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I keep my eyes focused on the floor. “It’s behind me, isn’t it?” I whisper.
“It is,” Valtu says carefully, his voice equally low. “But it’s just looking at you. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was infatuated with you.”
“It’s always the ones you’re not interested in,” I say as a joke, though he doesn’t know how painfully true that actually is for me.
Then the cold horror at my back disappears, the energy in the room lifting, and Valtu visibly relaxes.
“It’s moved on,” Valtu says with a huff of relief.
I wish I could be as relaxed. I’m not sure I can when I’m reminded the bad thing exists. “Moved on where? Do you know? Where did it come from?”
“So many questions,” he says, taking the glasses and bringing them over to the sink.
“And worthwhile questions,” I point out. “If I’m going to be living here, I think I deserve to know what I’m dealing with.”
Valtu suddenly tenses, his back to me, and he lowers his head for a moment before turning around and leaning back against the counter, his arms folded across his chest, a piece of his black hair flopping over his forehead. “You think you’re living here?”
I rub my lips together, not sure what to say.
“You’re not living here, Rose,” he adds, his tone unkind. “You’re just staying here. And not for long either. You might be a damn good fuck, but I’ll get bored of you sooner rather than later.”
It’s like a shotgun blast to the fucking chest.
I swallow painfully and raise my chin, pretending that this isn’t a surprise, that it doesn’t bother me. “Of course,” I tell him. “Whatever you’d like.”
“Whatever you’d like, my lord,” he corrects me.
“Whatever you’d like, my lord,” I tell him.
Though I feel whatever he’d like involves breaking my heart over and over again.
Chapter16
Valtu
The girl has become a puzzle to me. One that I both want to solve and yet am afraid to look deeper into, because the deeper I go, the more I might like having her here.
And that can’t happen. I don’t let myself get close to people. I specifically never let myself get close to the people who have been brought to my place as a blood slave or a whore. Why should I when they almost never make it out alive?
I may have forgotten large chunks of my life, but their absence only tells me that erasing love, forgetting relationships, is the only way to survive in this world. In my world. Other people seem to handle love and loss as easy as they do breathing. They accept it and they take it and they suffer and they act like it’s just part of life and it’s okay.
But it’s not okay. And most people haven’t suffered what I had to. Grief took from me, it tookeverything. And as a vampire, we’re just supposed to deal with loss and sorrow for eternity?
It doesn’t seem fair now and it didn’t seem fair then. I don’t remember the pain that I was in, just as I don’t remember the woman and our love, and it’s only been a blessing in my life. Yet I’m aware of how easily things could change again. Every time you get close to someone you open yourself up to pain. Because eventually they will die or leave you and you’ll be a husk of your former self, discarded, left behind, and scattered by the wind.
But you do have a solution, I remind myself.It’s right over there.
I look over to my desk by the window. On top of it is the book. The cover was always worn, since it’s been around for a long time, centuries maybe, but the new wear and tear is due to my hands, the countless hours I’ve spent every day for years as I’ve flipped through the pages.
Beside the book is a music box, and inside that music box is a vial.
When I made the potion for myself all those years ago, I ended up making two just in case one broke or something went wrong. Now that extra vial is in the box, safe and waiting for the worst-case scenario, which is that there might be someone else in my future that I’d want to erase from my mind.
You’re getting way ahead of yourself, I think as I lie back in my bed.Rose is just a girl. Have fun with her while she’s here, then say goodbye.
But then I’m struck with a terrifying thought.
I don’t want Rose to be slaughtered by the demon. Call me sentimental. But now I’m thinking that if the demon is truly possessive over her, it might not let her leave here at all.
