Chapter Twelve
CLARA
Sleep didn’t come after he left me in the solarium. The corridor outside of it was cold enough that the hairs on my arms lifted. I wrapped my arms around myself and moved, testing each step before I gave it weight.
I didn’t know the castle’s layout beyond the few grand rooms I’d visited in my exploration, but I just moved because, right now, that’s all I could do.
I found myself in a hallway I hadn’t seen before. I instantly smelled something that made my nose tingle. Metal. The metallic note that lives at the back of the throat, like I’d been sucking on a penny. I tasted it before I understood it.
Every breath scraped my throat. My pulse felt too loud in my ears. I kept hearing Ivan’s voice, that low vow, like a blade dragged across a stone, “I’ve been waiting for you for centuries.”
The castle shifted around me. The light had bled away, and night had flooded every inch of this ancient castle. I told myself to stay where I was. But I knew I couldn’t hide; I could barricade myself in somewhere and hope it kept out a supernatural creature.
I should have left. I should have run back to my room and locked myself in and screamed until the walls shook. Instead, I followed the scent until it intensified and I was in front of a door. I touched the handle; the brass was chilled and unforgiving.
A little voice told me to turn back. Instead, I pushed the door inward and found a shallow flight of stone steps, each tread worn into a soft crescent by centuries of feet.
Before I could think better of it, I was descending.
The air sharpened with that coppery scent with every step until my nose stung.
The stairs spilled into a low, vaulted undercroft. Stone—cool and damp—rose in carved pillars to a ribbed ceiling, and a narrow runnel split the floor, carrying a ribbon of dark water toward a grated drain. The metallic tang hit me again.
My stomach clenched. I could have lied to myself a hundred different ways, but the deeper I moved, the more impossible it was to deny.
Blood.
The tunnel opened into a chamber, and I stopped short, shock skidding through me.
It took my brain a second to make sense of the shape on the stones—a deer, a stag, I thought—its antlers catching the candlelight that swayed and danced in this darkened crypt.
It lay on its side, legs thrown awkwardly, chest not moving.
I realized what this was… a visceral exhibition by a murderous artist on full, grisly display.
The ragged tear at the flank, the deep, obscene bite at the throat. I felt my eyes widen like saucers as I tore them away from the animal carcass. My gaze landed right on him.
Ivan stood in the corner, half-swallowed by shadow, head bowed, eyes glowing pale. He didn’t look… right. Instinct kicked, and I stepped back, knowing I was staring at the thing beneath the man— the monster I’d felt breathing behind the mirror of humanity.
The lower half of his face, chest, and his hands—those same hands that had held my face so gently—were slick to the wrists with something dark and glossy. I didn’t need color to know what it was. He was unsettlingly still. And entirely focused on me.
The sound he made barely qualified as sound.
It was low, feral, and the kind of noise nightmares kept buried deep.
It skated over my skin and tightened every muscle to fight or run.
I pressed against the stone wall, heart thundering, a scream trapped behind my teeth.
And yet, buried under the terror, something else stirred…
an inexplicable certainty that I was not his prey.
With him, I would not be harmed. Reality was louder.
Panic surged. He closed his eyes, forced himself deeper into the corner until darkness swallowed him whole. Then, after long, agonizing seconds ticked by, he stepped forward into the candlelight, and the air left my lungs.
The monstrous visage slipped, revealing the brutal beauty of the man.
And still… all that blood. Heat flashed through me so hard it felt like lightning.
His mouth was red, his teeth stained, the twin points of his canines leaving no doubt what he was and what he used them for.
Blood slicked down his throat, coursing a trail over the huge muscles of chest and dripping lower over his defined abs before saturating the front of his pants.
Those teeth were made to tear, to latch on, to drink a body empty.
For a breath, we didn’t move, both caught in the same dark snare. The undercroft seemed to exhale with the weight of blood and stone, the cold air curling around me as if urging me to turn and flee.
His gaze never wavered from mine as he moved toward the stag and crouched beside it.
He pressed one broad hand to its chest, fingers smoothing over the matted fur with a tenderness so at odds with the carnage that something inside me seized.
His lips moved, a low murmur spilling from him—words I couldn’t decipher, yet they struck me with a strange familiarity.
I didn’t need to understand the language to know its meaning. Some quiet part of me recognized it, whispered the truth before my mind could catch up… he was thanking the creature for its life.
The cadence of his voice clawed at something buried deep inside me.
I shouldn’t have recognized it, yet the sound threaded through me like an echo I’d once known.
A shiver lifted the hairs along my arms, not of fear but of familiarity.
It was as if I had heard that same tone whispered against my skin in another life, words meant only for me.
He didn’t hide what he was. He didn’t pretend. He simply wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing the blood into a darker mask. When he spoke, his voice was steady, low—deeper than I’d ever heard it.
“In the beginning, I fed on humans,” he said.
“For decades. For several hundreds of years, in fact. My enemies. The worst of humankind. It was the only mercy I allowed myself—not killing the innocent. I don’t even remember when I started feeding on animals.
But this one…” He gestured to the stag. “He was dying at the edge of the property. He wouldn’t have seen dawn. I did him a mercy.”
I swallowed. The taste in my mouth went sour. “You don’t feed on humans?” The words felt absurd even as I spoke them. “You don’t kill them… anymore?”
