Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Along with Mira, the three of them walked in silence down the corridor that led to Thomas’s elder father’s office.
This part of the castle was darker and colder.
It always had been due to the lack of windows and airflow.
Growing up, it used to remind Thomas of a posh cave.
But there was nothing extravagant about it now.
Some of the arms and portraiture were missing from the walls, and they’d left pale, dust-outlined shapes where they’d once been.
Thomas almost asked where all the antiquated family regalia had disappeared to, but he could easily guess.
Sold or pawned for extra money to fund those lavish banquets and events during Oliver’s engagement festivities.
Thomas had wondered how his clan would pull that off—holding up their end of the traditional Eden marriage rituals for a royal audience accustomed to Central’s extravagance.
It was a wonder that they didn’t open up part of the estate as a bed and breakfast for additional income. That would have been harder to keep secret, he supposed.
When they reached the familiar door to the office, Thomas gripped Cameron’s hand even tighter. A sudden paralysis shocked his chest and he stiffened. Cameron stepped in front of him, blocking the view of the door.
“Do you want to do this?” he asked quietly. “We can stop here if you choose it.”
Thomas looked into his pretty eyes. They emitted such a sincere kindness, warmth and steadiness that it gently eased the fear and tension inside his body. Cameron was here with him, no matter what. This man was the embodiment of his safe space. He would be okay.
He inhaled deeply and leaned to touch his forehead to Cameron’s. “I want to. Thank you for insisting to come with me. I’m glad you’re here.”
Cameron lifted, nodded and kissed his forehead.
The viscount had silently watched everything play out. Quietly, he said, “Are we ready?”
“Yes,” Thomas assured him.
The viscount didn’t bother knocking, nor announcing their party. He pushed the door open and gestured them inside.
The office was nearly identical to Thomas’s memory of it, except for the smell.
The air was dry and reeked of decay, old blood and sickness.
It reminded Thomas of the dungeon, and his body tensed as he quickly clasped a hand over his nose and mouth.
Cameron stepped up behind him, warm and firm, and put his hands on his waist in an affirming gesture.
Grounding him and bringing his own, much more pleasant bodily scent closer.
The viscount walked over to the velvet armchair where a vampire sat slumped, hunched and unmoving. He bent to one knee and said quietly, “Charles, our eldest is here. He wishes to see you.” The viscount lifted a hand, beckoning Thomas.
Thomas stepped out of Cameron’s grasp and inched forward, staring at the pale entity as he came around to the front of the armchair.
He drew back, appalled. It was his elder father, but his skin was shriveled and blotted with ugly sores from lack of feeding and eating.
The stench was stronger this close, and it was clear to Thomas that he was standing in front of a slowly decaying creature.
The eyes, no longer the steely gray that matched his own, were almost white. Translucent. Without warning, they flickered up to Thomas, unexpectedly focused.
“Why?” his elder father ground out. His voice was dry and papery. “Come… to see me suffer? Satisfied?”
“Perhaps,” Thomas said honestly. “Although, your suffering is at your own hand. Not mine.”
“Ungrateful child,” he rasped, then coughed violently, spitting and hacking as the sound rattled in his chest, mucus-riddled and wet.
Thomas stepped back and glanced over at his mate. Cameron met his eyes and nodded once, firmly. It was time to leave. There was nothing else to see.
He turned and took a step toward the door, but his elder father shouted in that croaky, dry voice, “Apologize!”
Confused and somewhat bewildered, Thomas froze. “Excuse me?”
“Apologize—” He coughed again, but pushed up from his seat, which Thomas wouldn’t have thought possible if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. “Make him apologize to me—to us! Tell him to apologize.”
Scowling, Thomas shook his head. “Who the devil are you talking about?”
The viscount hastily stood and went to his husband’s side, attempting to support him.
His elder father shrugged him off with a violent snatch of his arm.
“Prince Alexander! Tell—Make him apologize. It is—it’s your duty to this family.
To—” He coughed again, spraying vile debris from his mouth and spitting.
