I ignore her and ask, “What did you lose and where do you expect to find it?”
“He has asked you to share his castle?” she presses, not moving forward.
“Yes,” I say shortly, “not that it is anything to do with you. Now, if you please? I would like to get back to what you interrupted.”
“I’m sure you do,” she mumbles and steps forward, leading me to a room not far from my own. “Erm,” she hesitates.
“I know you were together here with Sebastian,” I tell her, although I was not informed it was actually here, which is a very bad move on CK’s part. A very, very bad move. “Please go and see if you can find what you lost,” I say, opening the door and she steps in hesitantly.
“You know?” she asks.
I sense her fear, as I was quite explicit the last time I saw her about keeping her hands to herself. “Yes. He tells me everything,” I say haughtily. And yes, I am a big fat liar, but I am not giving this woman the satisfaction of catching me on the back foot.
“Oh. You are not angry?” she asks, wary of another Queen-like smack down.
“I wouldn’t say that, but I know he did what he did only because of Sebastian.” I make this point to her, so she knows it was nothing to do with her.
She searches furtively for a few minutes and I decide to help to speed this along. “What did you lose?” I ask.
“My Faerie Silver,” she says to my amazement. “I have lost that damn cuff more times than I care to think about. I have looked everywhere else. It has to be here.”
“Cuff?” I ask her with a frown.
She nods absently and gets on her knees to look under the bed. Okay, this is weird, but I help and go to the other side of the bed to look. I find it straight away. “Here.” I stand and hold it out to her.
“Thanks,” she says gratefully. She takes it from me and puts it on.
I am burning with curiosity and, well, screw the damn cat. “Eloise gave you a bracelet?” I ask her.
Her eyes meet mine. She debates whether to talk to me. “Yes.” She slips it off her wrist again with ease. “Easier to punish me,” she says and shrugs. “I sometimes don’t even notice it is gone I am that used to having it off. One of the many reasons I am not sorry you ended her,” she adds quietly.
Her own sister not only turned her but also punished her? Extensively, by the sounds of it as well. What a bitch.
“You don’t have to look so horrified on my behalf. You know what a cruel bitch she was.”
“Erm, yes. I am surprised she would do that to her own sister though,” I say.
“We stopped being sisters the minute she became my sire.” She sits heavily on the bed and I actually feel sorry for her. “He is so in love with you,” she says out of the blue. “I envy that.”
Well, so much for feeling sorry for her, I narrow my eyes at her. “I love him,” she continues. “I have loved him since the day he first looked at me.”
Yeah, I get that. I blink but remain silent, wanting to know more but at the same time slightly terrified of what she might say.
“She loved him too. She wanted him more than anything she ever wanted in her whole long, goddamn life. But he was mine.”
I drop my shoulders and pull myself upright. No lovey, not yours.
“He was mine centuries before you were even born,” she says boldly but at my intense, angry glare, she amends, “I mean, he was more mine than hers. But I know he only went after me to piss her off. I didn’t care, I just wanted to be with him.”
He did what now?
“That first time, when he hurt me, I was scared, but then I felt relief. Relief from the agony of being what I am. What she made me. Her bitch.” She continues her tale as I just stand there, mouth agape.
“I wanted more, because it felt better to feel that, than self-loathing and disgust.”
“You don’t like what you are?” I ask her cautiously. I really don’t understand this reaction from Vampires. I mean, we are awesome. Who wouldn’t want to be like us?
“I grew to accept it. It isn’t what I wanted. She wanted it. So, she wasn’t alone.”