Lair of Beasts [Book I in the Curse Of Blood Saga]

Chapter IX - The Aegis

That same night, as I watched the scud stretch across the full moon, a light mizzle tapping gently at the glazing, I marveled again at the silence of the keep. I was not used to such quietude, but at length I did succumb to sleep.

But the castle was beset with a terrible gale in the small hours of the morning, and I had been dreaming but a few hours only before I was harshly awakened.

"Have you consulted with the devil, you wicked child?" My head came away from the pillow in a rush of panic, the nightmare, and my slumber, having dissipated swiftly at the sound of thunder that had snapped through the sky.

With my dead grandmother's voice still ringing in my ears, I leapt from the bed and hurried to my door to escape both her ghost and the darkness. Howbeit, that darkness was only sporadic, and though I craved the light, I did not care for the intermittence of it that accompanied this furious display of nature.

The moon was gone and the sky was freaked with terrible light the likes of which I had never seen before. It so horrified me that I bolted from my bed, my maid, ostensibly used to the tempest's cacophony, still lay abed peacefully in slumber.

There was no light in the hallway and the cold flags seemed to stab at my soles as I wondered down the gallery, alternately gasping and trembling each time a particularly violent clap of thunder cracked through the night.

I had half expected the castle to be awakened, as I had been, but it seemed that all were still abed, untroubled by the storm that vented its fury outside our walls. On I walked, without bearing and uncaring wither I was bound. I only knew that I could not rest until the sky did.

So distracted was I by the trembling of the thick, stone walls that I did not at first notice the light at the end of the corridor, mistaking it initially for the residual glow of a lightning bolt. But it was a torch that flickered there and I instantly made my way towards it like an eager moth, somehow believing the glow to be a beacon of safety.

When I reached the sconce I noticed the door beside which the flame burned was left ajar, but I dared not enter. I merely stood beside the flame, drawing of its meager warmth and reassuring, steady light. I had resolved to stay there until the sun rose or at least until the storm ebbed, but my will was thwarted by the last voice I wished to hear.

"Is there any reason you are waiting outside this door particularly?"

I whirred around and nearly sobbed for fright. Lucian had appeared like a wight and stood towering over me, brows lowering, like a bloody giant, his eyes seemingly charged by the golden flame of the torchlight.

"The storm..." was all I managed, clutching at my shift to stave off whatever cold I could.

I thought surely he would thunder at me, as the storm was doing, and demand I remove myself to bed, but he only regarded me thoughtfully. As I returned his scrutiny it was then I noticed his hair was damp and his feet were as bare as mine atop the stones.

If I were not much mistaken, either he had been wandering outside in the storm or he'd just partaken of a midnight bath. Both possibilities were, although feasible, entirely odd behavior for this time of night; or morning rather.

"Come on then." He motioned for me to enter through the door I'd been staring at moments earlier.

I did not move and he shrugged his shoulders and entered without me, leaving me to the mercy of the shadows without. At last I could bear the lonely roar of the wind against the castle battlements no longer and passed through the open door to see Lucian stoking the fire.

Without glancing at me he retrieved a large pelt of fur from his bed — a bed that was as undisturbed as one that had not been slept in — and walked back to stand before me, wrapping the heavy mass around my shivering shoulders.