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“I am,” he told her.
Right. Well. So much for destroying her crush by getting to know him better.
Gwen cleared the knot in her throat just as a gust of frigid air cut through the path. She shivered. Sirus peeled out of his harness so quick, she barely recognized what he was doing until he pushed his jacket toward her. “Here.”
He wore a dark gray cable-knit sweater that was loose enough she couldn’t see his cut physique, but it still hinted at the muscles she knew he sported underneath. Her cheeks flamed again. He was giving her his jacket because she’d shuddered. This crush-crushing plan was not going well at all. “No. I’m okay. I’m?—”
“Stubborn? Yes. Take it. The air is cold, and your jacket is thin.”
Her teeth ground. She’d not anticipated wandering around in the cold and hadn’t dressed accordingly—another knock against her outfit choices this evening. He pushed it closer.
“I’m not the only one who’s stubborn,” she pointed out. Gwen could tell if she refused, he’d urge them to go back inside, and she couldn’t have that. Not yet. She needed to get back on track. She had a crush to destroy.
Gwen regretted taking the jacket the moment she wrapped it around her shoulders. It smelled like him. Spice and trees. Her insides immediately warmed, and not entirely from the dark wool. It was like being cocooned in Sirus. Hell. “Thanks,” she groused half-heartedly.
Sirus reattached his harness of swords to his back, and Gwen couldn’t help but stare as he did. “Do you take those everywhere?” An image of him wearing them in the shower popped into her head. As ridiculous as it was, it still made her stomach tense. Sirus all wet and muscled and…armed. Get it together, Gwen!
“No,” he replied coolly as he finished with the straps. “They are conspicuous in the modern day.”
Gwen couldn’t help but smirk. “Conspicuous in the modern day?”
He nodded, not seeming to understand what was amusing.
“You sound ancient,” she teased, unable to help herself.
One of Sirus’s brows arched. “You sound like Niah,” he replied. Gwen smiled at that. She had no idea how old his sister was either, but Niah was far and away more hip to modern culture. She even had a cell phone and played Candy Crush, a fact Gwen had found fascinating and hilarious. “I carry guns and knives when I must,” he added. “I prefer swords.”
That wiped the smirk off her face in an instant. She imagined he had a room full of all kinds of weapons back home in his castle. Rooms, even. Gwen swallowed the lump of nerves in her throat and moved along the path.
“I still can’t believe you have a sister,” she murmured to fill the stretching silence.
“Oh?” he commented just behind her.
Gwen shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know,” she fumbled. “You just aren’t anything alike, or don’t seem anything alike anyway.” Which would be the case, she knew, since they weren’t actually blood relatives in the traditional sense.
“We have our differences,” he offered. Gwen didn’t know the whole of it, but both Levian and Barith had mentioned that Sirus and Niah didn’t exactly get along. It was weird, but their sibling discourse almost made them both seem more…well, human.
“I guess that’s true of most siblings,” she pointed out.
“Perhaps.”
Gwen peeked at Sirus behind her. He was trailing by five or so paces. Still giving her space. She struggled to imagine what it must have been like for him, becoming a vampire. He hadn’t told her much when she’d asked him before, but from what he’d just told her, Gwen assumed the process must be horrible and violent. A lump formed in her throat. It made sense, she figured. Why he was so cold and hard. She’d thought of him often as she’d lain awake at night. Some of her more frustrating meandering visions had caused her to get a little too hot under the covers, but others had turned a different angle. She’d wondered about him. The real him. What kind of life Sirus had lived as a vampire. What he’d done. What he did. If he read in the night when he didn’t sleep. What kind of books he would read. What his castle was like. If he had hobbies when he wasn’t running around with swords in his hands. She’d wondered if he ever smiled or laughed. She wondered often what his laugh would be like. She had no doubt his life was dark and dangerous, but she still wondered if some semblance of a heart thumped beneath his cold exterior, despite what he’d told her. That the dead feel nothing. That he felt nothing. Maybe he didn’t feel much, but she knew he didn’t feel nothing. The way he’d looked into her eyes after the incident…while he’d held her. There’d been something there. Something like concern in those frigid blue depths.
She looked back at the path ahead of her. Focus, Gwen. You’re supposed to be liking him less, not convincing yourself to like him more. “I guess you’re probably disappointed too,” she threw out. “Levian and Barith told me how it works with the contracts. The longer this drags out, the longer it takes for you to get back to your spooky castle, and I know you’d rather be?—”
When he appeared so suddenly at her side, she startled, nearly falling into a rose bush. “Volkov is not spooky.”
Gwen blinked, her heart thrumming in her throat. He looked so severe, his jaw set firmly. “I beg your pardon?”
He stepped back so that he no longer hovered over her. “The home of my clan. Our castle. It’s called Volkov.”
“Vol-kov,” she tried to repeat in the same accent. Niah had told her a little about the castle where their clan lived, but she hadn’t said it had a name.
Sirus nodded and looked back over his shoulder toward the chateau. “It’s larger than this.”
Gwen’s eyes went wide. “You’re kidding.” Abigail’s place was ginormous. It was basically a palace.
“Much larger.”
