perhaps Father had already hidden it.Or perhaps he only left it after his final visit.
‘Will you be better soon?’I asked.
A breath in.A breath out.
‘I love you,’ she wheezed.
I tried to make myself reply, to make things end differently this time.But I couldn’t – I hadn’t.I’d stormed out without replying, filled with the bitter indignation of a child who had never known hardship.I never imagined it would be my last chance to say it back.
That the next time I saw her, she would be stiff and cold and bloodless.
I snapped awake, raw with the same regret that had gnawed at me for the last fourteen years.‘I love you too,’ I whispered into the darkness.But the only soul who might have heard me was the reason she never would.
I resolved never to leave my room again.It was clear to me now that escape was impossible.The labyrinth was impassable, the cliffunscalable.So I would rot here alone until Raleigh grew bored of his defiant and shrewish hostage and released me, or I died.
Orlfen would be better off without me, anyway.It had occurred to me before, in the few occasions when I’d imagined embracing Father’s wishes for me to marry a nobleman from abroad.If I died here in the castle, they would have one less mouth to feed, one less burden draining what few resources we had left.I knew the people in town held no love for me, and I could count on one hand the number left who deserved my sacrifice, but Orlfen was the only home I’d ever known.I would always love the ever-shifting snow caps and the brightly coloured murals on the shopfronts.If dying here would protect just one of the people who made Orlfen what it was, perhaps that was a fate worth embracing.
My resolve started to wane after I had to use my chamber-pot the next morning and had no means of clearing it out, and then again when my stomach began to roar for attention.But I knew how to endure hunger, and the window was good for something after all.It was my thirst that really pushed my resolve.I hadn’t had anything to drink since my meal the day before, and the jug that had been left for me was now shattered after my thwarted attempt at killing Raleigh.I lay back in my bed, the debris from last night’s tussle still strewn around me.Was I really so weak as to consider giving up because I had a dry mouth?
So when someone rapped on my door later that afternoon it didn’t occur to me to be frightened.If my looming appointment with destiny had been pushed forward, it would at least save me from having to admit how woefully ill-equipped I was for tolerating discomfort.
‘Are you awake?’
It was a woman’s voice.I sat up quickly, wondering if I’d misheard.The sun was still burning in another cloudless sky,which meant whoever was calling had to be human.Or at least not a vampire, and I didn’t want to consider that there might be more possibilities.
