His fangs gleamed faintly as he leaned closer. “I presume nothing, Lamb. I only observe.”
“Why do you wish to learn to play?” she asked, gesturing towards her piano.
His eyes followed her hand, settling upon the ivory keys. When he spoke, it was barely a whisper.
“Because I like to listen. There is a sorrow in the music you make. A sorrow I would quite like to understand.” His gaze flicked back to her. “This despair you create. It sings to me.”
Penelope’s throat tightened at his words.Despair you create.She had never heard anyone speak of her music so plainly, nor so accurately.
Had anyone ever noticed anything beyond the well-timed notes she played? Beyond the mask of elegance of her music? Past every careful gesture demanded by her station?
“And if I refuse?” she asked, her voice breaking despite her resolve.
A shadow of a smile passed over his lips, and he bowed his head, as though her refusal wounded him and he welcomed that injury. “Then I go. You will not see me again. You will never hear my voice, nor feel my hand upon yours. You will continue your life of silence, locked away until you are given like coin to a man. You will play your piano, and fill your father’s house with sorrow, and one day your husband’s. And still, no one will know the song but you.”
Her heart stuttered as his hand brushed over the breast of his coat, where the letters now rested. “And you will never see these again,” he added, soft and merciless. “And I ken, you could use a pause from your relentless routine.”
Heat burned her face. “You presume much.”
“Perhaps,” he answered gently. “But perhaps I do not.” His gaze deepened, as if he could strip away every layer ofher.“Because, Penelope Adams, do you truly wish for your life to remain within the walls another builds for you? Do you wish to give your music only to empty rooms… to ears that will never truly hear it?”
The air grew heavier, the candlelight itself bending toward him.
“I have a feeling, Lamb,” his voice dropped lower as he continued, “that should this be your final composition, it shall be the most polished sound of despair to grace even the heavens.”
Without warning, he stepped back, relieving her for the final time of his presence as he clung onto the edges of the open window.
She could not breathe. The way he had spoken, the way his eyes had stripped her bare—he had seen her. Every hidden thought, every trembling piece of her that she fought to bury beneath civility and grace and the teachings she had been given. His words had been mocking, yes—uncharitable,even. But they had jangled within her like a church bell, ringing honest and loud, nonetheless.
“Your name,” she caught herself calling out as the vampire hoisted himself onto her windowsill, turning his head over his shoulder to glance back at her. “You never told me.”
“Elias.”
And with that, he dropped from her sight, disappearing into the darkness.
4
ELIAS
“What makes a monster, I wonder,” Elias murmured, his voice low and deliberate as he forced the fox’s head into the soil. He knelt over it with the stillness of a corpse, his hand holding it fast while the creature writhed beneath him, snarling and snapping its teeth in futile rage.
“We act only as nature demands, do we not?” he asked. The wind pressed against him, rustling the dead leaves that still hopelessly clung to the trees.
The fox’s golden eyes flickered, their wild shine dimming as it stared back at him—caught, cornered, helpless.
“Then tell me,” Elias whispered, freeing the snare from its torn paw. He held it up for the animal to see, the metal glinting dully in the moonlight. “Is the monster the one who obeys instinct… or the one who cloaks it?”
Rising to his feet, Elias dropped his hold on the fox, discarding the snare to the forest floor. For a moment, the beast remained there, laying on the ground as though it were awaiting its end.
“Go on, then,” Elias murmured, nudging its hind leg with the toe of his boot. “Before I decide I am hungry.”
The fox bolted at last, vanishing into the underbrush with a rustle of leaves.
The forest still sung with the same chorus it did all those years ago. He almost caught himself missing the sensation of the cold autumn nights. The chill of the wind caressing his skin. Even the fear of what it meant to be alone in the woods. The fear of what might have lurked.
Elias stood alone for a moment longer, staring into the place where the fox had fled, the scent of blood still thick in the air.
At last, he turned, brushing the soil from his hands as he made his way down the narrow path that threaded through the trees, back to the enclave. The forest loomed high around him, skeletal branches scraping at the sky like blackened ribs. Each gust of wind sent more leaves tumbling, brittle and broken beneath his steps.