“I feed when I must. I stopped killing a century ago.” He didn’t explain further, and I didn’t ask. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
Silence bled into the stone room, chilling me from the inside out. The stag lay still, its black eyes glassy, a sadness clinging to it even in death. My hands felt stupid at my sides, and I dug my nails into my palms until crescent moons bit my skin.
“I didn’t mean to come down here,” I whispered. “I didn’t want to… see this.”
“I didn’t want you to,” he said evenly. “But it was inevitable. You needed to see—really see, Clara—what I am.”
My throat worked around a hard swallow. “Why? Why would you want me to see this?”
For a heartbeat, he said nothing. Then, softly, Ivan murmured, “Because you’re mine. And the devil has already claimed you, Clara. I’m a predator, but I would never hurt you. I wouldn’t let anyone get close enough to try.”
He stepped away from the carcass toward a stone basin sunk into the wall that I hadn’t even noticed before. I stood frozen, watching as he dipped his hands into the water and clouded it dark, washing the gore from his skin. When he finished, he used his discarded shirt to wipe his mouth.
It looked like a ritual—obscene and deliberate all at once. When Ivan turned back, the monster wasn’t gone. It was simply contained, as if he’d drawn a curtain over it for my sake.
“You’re scared,” he said quietly. “Angry.” It wasn’t a question. His voice had softened just enough to ease the sharp edge of my fear.
“I’m—” My throat worked around the word. I stared down, sifting for something solid, telling myself over and over I would not be a prisoner, I would not be a victim. I was disgusted. Terrified. And yet, I felt something else deep down in my soul.
I was hypnotized by the sight of him. Horrified by the heat crawling through my veins.
And then it hit me so fast I thought I’d lost my balance.
A memory. Not whole. Not clear. It was just a fragment.
It was like cold air slapping against me.
The smell of iron and wood smoke. A hand—Ivan’s hand—smoothing my hair back as he whispered against my ear.
The tone was low and desperate. I knew the words were spoken out of love.
As fast as the memory came, it was gone.
“I don’t know why,” I said finally, my voice thin, “but part of me feels like I’ve seen this before. Like I’ve been here before. I don’t understand it. I just… knew something was coming.”
“I should be grateful,” he finally said, voice low enough to echo off the stone. “That a part of you remembers some things.”
“Don’t twist this,” I snapped, breath shaking. “I’m not—”
“Accepting this,” he finished softly. “No. You aren’t. But you came here anyway. This door isn’t on the main corridor. Your feet—your memory—found it.” His head tilted slightly, studying me in that unsettling way of his, as if he could hear my thoughts before I formed them.
A shiver rippled through me as an image rose.
A lantern swung from a hook where the basin now stood, the undercroft lit not by moonlight but by flickering gold.
My fingers curled against my palms as another memory—no, a feeling—bloomed.
Laughter echoed off these same stones. Warm bread shared on the steps.
His hand steadying mine as we traced the carvings on a pillar, reading their meaning aloud like we were telling bedtime stories.
The ghost of it passed through me as sharp as the first rays of sun touching the land for the first time.
It left me dizzy. This was not just a crypt or a hiding place where he fed.
Once, it had been a refuge. A place we’d come to escape the world, where just the two of us could speak freely with no one hearing.
My skin prickled at those memories. Ones I didn’t understand. Ones that confused and terrified me.
“I know what you are.” My throat burned. “I see it clearly. I see everything.”
“Yes,” he said. “And you’re still here.”
The words cut deep. I wasn’t still here because I wanted to be. I was here because he kept me, because stone walls and locked doors made sure of it. Yet, something traitorous inside me twisted, whispering that there was more to it than chains or corridors.
I realized I’d felt almost safe—in the bedchamber, the library, the glass-lit solarium. But down here… there was no softness. The undercroft was raw, stained with decades of blood, smelling of death that was so thick it was an unmistakable odor.
“I won’t pretend,” he said, almost lightly, “that I didn’t enjoy it. Feeding. There is pleasure in surviving. But it’s a necessity. I won’t dress it in finer clothes to make you more comfortable. This is what I am.”
I shook my head because it gave me something to do. My palms ached from digging my nails into them. I forced them to loosen, then wrapped my arms tight around myself. “You wanted me to see this,” I said, my voice breaking smaller than I intended.
“Eventually, yes, you needed to see what I am. But I didn’t bring you here,” he said. “You came of your own accord.”
Heat flushed through me so fast I thought I’d be sick. Shame burned, and I clutched it because it was easier than facing the other thing clawing through me. He noticed. Of course he noticed.
We stood in silence long enough for the bite on my neck to throb, a reminder that he’d fed from me, too. My fingers went there on instinct. The heat that answered my touch made me furious.
At him, and especially at my body for betraying me. “I should go back,” I whispered. “I—”
“You should.” He stepped back a single inch, enough to shift the air between us. “Get some rest. Tomorrow”—the word sounded like both a promise and threat—“we’ll talk.”
I swallowed hard, wanting to argue, to demand answers. My gaze caught on the clean line of his jaw, the faint smear of blood at the corner of his mouth.
The woman I had been before all this would have recoiled.
The woman I was now wanted to reach up and wipe the blood away with her thumb.