Chapter Thirty
After the brief reprieve of the Celeste party, it hurts anew to wander out of my room the next evening and find that Claude is gone again.
I make myself coffee and breakfast; neither tastes as sweet as when Claude makes them for me.
I resisted his insistence on serving me for so long, but now I miss it terribly.
I suppose it was my mistake to get used to such treatment.
It always would’ve ended eventually, wouldn’t it have?
Because this life is not forever. It’s just for a year, which is both a comfort and a different sense of pain at this point.
The long, lonely nights blend into each other over the following weeks.
Claude is absent even more than he was before the Celeste party, and when he’s here, he’s only half present.
He seems distant, his mind wandering and his face marked with shadows of exhaustion.
He barely seems like the man I know. But I suppose I’m a shadow of myself as well, so I can’t blame him.
Still, it seems extreme. Sometimes it seems like he can barely keep his eyes open. On one rare night he joins me for dinner, he falls asleep in his chair, his head tilted back and his mouth slightly ajar.
“What in the world have you been up to, Claude?” I mutter to myself. I cross the room and take his shoulder to gently shake him awake.
He flinches at the barest touch, and suddenly his hand is gripping my wrist hard enough to hurt. At my gasp, he releases me.
“Sorry,” he says, expression pained. “Are you alright?” He shifts in his seat, adjusts his shirt, but not before I catch a glimpse of a bruise near his neck. I didn’t know vampires could bruise.
I raise my eyes to meet his, studying his face. “Are you?”
He smiles wanly. “Of course. Just tired. I apologize.” He takes my hand, presses a kiss to my knuckles, and leaves me there at the dinner table with my thoughts whirling.
What could he be off doing that would leave a mark like that? I had assumed he was off distracting himself with parties and wine, but maybe the truth is something else. Something worse.
Yet the following night, he’s gone from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed, leaving me without any way to ask him.
* * *
More time slips by. Long days and longer nights spent alone, or with only minutes of Claude’s time.
In the early days I check in with Benjamin frequently, hoping that he may have found a way to free us from the contract.
He visits multiple times and we pore over it together, but there’s nothing to be done without the cooperation of the Vulpe Court.
Benjamin sends multiple formal requests to meet with Ambrose and other prominent vampires, but the letters are returned unopened.
I spend time talking to Sophie and Elaine, and become better acquainted with Amelia as well. It helps to be able to lean on them for support, but they can’t offer much other than sympathy and friendship.
As time goes on, my hope dwindles. I busy myself looking into attending university once my contract is over, researching apartments near campus that are now well within my budget.
I’m making great money as a valentine, despite all of this, and hardly spending any of it; I’ll have more than enough to cover tuition, rent, and other expenses, even if I decide not to work while I’m attending school.
It should be everything I wanted… yet I can’t summon much enthusiasm.
Whenever I imagine my life after this year, there’s a blank space where Claude should be, an emptiness I can’t ignore.
At the beginning of this arrangement, a clean split was exactly what I hoped for; now, it seems impossible that it might be the only option.
Then one evening, I wake up to the smell of breakfast cooking. Crackling bacon and the sweet sizzle of pancakes lead me to the kitchen, where I find Claude at the stove again. A once-common sight, now shocking enough to make me halt in the doorway and stare.
It takes a moment for him to notice me. He looks up and smiles, but his eyes are tired.
“Bonsoir, mon chou,” he says.
I’m gripped by the urge to cross the kitchen and fling myself into his arms, to just hold him and be held, but that would break the rules that I, myself, put in place. The distance is best for both of us, even though it makes my heart crack open.
I force a smile. “You’re home.”
“Indeed. And happy to be here.” He plates the breakfast feast, adding thick slabs of butter and a drizzle of syrup to the stack of pancakes.
I hesitate, questions on the tip of my tongue.
I want to know where he’s been, and what he’s been doing, but I’m afraid the answer will only make this harder.
I know Claude and trust him not to hurt me, so if he’s keeping the information for himself, he has to have a good reason.
“Is everything okay?” I venture instead.
“Why are you here?” I bite my lip. “Not that you need a reason to be in your own home, I mean… it’s just… ”
“Nora.” He crosses the room to me, holding my plate in one hand. The other smooths an unruly strand of hair behind my ear. “I know. Come, eat breakfast with me.”
I watch him head to the dining room, my brow furrowed as I realize that was no answer. There’s nothing for me to do but trail after him to the dining room table and sit in my usual chair.
I eat my food while he watches me. Once a usual event at the house, but now odd enough that I’m not sure how to feel.
As with all of his food, it’s delicious, the perfect balance between buttery and maple-sweet, but still I find it hard to swallow.
Claude props up his chin with one hand and smiles at me across the table. Still, he looks exhausted, his eyes shadowed and his usual charm dimmed.
“Back to watching me eat, I see,” I tease, trying to lighten the mood.
“I missed it,” he says. His head tilts slowly, his eyes never leaving me. “I missed you.”
I set down my fork. “I missed you too.”
Yet him being back here is almost painful. The way our eyes lock across the table only serve as a reminder that we can’t touch, can’t be together in the way we want to. Looking at him is like pressing on a fresh bruise, but I can’t seem to tear my eyes away.
“Why are you here?” I ask again. “Do you need blood?”
He must have been getting it elsewhere over the last couple of months.
And I know, I know he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, but even the thought of him casually drinking from someone else’s wrist makes me hot with jealousy.
It’s not fair—he needs blood to live—but I am jealous of whatever skin has felt his fangs, his bloody kiss.
“I would like to drink from you,” he says. “And I would like to try to paint, again.”
I blink, surprised. “I thought you had given up on that.”
He rubs a hand across his face and sighs. “If I could just bring myself to paint something,” he says. “Ambrose would be pleased. Maybe pleased enough to let me alter the contract, and then… none of this would be necessary.”
Somehow, I doubt that’s the case. Ambrose seems like a man who will always find something to be disappointed about. He’d find some reason to be dissatisfied, some reason to continue to keep Claude under his thumb, and it would only make Claude feel worse.
But I bite my tongue. I don’t think it will be helpful to say that. And anyway, I can’t resist the excuse to spend time together. “Let’s try it, then.”
* * *
We take our usual places: Claude at the easel, me posed at the window seat.
We’ve been here so many times before, but today my pulse races and my gut twists.
As much as I doubted him earlier, it’s difficult not to seize the dangerous hope he offered.
Maybe he will paint, and maybe Ambrose will be pleased, and maybe he will let us change the contract…
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
The last thing I want to do is put further pressure on Claude. There’s already so much on his shoulders, I fear his spine will break beneath the weight. So I stare out the window, trying to lose myself in my thoughts.
Yet I can’t help but steal the occasional glance at him in the silence. And now that I know to look for it, I can tell he’s not really painting at all. Instead, he just stares at the canvas, brush in hand, like he’s trying to work out the answer to a complex problem.
After an hour of silence stretches out, Claude sighs and says, “That’s enough for today.”
“Did you—” I turn toward him, but he’s already leaving, the tense line of his shoulders providing enough of an answer to my question.