“To uphold our honor! You—my eldest son—”
Thomas barked a laugh so loud that the elder vampire physically jumped. When the silence between them had bloated profoundly, Thomas said, as clearly as he could muster and with his whole chest, “Absolutely not. You must be out of your fucking mind.”
The pause after that statement was brief and charged with a subtle electric force that tingled across Thomas’s skin. Without warning, his elder father rushed forward, his eyes alighted white-silver as his skeletal hands lurched to grip Thomas’s neck.
Within that split second, Thomas’s nature unfurled and sprang to life and his own eyes alighted. He lifted his palms to—He didn’t know what. Push the man? Stop him in his assault, surely. Protect himself. Whatever the intention, the result was unlike anything he’d ever seen or done in his life.
It was as if his aura had concentrated itself and pulsed outward in a flash of glittery aqua heat and light. His elder father never made contact, because he was blown backward violently and away from Thomas’s body.
The man’s head made an ugly smacking sound against the hard wall before he fell limply onto the floor. There was blood on the wall where his head had made contact. His body jerked, then went completely still in a mangled heap.
Thomas’s eyes burned out and he gasped. He took a step back and bumped into Cameron, his spine pressed against his broad chest. His mind was reeling. What the hell just happened?
The viscount ran over to his mate and dropped to his knees. “Charles!” he called, his voice desperate.
“Did I… Have I killed him?” Thomas asked slowly, blinking and shaking his head because this no longer felt like reality. “Is he—is he dead?”
“Charles! No—no, this can’t be. Not like this, please.” His expression wild, the viscount turned to Cameron and Thomas. “I need to feed him, but go get help, please.”
Thomas didn’t think his legs were working, but when Cameron wrapped a heavy arm around his shoulders and guided him out of the room, Thomas moved without resistance. In the hallway, Cameron told Mira to go get one of the servants. She nodded and took off running down the corridor.
“Cam, I—I’ve never done—I don’t know how—”
“I know,” Cameron said, embracing and pulling him into the warmth of his body. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Thomas was trembling, crying and terrified, but he wrapped his arms around Cameron’s waist and let himself be held.
He was also definitely getting snot on Cameron’s shirt, which he would be severely embarrassed about later.
Thomas pressed his face into him anyway and held on for dear life, gripping the material in his fists and willing his body to stop shaking.
He didn’t know what else to do but take refuge in his personal safe harbor.
The days following Thomas’s visit to his home estate were quiet and soft. The sun shone golden and warm in Upper Avalon. A healing light for Thomas’s peaceful refuge.
He didn’t speak much. Mostly, he sat around on various comfy couches, window ledges and armchairs with a mug of cappuccino or herbal tea cupped within his palms. A knit blanket thrown over his lap and a book at his side.
Cameron had bought him another bouquet of white tulips, and it had made Thomas smile. Sometimes, his mate sat snuggled against him, or beside him and with Thomas’s feet in his lap, while they mutually read—a heavy palm rested on Thomas’s knee or thigh. Always present but demanding nothing of him.
His mate didn’t ask probing questions about how Thomas had accomplished such a spectacular feat with his aura—something it usually took purebreds years and years to master, if at all.
He didn’t ask how Thomas was feeling, which was a relief, because Thomas didn’t know himself.
There were many feelings, but none of them were satisfied, like he had conjectured.
Or like his elder father had acerbically asserted.
Cameron didn’t ask any questions, but he did offer information. The morning after their visit, he came into the lower library to tell Thomas that his elder father had not died. He was in worse shape—a coma, apparently—after the nasty knock on his head but still alive.
Yet again, Thomas’s feelings had been mixed.
For all his grandiose declarations to murder his elder father when he’d first moved to the Ashford estate, in the true face of it, he’d practically fallen apart.
Back then, he’d envisioned himself setting the castle ablaze and striding away triumphantly in a dark and fashionable trench coat that swayed around his ankles in the wind (he didn’t know why this specific article of clothing was paramount in the fantasy, but it was).
Or he had imagined himself orchestrating some clever scheme, Count of Monte Cristo style, that would have led to his elder father’s complete ruination and subsequent impoverished death. Again, a remarkable vengeance.
