I snorted, rubbing my eyes. “You dosed me with Hypnos.”
“Three months ago. Let it go, Hamilton.”
I just grinned sleepily. “You have so much to learn.”
Chapter 2
Solange
I landed on a spiraling stone stairway. I was in some kind of a castle, with dust in the air and dried flowers and hay under my bare feet. I wore a burgundy, medieval-style dress, the kind Madame Veronique favored, with a jeweled belt. She’d been turned in 1162, so my brothers and I studied the twelfth century thoroughly enough that I knew the window in front of me was actually a murder hole, through which archers shot arrows at advancing knights. Sunlight pierced through it, landing on the back of my hand. I snatched it away, as if it were an arrow being sent back at the castle.
It didn’t burn.
Or make me feel weak.
I lifted my fingertips to my teeth. I still had the triple set of fangs but no desire to sink them into the nearest living thing. I wasn’t thirsty for blood; and lately I was always thirsty. I wanted to enjoy it, but I knew I couldn’t stay here. Mom would say get to high ground, or at the very least, don’t let yourself get cornered. I was definitely cornered in the stairwell, but if I went up to the roof, I’d be just as confined.
I hurried down the steps, listening carefully for the sounds of the castle’s inhabitants. I could hear the clang of a blacksmith’s hammer from somewhere outside and the whinny of a horse, but nothing closer. The walls were whitewashed and painted with a rose in the center of each stone. Tapestries hung in the rooms that opened up out of arched doorways. I smelled smoke and roasting meat, and dried lavender under my feet.
I made it to the great hall without being discovered. I peered around one of the tapestries and saw wooden tables and benches, a fire in the center of the room, smoke rising to the rafters and staying there. Women bustled back and forth, wearing dresses similar to mine. A young boy brought in an armful of firewood. I slipped away, into the sunny courtyard.
This made no sense. I should be in the Blood Moon encampment. I felt insubstantial, as if the precious sunlight were glittering right through me. Was I invisible? Insane? Was this time travel? Or another vision like the one Kala had given me? It didn’t feel the same but it was definitely some kind of magic.
It didn’t matter.
I needed to get back home. I needed to make sure my family was safe and that Lucy wasn’t bleeding to death in the woods. And that Kieran didn’t hate me, before he left for Scotland and I never saw him again.
I remembered the taste of his blood in my mouth. I’d bitten him long before that girl’s voice started to merge with my own. I couldn’t blame that on her, not entirely. She’d been there, in the background, but I’d been the one to bite him. Hadn’t I? And he still hadn’t turned me over to the hunters. He’d called Lucy instead of the Helios-Ra. He deserved an explanation. An apology. Everyone did.
When had I stopped being the girl with dried clay on her pants and a pathological need for solitude?
Guilt and worry would crush me if I let it. Right now, it didn’t matter why or who or what. It only mattered that I get myself back home to fix the mess I’d made.
I skirted the edge of the courtyard, staying in the shadows of the rosebushes and lilac trees. I passed stables and a dovecote. There was an orchard in the distance, and a gray stone wall beyond that. I stepped on the dirt path, uneven with ruts from carts and horseshoes, toward two round towers. I ducked between them, waiting for a guard to shout out my presence. Instead, there was only the wind and a stray chicken pecking for seeds. The sun was warm and pleasant on my face. It had only been a few months since my blood-change, but I still missed the daylight.
A longer path went downhill to a lower bailey and past a huge field full of armored men practicing with swords and lances and maces. Grizzled, scarred men fought with broadswords. A cluster of younger boys, around my age, loosed arrows at a haystack painted with red and white circles. Men on horseback charged at a heavy sack on a