CHAPTER TEN
I hated sitting still.
Despised it, actually.
Vale all but threw me back into the bed, and I sat there for half an hour before I was fidgeting, trying to get up only to immediately stumble again. He caught on fast, soon taking watch at my bedside.
“You’re self-destructive,” he muttered, visibly irritated with me.
“I’m busy.”
“You’re ill.”
So what?
But before I could come up with another protest, he went to the bookcase, withdrew some books, and plopped them heavily onto the bed. “Here. If you want to work so badly, then work.”
I picked up the books. They were all written in a language I had never seen before.
“Is this… Obitraen?”
Only at my tone did Vale seem to recognize the flaws of his plan.
“What are these, anyway?” I picked up another one of the books and flipped through it. It was illustrated. Graphically so.
My cheeks tightened as I turned the book sideways, taking in a full-page spread. “My, Vale. Your taste is…”
He snatched the book away. “Fine. Then sit here doing nothing.”
“What is it, exactly, that you think I do, if you thought you could give me a random collection of books written in a language I didn’t understand and that would qualify as ‘working?’”
His face flushed with something that almost—almost—resembled embarrassment. Gods, I wished I could capture that expression. It was a thing of art.
“You’re awfully ungrateful of my hospitality,” he muttered, turning away.
“Wait.”
He stopped at the door and looked back.
No, these books, whatever they were—and I was very sure they had absolutely nothing to do with my field—wouldn’t help me work. But… still, curiosity nagged at me. How many humans had gotten to read Obitraen books?
“You could read them to me,” I said. “If you’re just so desperate to host.”
“Read them to you?”
Was the twinge in his voice disgust? His lip curled as if it was.
“I don’t know Obitraen, but you do. If you want me to stay in bed, it would be easier if I had something to do.”
Vale thought for a moment, then snatched one of the books from the bed—not the illustrated one, sadly—and sat in a chair by the window.
“Fine,” he huffed. “It isn’t as if I don’t have much more important things to do, but I’ll indulge you if you’re bent on being difficult.”
“An honor,” I said, unable to suppress a smile. “I know you’re very busy.”
But Vale, for all his supposed busyness and his grumpy reluctance, launched into those stories with all the enthusiasm of a man who would rather be nowhere else in the world.
I lost myself in those stories. It was too easy. My mind was thick and muddied, and I was exhausted. The first book Vale had picked up was a history book, vampire lore told in short vignettes. Their history was… appalling, but also riveting, every myth and legend woven into a tapestry of blood and betrayal. And yet, even when telling such horrible tales, his voice was smooth and deep, rising and falling like the swells of the ocean. Steady, like a heartbeat or breath. Elegant, like the way his blood looked on the wall.
I didn’t remember falling asleep, only that Vale’s voice and his stories followed me into my dreams. And I didn’t remember lying down or pulling the covers around myself, only that when I awoke, I had been carefully tucked in, silk sheets smoothed tight around my body.
I felt hot and weak, but worlds better than I had before. So I did the only natural thing: I got out of bed and started exploring.
I still couldn’t decide if Vale’s mansion was the ugliest or most beautiful place I had ever been. Each room I wandered into was more cluttered than the last—an absolute mess, but with the most fascinating objects. I came to the conclusion that Vale must only live in a very small section of this enormous house, because almost every room I peered into seemed to be used as storage. All of them were stunning, but the fourth room made me stop in my tracks, awed.
Weapons. Everywhere, weapons. I was an academic, a farmer’s daughter raised in a farmers’ town. I’d never held a sword—had barely even seen any, save for those on the hips of city guards. They’d always seemed to be simplistic and brutish instruments to me. Unremarkable.
Not these.
These were works of art. Even I, a woefully untrained eye, could see that immediately. Swords lined the walls, hung straight up and down in slashes of silver and gold along dark wallpaper—swords of every size, every shape, some nearly as tall as me and others light and delicate. On one side of the room, several sets of armor were mounted on wooden frames. Gorgeous, even from a distance—silver metal and black leather and capes of purple silk. Freestanding racks, haphazardly arranged about the space, held axes, bows, arrows.
A few, I realized as my eyes adjusted, were marked with spatters of black.
And there, on an end table right within the door, was a rapier stained with dried red blood—dried, fresh red blood. Perhaps from only a few days ago.
The hairs prickled on the back of my neck. The beauty of it all collided with the realization that dozens—hundreds, maybe thousands—had almost certainly been killed with the instruments that surrounded me now.
“You’re very bad at resting.”
I jumped and almost fell into a rack of arrows before Vale’s hand snaked out to catch me. He pulled me upright, but didn’t let me go. Our bodies were close. His eyes were slightly narrowed, searching my face, and I struggled to decode the complexities of what lay within them.
Annoyance, yes—that I expected. But something else, too, like he was waiting for the answer to a question and was nervous about what it might be.
“So I take it you’re feeling better,” he said.
“Yes. Better.” I cleared my throat and pulled away. Then looked to the room.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he said.
“How did you get all of this?”
“I take my field seriously, just as you do yours.”
“And that field is…？”
“I was a general.”
“A good one?”
Even as the question left my lips, I knew it was a stupid one. I’d seen Vale fight now. Like it was an art.
“The third best in the House of Night,” he replied, very seriously, and that—well, I wasn’t expecting that kind of honesty.
“The first two must have been something to behold, now that I’ve seen you in action.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “They were. But they are dead, and I’m still here.”
And if anything startled me more than his first answer had, it was this.
Because I recognized something in that tone… something human, something vulnerable. My gaze flicked to him, and he was staring at the weapons with an odd, faraway look in his eye. The kind of expression I saw on the faces of those who walked by their family’s grave sites.
“You said you oversaw the loss of a war,” I said.
He flinched—actually flinched.
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you came here.”
“Yes.”