Chapter 6
I still couldn’t believe that I had been sitting half-naked on his bed while Xavier dressed me. Something in his eyes made me forget how to breathe properly—the way he stroked me, his fingertips brushing against my ribs, caused a spark on my skin.
He guided me out of his bedroom into a shadowy corridor, where the faint glow of wall lanterns, shaped like delicate flowers, provided the only light around.
The hall we entered resembled the shape of a circus tent, but was made of glass panels colored in every shade of the rainbow.
The panels were transparent enough that you could recognize the bright twinkle of stars and the crescent moon shimmering in the sky.
The sight was mesmerizing, almost like stepping into a dream I’d never known I’d been chasing.
It was exactly how I’d always imagined my own twisted little Wonderland would look… if it had ever truly existed.
“You stand in the heart of my realm,” he said.
I tilted my head, Maverick shifting on Xavier’s shoulder with a quiet caw. They were both staring at me. Again.
For a moment, I just stood there, my eyes sweeping across the turrets of glass shimmering in hues of lavender, gold, and sapphire.
“It looks like a rainbow…” I accidentally said aloud, barely realizing the words had slipped out.
Xavier turned his head toward me, his lips curving into a smile.
“I’d never thought of giving my castle a name,” he replied. “But indeed, it is fitting… it shall be the Rainbow Castle,” he said, amused, before he had opened the door to something resembling a saloon.
“Welcome to the Rainbow Castle of Carnivalland then, my love.”
Carnivalland. The name unfurled like a secret whispered in my mind.
“Carnivalland?” I repeated, my voice caught between awe and uncertainty. “That’s what it’s called?” He nodded once, slow and certain.
“Why?” I asked, searching his expression. “Why name it something so…” I didn’t even know how to describe it.
“Strange?” he ended my question, amused.
“What else would you call a land made for people to live in weirdness and madness?” The edge of his lips curved into a grin.
He took a step closer, his gaze narrowing at me.
“Isn’t that what you fear most, my love?
That you’re not escaping madness… but slowly drowning in it? ”
His words struck something deep inside me. Maybe the shadows that were following me weren’t part of this world… but part of me.
“You don’t know me…” I stuttered the last words. Why was he making me so nervous with every single word he said?
“I do know you.”
Why did I feel this sort of utterly deep longing after someone… a man I knew no more than a day? How could this be anything else if not a dream?
“You are insecure about your appearance despite the beauty you were born with. Your mother didn’t care about the feelings of her daughter as she should, giving you the blame for your father’s disappearance.
She used you for wealth and power by forcing you to marry a disgusting man, despite knowing you did not love him.
You feel so deeply because you’re forced to experience the anger and emotions your mother didn’t heal from.
And I know you always dreamt of a place like this, didn’t you? ”
My eyes widened, processing every single bit of information he was revealing about me. I wasn’t aware that he knew about my love for circuses and carnivals, always being a dream to live in a place characterized by magic and colors.
Xavier was still a stranger to me, and yet seemed to pay more attention to my feelings than my own mother.
“Do people celebrate Carnival often here?” I asked. I knew that he still refused to tell me why I was here, but I wanted to know so much more about this place… and about him.
“No.”
“Hmm… why the name then? It’s so quiet here, and the name of this land would imply people being loud and celebrating Carnival…”
“You are a curious little thing, aren’t you?”
My cheeks reddened. I couldn’t deny the effect his words had on me. His smirk told me he indeed knew how he affected me, and he was obviously enjoying it too much.
“If you try to find a deeper meaning behind Carnivalland… you’ll find none. It was just built as some sort of realm for fun and entertainment. The name has no certain purpose. Well, it hadn’t…”
“It hadn’t… which implies that it has a meaning now, right?”
He chuckled and took my hand in his, his skin soft against mine. I should have pulled my hand away, but it was like my body didn’t belong to me right now.
“I love your curiosity… it’s…” His gaze dropped to my lips as he bit on his own, “…refreshing.” His eyes followed every movement of mine before he added, “I asked all my servants and the people who live here to not leave their rooms today.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to show you this place all by myself, foreign eyes are not invited. Only you and I.” Only you and I. He talked about us as if we hadn’t just met each other.
“And I’ll kill anyone who sees you in this… that isn’t me,” he bluntly stated, opening the glass door leading outside, the fresh air cooling my skin.
And in the next breath, the world had changed.
At least for me. Although Xavier insisted on me being enchanted by a place like this for so long, I wasn’t sure my imagination could have ever invented something as beautiful as the view in front of me.
We stood at the edge of a winding stone path shimmering faintly beneath our feet, like it was housing the night sky.
All around us, tall trees arched toward the sky, their dark leaves forming a velvet canopy above.
But these didn’t look like ordinary trees.
No, they felt alive as if they were whispering the colors of the wind.
The trunks were strung with red ribbons, similar to the ones Xavier was wearing in his hair, and delicate chains of glass beads that tinkled when the wind stirred.
From their shimmering branches hung glowing lanterns, casting pools of golden warmth into the darkness of the sky.
Beneath them, flowers bloomed in shimmering shades of whites, yellows, purples, and blues, spilling into the grass like some magical paint.
If I would have been a painter of the night, it would have looked exactly like this.
I listened to the soft music around us, a symphony of old, stringed instruments. Somewhere deeper in the garden, laughter rang out.
“Hmmm, looks like my people didn’t understand what wanting to be alone with you means…” Xavier muttered angrily, as if their happy moods ruined the day.
And then I saw it.
At the end of the path were some small wagons draped in ivy and pearls.