But the ruination had already happened. Not by his hands but by the ones who came after him. Oliver. Prince Alexander. Even the viscount, perhaps? Hudson and the staff that abandoned him. A veritable domino effect of misfortune after misfortune.
Thomas had never envisioned himself as the closer.
To be the one to go in and finish the job when his elder father was already so…
pitiful and revolting. Technically, that wasn’t his role, because the man was still breathing, for now.
Instead, he was another misfortune to fall upon his head. Another domino.
“Shall we walk the gardens this evening? It was warm out today and the cherry blossoms are starting to bloom. Green things are popping up all over.” Cameron took a sip of his red wine to give Thomas a moment to think it over.
They were having dinner. A week had passed since the awful incident with his fathers and Thomas had been moping around long enough. He nodded. “Yes, I’d like some fresh air. That sounds perfect.”
After they’d had dessert and given Sulee their sincere thanks, they walked the paved garden paths beneath the purple-coral twilight sky.
Birds were chirping prettily and flitting among the pear trees.
The air was warm against Thomas’s skin. Cameron’s palm was also warm and firm in his own, and it was quiet. Peaceful.
Thomas inhaled deeply, wanting to take all of it into his lungs.
Into his being. Spring was fast approaching, and he was alive and in love and safe.
He had a wonderful mate and books and responsibilities that he enjoyed.
He could travel, explore and discover. Truly, he had a good life, and he was beyond grateful for it.
“One thing,” he said without preamble as they stopped along the pear trees to take in the emergent leaves and birdsong.
“Mm?” Cameron hummed.
“Merciful gods, if I ever end up like my elder father, please just put a stake in me and finish the job. Promise that you would never let me get like that and you’ll get it over with!”
Cameron barked a laugh so loudly that it upset the birds and made them fly away. He winced, shrinking his posture. “Whoops.”
“You beast.”
“I don’t know my own strength, but that comment caught me off guard.
” He laughed again, then took a breath. “I don’t think you’ll ever need to worry about that.
You are not a hate-filled and resentful tormentor who would prefer to die than not have your way.
I think you’ll be fine. Your fathers aren’t even that old. The whole situation is… tragic.”
“It is appalling, to be certain. I’m glad that I went, despite it all, somehow. But I… I never need to see them again.”
“That, my dear, sweet husband, is a relief.” Thomas huffed a laugh, then kissed Cameron on his cheek. Cameron sighed. “In the viscount’s letter to me, he asked if I would write him sometimes to let him know how you’re faring. How do you feel about this?”
When Thomas thought of his younger father, unexpectedly, he felt…
sad. Prior to his imprisonment, Thomas had adored his younger father and reveled in his affections.
In many ways, he’d sincerely wished that he was more like the man.
Thomas had resented that he was a physical duplicate of his elder father.
You were formed from the very best parts of Charles and I.
His younger father’s words were engraved deep inside Thomas. Surprisingly, he felt no bitterness toward them. “I’m… okay with it,” Thomas said. “You can write to him occasionally, if you don’t mind.” Maybe Thomas would write his own letter, someday.
Cameron nodded. “For you, sweetheart, I don’t mind a thing.” Casually, he glanced around the darkening garden. “Now that I’ve scared the birds off, our soundtrack for the evening is gone.”
Not knowing what exactly came over him, Thomas swallowed, took a breath and began singing.
“The very thought of you makes my heart sing
Like an April breeze on the wings of spring,
And you appear in all your splendor,
My one and only love.”
Cameron stood staring at him, mouth agape and eyes wide. Thomas smiled, his cheeks hot. “Not as good as the birds, but—”
“More, please?”
They stood there beneath the illuminating stars, staring at each other for only a moment.
Then, Thomas sang the next verse, ignoring the deepening crimson burning his face.
He hadn’t sung in years, in forever, but it suddenly felt very good and right.
Like his soul finally felt sprightly enough for the task.
Cameron pulled him into a slow sway so that they were dancing among the pear trees. As Thomas sang the third verse, Cameron littered his neck with soft kisses.