PENELOPE
“Elias,” Penelope protested softly, though her lips curved upwards despite herself. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Patience, Lamb,” he murmured, voice brushing low against her ear. “Just a few more steps.”
He covered her eyes with his hands, leading her into his home. She huffed but obeyed, letting him steer her blindly into whatever it was he wished to show her. Every sense narrowed to the press of his hand and the deep, steady cadence of his breath behind her.
“You seem to be full of surprises tonight.”
Elias’ hands slipped from her eyes at last, letting the shadows of his home fall fully over her. She blinked against the dim candlelight.
“Wait—” she started, but he only held a finger to his lips. “This is yours?” she asked. Because there they were. Books. Thousands of them. Stacked and shelved, spilling across tables, leaning in precarious towers of leather and ink.
“Who else would they belong to?” Elias said, his voice low, almost amused, almost tender, as if sharing something fiercely intimate with her. “I have never invited someone into myhome before. You are the first I have ever wanted to show my collection to.”
The air smelled of paper, dust, and time. Her hand lifted instinctively to touch the nearest spine—her heart seized in her chest. “Tell Tale Heart,” she gasped, lifting the worn book, her fingertips trailing over its browned, fragile pages as though they might bruise under too much touch. “My mother used to read this to me when I was a girl. At night, by candlelight. She would hum the melody of the story as she read, the same way she played the piano.”
Elias’ gaze softened. “What was she like?”
Penelope lifted her eyes from the book, letting them meet his. Her shoulders rolled back, a faint shiver in the movement. “She was beautiful,” she murmured, her voice almost lost beneath the quiet weight of the library. “And kind. She was the one who taught me the piano… she said music could tell the truths we could not. You know,” she continued, “she always believed there was more to his stories. She said the way he spoke, so tormented, so lost, it seemed like there was always something he could not say. Something beyond the words… something that lived in the spaces between them, in the silences, the pauses, the things you had to feel rather than hear.”
Elias stepped closer, closing the space between them, his presence warm and grounding. His hand brushed the small of her back, a gentle anchor, and the library seemed to draw them both into its hush. “Poe,” he murmured, low, dark amusement curling the edge of his lips, “he always had a tryst with self-destruction. Mischievous, reckless… not unlike a certain Lamb I know.”
Penelope turned around, stilling her wandering hands from exploring the book any further. “You knew him?TheEdgar Allen Poe?”
The curve of his mouth was all dark amusement. “Unfortunately, yes. I met him while traveling. Briefly, before his end. I’d call it untimely, but that would make me a liar. Your mother was a smart woman.” He said as he stepped in closer until his chest pressed against her back. His hand found the spine of the book, his knuckles grazing hers as he traced the words on the page. “He wrote this when he was first turned.”
Her breath hitched. “He was a vampire?”
“One of the better ones, yes. And not by choice. When you turn, the world can seem like it is trying to suffocate you with its presence. The smells, the hunger, the sound—the heart beats. It is unlike any torture I have ever known. What he was hearing was a hundred beating hearts of the townspeople.”
“That sounds awful,” she whispered into the wavering silence, as she turned her face toward him. “Was that what it was like for you?”
“That is what it is like for all of us,” he said softly, his gaze fixed on where her fingers curled around the book. Finally, looking up at her, his eyes held something not unlike mourning. He smiled. “You learn to tune most of it out.”
The air shifted, thickened, and she became acutely aware of the rhythm inside her chest. Of the rise and fall of her breasts. Of the steady drag of his gaze down to her throat, where her pulse beat hard enough she could feel it against her skin.
And she hated—no, shefeared—how her body answered him. The way her heartbeat leapt into a crescendo when he leaned just slightly closer. The way heat curled low in her belly every time she caught him staring at her like that—like he was hunting her. The way her body responded so intensely just from a kiss.
Penelope turned away from him before the thought could swallow her whole, sliding the book back onto the shelf with fingers that wanted to tremble. “You have so many books,” she said, forcing her voice past the knot in her throat. Hertouch skimmed spines and cracked leather bindings. “Some in languages I can’t even name…”
His steps followed hers, unhurried. That stare pressed between her shoulder blades like a palm.
“I have lived a long life,” he said. “I’ve witnessed wonders across the world—artists performing in crowded streets and cathedrals alike. Their music equally beautiful. But yours”—he paused, voice low, woven with something dangerous—“yours was the first to make me feel something I haven’t in so very long.”
Penelope stopped as he grabbed her wrist, turning her so that her back was pressed against the shelf. “And what was that?” she whispered, her eyes dancing between his and his lips.
Elias stepped closer, the air between them charged and suddenly, she felt it. His hunger, one that was devouring him. One that was not just for her blood. “Life,” he whispered, caging her in completely. Trapping her.
Penelope’s eyes met his in that moment of stillness, her heartbeat filled her ears so that the only thing she could focus on was him.
His gaze trailed down her neck, across her chest to where her heart fought for his attention.
“I can teach you, if you want…” he whispered as he stepped closer, his red eyes slowly lifting. “Languages. History. Science. Anything you want to learn. My knowledge is yours.”
“Elias,” she breathed.
“If not here, anywhere. Anywhere in this entire world. Any place you wish to see. Whisper it, and it is yours.”
