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Gwen kicked a large rock as she stepped down onto the gravel path of the garden. She didn’t know which way Sirus would have gone or where he was, but she was in no rush to find him. She needed to clear her head.
Instead of going into the garden, she took a hard left and walked the path that tucked along the side of the chateau. As she meandered past rows of tall, potted topiaries, a cold wind cut through. Gwen shuddered, and somehow that caused her thoughts to drift to Sirus. Everything was so confusing. What she was. What she was going to do. And then there was Sirus.
He exuded cold indifference, yet she could have sworn she’d caught him staring at her a few times over the last week. She felt like a stupid high schooler at how their brief encounters had made her stomach flutter with nerves. It was stupid that Gwen had somehow managed to find herself with a crush on a man she barely even knew. A vampire, no less.
Levian and Barith had told her about some of their past contracts, and the one through line she’d picked up on was that Sirus didn’t get attached to people, no matter the circumstance. Ever.
To him, Gwen was just a contract. Nothing more. He’d even said it himself. That he’d been hired to keep her safe. It was a fact she’d had to remind herself of several times when she’d gotten lost daydreaming about him. A welcome dose of cold reality when she was tempted to get lost in dark fantasy.
Movement caught her eye, and she stopped. In the faint light that fell from the open windows of the chateau, Gwen could see a small ball of brown fur tucked at the base of one of the topiary pots. The little creature shifted nervously at her sudden arrival, and a pair of tall, alert ears came into the light.
The little rabbit’s nose wiggled as it sniffed the air and looked cautiously in Gwen’s direction. “Oh, hi,” she greeted it softly. It cocked its head. “Aren’t you cute.” The rabbit sniffed the ground and hopped a little closer.
“You better watch out,” she whispered. “There’s a vampire hanging around. He might gobble you up.” It bounced a touch closer, and Gwen smiled. For as crap as her night had been, the bunny did make her feel a little better.
She knelt down to get a closer look. “I guess you don’t have to worry too much. I think he prefers people over bunnies,” she told it. “I’m the one who should probably look out, huh?” It hopped closer. Gwen let out a deep sigh, fully aware she was a nut talking to a rabbit. “Knowing him, he’d probably take one bite out of me and spit it out.” The thought of Sirus’s mouth anywhere on her body made her flush. Good grief.
She held out a hand to see if it might come closer. The rabbit took a few more little hops toward her, sniffing the air with its wiggling little nose. It was only a few inches away when it suddenly went deadly still. The next second, it shot off into the darkness of the garden like a bullet from a gun, sending little bits of gravel spraying everywhere.
Her heart fell. She hadn’t meant to scare it.
As she righted herself, a strange feeling crept up the back of her neck, followed by an icy chill. Gwen turned slowly, but she didn’t need to see him to know he was there. Sirus stood in the darkness, only a stone’s throw away, the night itself seemingly pulled in around him.
Despite herself, the first thing that popped into Gwen’s head was how insanely gorgeous he looked. The second was, how long had he been standing there?
Chapter Fourteen
“Making friends?” Sirus asked.
Gwen hoped her blush was hidden by the darkness and her scowl. “Do all vampires enjoy sneaking up on people, or is it just you?” she snapped back.
He watched her with that icy stare of his. “You were correct.”
She cocked a brow. “That you enjoy sneaking up on people?”
“That I don’t eat rabbits.”
Gwen’s blush deepened. So he had been listening. “You know, it’s rude to eavesdrop on people,” she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You were talking to a rabbit,” he pointed out. “Not a person.”
Her scowl grew even deeper and her cheeks hotter. “So far, I prefer the rabbit over you.”
Sirus’s jaw tensed before he turned back to the dark path she assumed he’d come from. “I’ll leave you to be alone.”
“It’s fine,” she clipped. She’d not been trying to run him off. She was just—on edge. “Abigail sent me out to find you anyway.”
He shifted to look at her. “You are angry.”
Gwen let out a heavy, frustrated breath through her nose. Yes, she was angry. She wanted to point out that most people didn’t comment so openly about the clear emotional fragility of the people around them, but she felt like saying so would simply fall on deaf ears with Sirus. “She didn’t find anything,” she grumbled instead, kicking at a bit of gravel with the tip of her shoe. “She mentioned something about a mage, but nothing specific about my magick or where it came from or anything. Apparently, my past and future are shrouded in shadow,” she said, mimicking the witch. “She wanted to talk to Levian. so she sent me out to find you. She’s probably telling her I’m possessed by a devil or something.”
“You’re not possessed,” Sirus declared.
Gwen rolled her eyes. She didn’t actually think she was possessed. “Well, at this point, no one knows, do they?” she snarked.
“You are not possessed,” he repeated even more sternly. “Possessed creatures are trapped within their bodies and cannot assert their will. They also stink of onions.”
Gwen blinked. That sounded horrifying, but it was the onion detail that caught her attention most. If it’d been Barith telling her that, she would’ve known he was joking, but Sirus didn’t seem to have a humorous bone in his vampire body. Which caused Gwen to assume he was telling the truth. “Seriously? Onions?”
