‘You like that, Girly?’ he purred, closing his fists a little. I answered him with a sigh as the air in my lungs rushed out in one breath. He chuckled and his hands slid down, finding the hem of my shirt and pulling it up. I didn’t have time to react and in a second, he was holding it, leaving me standing in my bra and jeans.
‘What are you doing?’ I crossed my arms over my chest, very aware that the double doors to the left were thrown wide open to the night. He didn’t answer, but grabbed my hand and led me out towards the strip of light cast along the steps by the lamps in the entrance hall. I only just had time to kick my feet into the pair of dolly shoes I had placed aside. ‘Are you crazy? Somebody will see!’
‘Let them see,’ he replied, leading me out onto the gravel. He was too strong to resist and my back-pedalling proved useless, especially as he entwined his fingers in my hair, pushing my now drenched fringe out of my eyes. ‘Let them see how beautiful you are.’
I stretched out my free hand and pushed his own wet fringe out of his eyes, stifling a girlish giggle. ‘You do know it’s raining, right? And that it’s freezing cold?’ I could feel my jeans tightening as they became soaked through and streaks of water raced down my chest from the tips of my hair.
He looked up at the night sky, studying it with a bemused expression. ‘Raining? I never would have guessed.’ Drops of water landed on his face, running along his jaw and down his neck, which he wiped away with a brush of his own free hand. ‘But not cold. Temperate.’
‘Really?’ I shivered as I said that, emphasising how cold it really was. ‘I must feel like a hot poker then.’
‘As hard to handle as a hot poker,’ he muttered.
‘Hey!’ I placed a hand on his chest and shoved. He moved, but I knew that wasn’t anything to do with my strength. I took a few steps back and reached down, scooping a handful of water up in my cupped hands from the fountain and throwing in his vague direction. Most of his shirt was already wet but it caught his sleeve, plastering it to his skin. In a comically slow way, he looked down at it, arching an eyebrow.
‘Really, Girly?’
Before I could blink, he had darted forward and splashed me. It knocked the wind from my lungs as it hit me and I threw my arms around myself, thinking the glowing light and relative warmth of the entrance hall looked very appealing. He reached down to splash me again and I scarpered out of the way, around to the other side of the fountain. He rounded it one way and I dived the other, but he soon caught up with me, catching me by the waist.
‘Kaspar, don’t! I’ll catch a cold or something!’
Should have thought about that before you splashed him, my voice commented.
‘No, you won’t. Turning will stop anything like that.’
I groaned, relaxing into his arms as he steered us away from the fountain. ‘What if something goes wrong tomorrow night? What even happens when a human is turned?’
‘I take some of your blood, and you take some of mine. It’s simple. Nothing will go wrong.’
‘Yes, but what if—’
He pressed a finger to my lips. ‘If you were very old or very young, or seriously ill, then yes, it is likely that something could go wrong. But you’re not. In fact, you’re a dhampir, so there’s even less chance. So stop worrying.’
I made a disgruntled noise through my pursed lips. ‘What about after the blood bit then? How long does it take?’
‘It takes a few days for your teeth to completely sharpen and it will be a while before you develop hunting skills, but almost everything transforms in a few hours. It’s amazing to watch somebody pale like that.’
‘You’ve turned somebody before?’
He nodded. It was reassuring to know that he knew what he was doing, but something else, jealousy perhaps, crept in.
‘Who?’
He shook his head, like he was trying to remember. ‘One of the maids here, not long after the war. Anne, I think her name was.’
Something in the pit of my stomach fell away. ‘Do you mean Annie?’ Yet again he nodded. His eyes tinged pink and I didn’t have to ask to know what had happened. Well, that explains a lot. I felt another pang of jealousy, mixed with guilt too.
‘If something were to go wrong though, would—’
‘Father won’t be far away, and he knows everything there is to know about turning.’ Again, I didn’t know whether to be reassured or concerned.