Glimmering crystals, dried herbs in floating jars, masks made of feathers and silk, glowing fruits that seemed unnaturally shiny.
A few people drifted between them, some dressed in formal attire, others in wild, vividly colored clothes shimmering with glitter.
It was like a secret carnival, hidden in the folds of the garden.
And somehow, he had brought me here. As if I belonged here as well.
“Do you want something to drink?” Xavier’s question brought me out of my haze. Before I could answer, he had already handed me a little golden cup with some sort of red liquid in it.
“Here, try this,” he said, noticing how I eyed the beverage in my hands, a little more than skeptical. “It is fairy juice made of grapes, apples and raspberries. No poison, I swear.” He held out his hands in mock surrender.
I sipped it, praying he hadn’t lied to me, and could taste the sweet berry flavor on my tongue. I was about to take another gulp when a foreign female voice interrupted us.
“Xavier, where have you been?” A beautiful woman came up to him, pressing a kiss on his cheek.
Her hair was long, curly, and golden-blonde and her eyes were colored the shade of deep teakwood.
She wore a long gold dress which was almost transparent and accentuated her slim curves.
Her ears were pointy, meaning she must be of elven heritage.
“Who is this?” This. She was referring to me as if I were nothing more than an object.
“This… is the most breathtaking and important woman in my realm, and she is none of your concern, Aura,” Xavier replied, almost growling, as he gripped my waist, drawing me even closer to him.
The woman came nearer to me. Her sleeves brushing over my arm, mustering me from head to toe like I was some kind of curiosity.
“A human? How interesting,” Aura sneered. “Why a human? You could have anyone, Xavier. Yet you choose some fragile little thing with no magic. Is that what your kind has been reduced to now? Falling for creatures beneath you?”
Before the final words even left her mouth, Xavier’s hand immediately shot out, gripping her throat and lifting her off the ground.
“Speak of her like that again,” he growled, his voice low and lethal, “and I’ll rip your fucking tongue out.” His eyes turned a deep red again, and this time he couldn’t tell me that it was due to the flickering candlelight.
She didn’t flinch after he let her down. Instead, she straightened her posture, her lips curling into an almost cruel smile. “Do you know with whom I share my bed? The power he has? You are nothing compared to him. You should watch your mouth,” she fired back at his threat.
“Aura, I think you’re forgetting that your feet are on my land, which means I’m the one making the rules.”
For a moment, neither of them said a word. The air filled with tension, a silent challenge hanging between them as he stepped closer, radiating authority and protectiveness.
And then suddenly the tension broke with a quiet click of shoes against the stone pathway. I gazed up to find a tall man approaching us. His hair spilled past his shoulders in deep violet strands, with eyes of an unnatural shade of crystalline blue. Sparkling earrings adorned his pointed ears.
The man didn’t need to shout. He didn’t even need to lift a hand.
He just looked at her. A silent warning, far more terrifying than any threat Xavier had spoken before.
She fell abruptly silent, as if afraid to say anything further, and quickly left.
The man grinned at Xavier, then, without any kind of introduction, they suddenly hugged.
“It’s sweet how I need to rescue my older brother because he can’t speak up against that piece of trash…” They were brothers. Although their eye and hair color differed, they shared the same undeniably breathtaking softness, the kind of beauty that I’d never seen in my world…
“Shut up, Sparrow,” Xavier said, although his tone was more amused than hurt.
“Is this your way of thanking me for standing up for…” His eyes glanced back at me. “Who is this sweet treasure? She can’t be interested in you… no way.”
Xavier glared at his brother angrily before his fingers gripped around my waist, holding me closer to him. “Don’t stare at her,” he growled.
Sparrow chuckled at his reaction, his hands brushing along his white blouse, which shimmered like moonlight woven into silk.
The collar of his blouse was high, embroidered with lace, delicate and precise.
Sparrow and Xavier definitely shared the same love for clothing.
Pearls traced along the buttons, small and iridescent, like they’d been plucked straight from the Lake of the Sirens.
In fact, he almost resembled a siren himself.
“But what’s yours is staring at me… I can’t help that I’m part siren. You know our effect, especially in water. We are devastatingly, utterly beautiful.”
So, he truly was a siren.
Although he was unnaturally beautiful and clearly not mortal at all, he neither had a tail nor gills. He couldn’t be like one of the sirens I met in the lake. I tried shifting my focus back to the man in front of me.
Was that why he was able to appease Aura so quickly? Was it his power to control other people and their emotions?
“Sparrow,” Xavier muttered. It almost sounded like a warning, as if he didn’t want his brother to talk anymore.
“What? Haven’t you told your little human treasure about your heritage? Aren’t you proud to be the prince of the Vampire King Vad?”
Vampire King? A prince?
“Wait…” I stuttered, my eyes drifting back to Xavier.
“Oh no, my brother didn’t tell you what he was? Haven’t you seen his ears and his fangs?”
Ears? Fangs?
Sparrow lifted up some hair strands from Xavier’s ears, revealing the same pointed shape he had. Tapered, elegant, not like an elf from a children’s book, but something ancient. Beautiful in a way that made my breath catch. And at the same time, he was also…
“You’re not human,” I stated.
The words caught in my throat, I couldn’t even name how I was feeling about this information.
His lips transformed into a smile. And somehow, it made sense.
Of course, he wasn’t a human. His appearance, his magical bird, the way his eyes transformed into another color.
The way he behaved, he smelled—the way he looked.
Nothing was really mortal about this raven-haired alluring man, and yet I never would have thought of him being of elven heritage.
.. or a vampire. And not only some vampire, but the son of a King.