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“Yes.” He came closer, and each step made her heart flutter. It really was irritating how easily he unnerved her. “Since you assert yourself plenty and do not stink, it’s easy to deduce you are not possessed.”
A rush of heat spread through her, and Gwen almost said, Thanks, but stopped herself. He’d told her she didn’t stink. Not that she smelled good. Not that she wanted him to tell her she smelled good. Liar. “Fine. I’m not possessed,” she conceded with frustration.
“You’re anxious,” he observed.
Gwen’s cheeks flushed anew, and she glared at him in annoyance. “I know I’m anxious,” she spat. “You don’t have to keep pointing out how I’m feeling, you know.”
His jaw tensed, and Gwen had the sneaking suspicion she’d stung him a little. Sirus was old. How old, she still had no clue. But it was obvious the nuances of some social etiquettes were lost on him. Either because he didn’t care or didn’t know any better, but Gwen was starting to think it was mostly the latter. She hauled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. If anyone could empathize with struggling to say the right thing, it was her. She put her foot in her mouth more than she didn’t. Plus, he was, in his own weird way, trying to help. Or at least, she thought he was.
“This was all pointless,” she rambled, focusing her anxieties back on the topic at hand. “This whole night. Scrying and blood magick—it was all a bunch of crap.” Gwen let out a snort of anger before she added, “And what the hell is with that guy with no shirt?”
Sirus glanced back at the chateau. “Abigail has unique tastes,” he offered as explanation.
Gwen scoffed. “I guess she does, if you two—” She clamped her mouth shut as her stomach flipped upside down. She’d not meant to say it. It had just popped out. There she went, putting her foot in her mouth yet again. Maybe he hadn’t heard her?
He turned back to look down at her. “If we two what?” he pressed, his eyes narrowing.
Shit. Gwen turned away and scrunched her eyes closed with embarrassment, her face white hot. “N-nothing. It doesn’t matter,” she mumbled, trying to play it off and hoping he would drop it. The last thing she wanted to talk about was Sirus and Abigail and whatever they had or hadn’t done. The fact that she still felt a pang of jealousy riled her even more. “We should go inside.”
“Are you ready to return?” he asked.
“Honestly?” she huffed. “No. Not yet, anyway.” Gwen wanted to go back to London and sink into a steaming hot bath, but she was in no rush to see Abigail again. She needed air. A little time to settle her nerves.
“Then come,” said Sirus, turning toward the path that led into the garden. “The path is well-lit. Abigail and Levian will wait.”
Gwen hesitated. She was frustrated and amped up. She didn’t want to go back just yet, but the prospect of strolling through a rose garden with Sirus made her just as nervous. The idea of being alone with him at all made a bundle of butterflies rise up in her stomach. It was ridiculous how attractive he was in the moonlight. With an internal flurry of curses over how absurd she was for thinking he was attractive at all, Gwen stalked ahead of him along the path. “Sounds good,” she grumbled.
She was over this crush. It made her feel like a stupid, horned-up teenager. Clearly Sirus had no interest in her. Why would he? She was…well, her. And he was an ancient vampire hottie with swords strapped to his back. Yep. She really needed to get over this.
Levian had told her that her dreams were probably just small premonitions of Sirus. Of course, Gwen had left out the cuddling parts. And she’d not told her that the dreams had returned. But it didn’t matter. Having a crush on him was plain dumb. She didn’t get crushes. Not since she was fifteen, and she’d learned her lesson then. This walk could be a good thing, she told herself. Sirus was cold and unfeeling. There was no way her crush would survive spending any real time with him. The idea made her relax a little. Knowing that it would pass, and if she was lucky by the end of the night she’d be over it entirely. At least something productive would come out of this trip.
They walked in silence for a while, through several arbors overweighted with dangling roses. As the silence stretched, her anxieties began to ease. The evening was pleasant. The garden beautiful. The air cooling quickly as night settled. Gwen stopped to brush her fingers over the soft petals of a giant yellow bud. Her thumb was still a little sore from where she’d pricked it.
“There are other ways,” Sirus said, breaking the silence at last. “Abigail was merely one.”
“It’s fine,” she told him. “I’m used to disappointment. And I didn’t really expect her to tell me anything anyway.” It was half true, at least.
“Answers will come,” he added after a moment. “Give it time.”
Gwen’s throat constricted, and she glanced over at him. The soft light of one of the lampposts cast him in a faint golden glow, making his eyes seem almost green. She tore herself away from the roses and stalked further along the path away from him.
Give it time. She didn’t want to give it time. She was impatient. Anxious. She couldn’t handle this…this feeling. The hum just under her skin. The temptation to feel that power again. It was dangerous. She was dangerous. She’d nearly blown out half of Barith’s townhouse, for goodness’ sake!
She stopped suddenly and spun around to face him. He was trailing behind her. Giving her a respectable amount of space. The words just fell out. “I don’t know what to do,” she blurted, balling her fists. She took a deep breath to steady her rising heartbeat. Gwen slumped, giving out under the weight of it all. She was too tired to be amped. She was so tired. “No one can give me answers. No one knows what I am. Who I am. I just…” She looked up into the cloudy night. “I know I can’t go back. I know I can’t just forget all this happened. I just want to feel solid in something. Anything. You know?” When she lowered her eyes back to him, she felt a chill of embarrassment at having let all that out. It was the most vulnerable thing she’d said in the last week, and she’d told Sirus, of all people. He was looking at her the way he always did. With cold indifference. “Never mind,” she huffed, wrapping her arms around herself. “I wasn’t trying to?—”
“When I became a vampire, everything I thought I knew was lost,” he told her. Gwen stilled and blinked up at him. “When we are reborn, every instinct is rewritten. We are like children in the beginning. Hungry. Feral. Adrift. But each day grows easier. Each day, we settle into the new truth of what we are.”
The admission startled her. She couldn’t think of what to say, so she just stared at him and tried to imagine him out of control, as he’d said. She couldn’t. All she ever saw when she looked at him was complete and utter icy control. His face was stoic, his eyes cool yet dark now that he’d stepped away from the light.
“You will find your way.”
She stuttered a breath. Was he trying to comfort her? Console her? The very idea made her chest tighten.
Niah had told her a little more about vampires. She’d explained how they were created by an ancient race of dark faerie called the Dökk. That these fae had forged vampires from the bravest human warriors to ever fall in battle in order to build an army of bloodthirsty killers to fight their wars for them. Vampires, she had learned, don’t just crave blood, they crave magickal blood. She’d also learned that these dark fae had been wiped out a very long time ago, even with their army of vampires. The vampires who remained had been hunted without mercy, and those who’d survived had formed clans. Niah had explained how they’d worked in the shadows for centuries, hunting monsters that terrorized the mortal world, settling scores in secret amongst fae kingdoms, fighting their battles—all for a price. There were much fewer vampires now, apparently. Mostly hired mercenaries or assassins.
Gwen remembered all those countless scars stretched over Sirus. Her stomach roiled when she tried to imagine all that he must have gone through over the course of his long life. All the things he must have seen and done and endured. It pricked something deep in her heart that he seemed so confident she’d find the answers she was looking for. It almost made her believe it herself. That she could figure this out. “I’m not so sure,” she replied, in utter honesty.
He tilted his head just so, and the focus of his eyes on her face made her cheeks grow warm. She just hoped the chill of the air had already made them pink.