‘Do you want to know something?’ he said, clearly keen to change the subject as he entwined his fingers with mine. He didn’t wait for an answer as he placed my hand over the spot on my chest where my heartbeat was the strongest. ‘I can’t wait until that heart stops beating.’
I rolled up onto my toes and planted a kiss on his lips. I could wait, but if there is ever going to be a good reason to turn, it is for more of these moments. I rested my head on his shoulder. He had his back to the mansion and I looked up at the place that had been my home for the past three months. I stared at it, wondering how such a large, empty, cold house could feel so right, even after everything that had happened.
And from the top floor, a face stared back: the King’s. His expression was neither kind nor angry, just blank, just as I thought his heart had been for so long. But now I realized he suffered, more than any of us; and a floor below that, a second man looked on: my own father. I didn’t need to study his face to know that it was full of hurt.
I pressed my bare midriff into Kaspar, hoping they wouldn’t see and glad the darkness hid my flushed cheeks.
I won’t let any feud between them come between Kaspar and I. I can’t let it.
SIXTY-TWO
Violet
All traces of the storm had disappeared by the next morning. The sun streamed through my windows, voiles thrown open by Kaspar to wake me up before he left. He had gone to hunt, because he wanted to make sure he wasn’t thirsty before he turned me.
Today is the day. Today, I become a vampire. Today, I seal it all.
The hairs on my arms stood on end. My legs slowly warmed as strips of light divided the sheets I was tucked beneath; moments before they had been frozen from his touch.
This is it.
The clock on the bedside table read a little after nine. When the hands reached half-past, my father and Lily would leave, escorted by Eaglen.
There is no going back.
It could be months before I saw Lily again. I hadn’t even seen my mother.
Tonight is the night.
I slipped my feet from beneath the sheets, cursing how cold the floor was as I pulled one of the sheets with me, to cover my na**dness. When it occurred to me that no would see, I dropped it, letting it pool at my feet as I picked my way through the sprawled clothes that lay on the floor.
So much for not being able to forget.
The mirrors in my wardrobe reflected every inch of my form: haggard, drawn, the cold making me rosy-cheeked – not for much longer. The skin was taut over my bottom rib – it never used to be. My h*ps jutted out more than I liked and my knees looked scrawny. I was thin: too thin for a body that had once been rounded and curvy. My skin was torn and bruised from weeks of torment and caress under Kaspar’s hand. My eyes were wide, always wide; always fearing what would come next.
‘Is this what you want, Violet?’ I whispered to my reflection, reaching out and touching my glass shoulder. ‘Truly?’
My reflection did not answer, but stared back, lips only parting as mine did to sigh.
Truthfully, want was never a luxury you were permitted to have, my voice said, so clear in my mind that it could have come from a real person beside me.
‘I know,’ I replied, turning away and pulling a clean shirt down from the railing. When I had dressed, I attempted to pull a brush through my damp, tangled hair, but it only left it frizzier, so I gave up.
The entrance hall was still quiet when I reached the bottom of the stairs. The butlers stirred from their stone-like stature when I passed, bowing. A maid replaced the black roses in the vases with fresh white lilies, pressing the petals of the withering flowers between the pages of a heavy book she had placed upon the table.
Nothing was out of the ordinary. Nothing had changed. Nothing would change, but me.
In the kitchen, Cain greeted me with a grin, laughing and joking from behind a tumbler of flowing red liquid, which swirled from side to side, staining the glass pink. His eyes twinkled as he asked after my sister; dulled when I replied that she was leaving shortly.
The apple I picked from the bowl was as red as the blood he drank. I sank my teeth into it, wondering if this was how it felt to sink fangs into flesh – but no, skin would be softer. I swallowed a chunk of the apple, moist and sweet, forgetting to chew most of it.
The digital clock on the wall read 9.26 a.m. I contemplated returning to the entrance hall. I should say goodbye. But how do I say goodbye when I only greeted them a day ago?
