have lifted my head, Alfred kept me still. I gritted my teeth against the devastation of how silent the room had gone save for the lap of water against the rock pools.
“Don’t look,” he advised me. “Turn and walk out, go straight up to my room.”
“What?”
“My room has older, more inflexible wards on it. We will be improving all of them, but it is there or my crypt. I thought you might prefer my room.”
That even managed to sound reasonable. But I hadn’t been back in his room since that last morning when they’d declared my transition complete.
He still wouldn’t let me turn my head. I wasn’t squeamish. Admittedly, a part of me was feeling guilty. I had the sense that there was no Anton left at all. Or if there was? It might be kinder to put him out of his misery. Atop all of that, my skin still buzzed and crawled with the sense of other I’d pulled out of the Dorran-slash-Anton whatever it was. I didn’t think possessed was the right term.
“Is it safe to go up there?” was the only question I landed on, and it came out even raspier than before. The pain in my throat intensified.
“Yes,” Alfred promised me. “He wasn’t here long. Anton wasn’t supposed to be here at all. He left weeks ago, and apparently, he returned a day before we did.”
Oh. Someone was not happy about that.
“It won’t happen again.” The danger licking along that promise sent another thrill up my spine. “Now go, I will come to you when I am done here.”
Arguing was in my blood. I hated orders. I sure as shit didn’t like orders from assholes.
I had to wonder who was more surprised at my obedience—Alfred or me?
I didn’t stop until I was at the doors to his room, and I pushed them open without a second thought.
It was just as I remembered it. The sofas framing the currently dormant fireplace included a pair of colorful throws now, both in deep green. The bed lay in the half-shadow of the room. Apparently, the skies outside were dark and stormy. I had to wonder if it would snow again. I hadn’t been out to the garden since our return.
Closing the doors behind me, I leaned back against them.
The room even smelled like Alfred. Cool. Crisp. Aged whiskey, like you’d find in the old cask barrels. Leather. Something indefinable.
I closed my eyes as shudders of reaction rocked through me. My skin still crawled. My insides burned. And my throat could probably not feel worse if he’d slashed it open.
Pushing away from the doors, I stumbled toward the window and away from the sprawling bed. Unlike the rest of the keep, this room was hushed. Like the silence was deeper here. The wards, most likely, since he said they were stronger here and in his crypt.
That would make sense. I supposed.
Touching my forehead to the glass separating me from the rest of the world, I winced. There was a bruise forming there. Or whatever it was vampires did after injuring themselves.
The mark over my pulse point burned, and a sensation crept through me, chasing out the chills. Covering it with my hand, I could almost feel Maddox. It was just a sense of him. A flash. Intense anger. Worry. Then just as intense relief.
Had he felt what was happening?
Dorran had been choking me out. Would that have hurt Maddox if he’d succeeded?
Beneath the shivering and the disgust roiling through me came a much more potent emotion.
Fury.
That was where the energy had come from. Maddox. Stroking my fingers against the mark, I tried to focus on him and the sense that I was all right.
I had no idea how this worked. The other mark on my throat seemed to burn, and when I touched it, I could feel Alfred’s approach. He was only steps away. I turned to the doors just as they opened. The tense and forbidding expression on his face eased a fraction when he locked gazes with me.
After closing the doors behind him with a soft, if ominous click, he crossed to where I stood. In some ways, it was a violent déjà vu to the morning he found me in the garden. The fixed look in his eyes, the tension in his jaw, and the sense of rawness that just emanated from him. Only this time, he didn’t collide with me and strike with a bite.
This time, he just raised two fingers to my jaw and gently