Lyla’s beaming face appeared in the doorway, chased by a cheering Fabian, who chuckled and grabbed her as they pulled closer and locked lips. I saw them only as figures against a bleary background. Felix and Charlie followed, not far behind, and bowed. It slowly percolated my skull that they lowered themselves for me. Declan, late; spread a newspaper across the counter, his fingers tracing the edge of each page, headlines and pictures and columns merging into one black-and-white whirl. I found myself walking away, reminded of my first morning at Varnley.
‘But you choose to kill people instead.’
The metallic smell filled the corridor, seeming to stick to the carpets of the living room like smoke. It filled my throat, drained my saliva and left me propped against the back of the sofa, clutching my throat and gagging.
A few hours and I will lust for the stuff.
When my breathing eventually slowed, I moved off in a daze, not convinced I was even awake. My hand rested on the door out of the living room and I froze, wanting to stay, to just let them go; forget goodbye, because goodbye was too hard and I knew that tonight, I would betray them, particularly my father, in the ultimate way.
But it wasn’t goodbye for good. It was goodbye to the Violet they knew, who ate and drank and got ill; the Violet who would die before she had seen a century pass; the Violet who they had loved and cared and fed and taught for the past eighteen years. That’s all.
I took a deep breath and twisted my wrist to turn the handle, allowing the door to swing inwards. I stepped through, seeing Eaglen first, then my father and the other two men from the government, arms grasped by the guards. Lily stood close by. She saw me first; her face a picture of sadness and disappointment, only outshone by my father’s face as he looked away and refused to meet my gaze.
‘Dad?’ I breathed. I felt tears prick the underside of my eyelids every time I blinked. He did not react. But Lily did. She broke away from the group, dodging one of the guards that moved forward to stop her.
‘I want to speak to you before we go,’ she said once she reached me. ‘In private,’ she added, glancing over her shoulder at Eaglen.
I nodded at him and the guards. ‘We’ll be two minutes.’
She led the way outside, ducking into the alcove I had sheltered under just the night before. With a slight blush, I realized my soaking shirt was still draped across the banisters, where Kaspar had left it the night before. I picked it up, squeezed out the water and laid it out flat in a patch of sun to dry.
‘That’s your shirt?’ Lily asked. I nodded. ‘How did it get there?’
I stared at the ground, refusing to say it in words.
‘I didn’t think you’d ever fall into bed with a murderer, but now I can see I was wrong.’
‘I guess this is goodbye then,’ I muttered to fill the silence.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you for longer.’
‘Me too.’
‘But it’s not safe for you to come to Athenea. You and mum will be safe at home. You understand that, right?’
‘Yeah.’
Again we fell into silence. I wanted to stare at my feet, scuffing against the stone, but instead I watched my little sister, burning her image onto my memory, like I had the cold the night before. I wanted to remember the healthy glow in her cheeks that hadn’t been there for more than a year and the twinkle of her violet eyes and the way she didn’t seem so short anymore.
‘Violet?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Do you remember when you were doing your exams and you told me that you would read me some Shakespeare once you had finished studying?’
My lips twitched. I had promised her that whilst she was having one of her chemo sessions the previous May. ‘You mean that time I really annoyed you by talking in Shakespearean language the whole day?’
‘Yeah, then. But you never did read me any and when I was really bored in hospital, I decided to read Romeo and Juliet myself because I wanted to impress you when you came home and so I could get ahead with my English GCSE next year.’
I tried to smile. ‘Did you like it?’
She scowled. ‘No. Romeo and Juliet were naïve and blinded by lust.’
‘Oh.’
‘I hated it and I forgot all about it until last night, when that Cain guy let me into the library and I found a copy of it. And it reminded me of something Juliet had said that I thought I should tell you.’
‘Really? What was that?’ I asked as I looked over her shoulder towards the entrance hall, where I knew Eaglen would be eager to leave. Maybe I’m even eager for them to leave.
‘It’s quite famous. You probably know it.’ She looked up at me, waiting until my eyes slid back to her before she carried on. ‘Deny thy father and refuse thy name; or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet.’