Page 47 of Castle of the Cursed
Tears burn in the corners of my eyes.
“What do you want to know?” he asks at last.
I force back the wave of emotion threatening to overtake me and start with what I hope is an easy question: “Where do you go in the daytime?”
He doesn’t immediately answer. “I do not know.”
“I can’t with you!” I say, throwing my arms in the air.
“I am telling you the truth,” he says, as I cross my arms again to cover myself. “I do not know where I go when the sun comes up.” His voice is heavy with gravity, like he’s confessing to criminal behavior. “I only come to at nightfall.”
I think of the vampire myth, how they sleep in coffins during the day, and I wonder if there’s a grain of truth there. “So you appear in the castle at night and disappear at sunrise?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” I ask, and when he doesn’t answer, I do it for him: “You don’t trust me, do you?”
He doesn’t deny it.
“I cannot trust anything about this castle until I know why I am here and who is behind this enchantment,” he says. “For all we know, we are being watched.”
“What?” I blurt. “Who—?”
“I do not want to frighten you any more than you already are, not when you are so near to giving up.”
His description of me hits hard.
Is that how he sees me? Is that why he doesn’t want to be partners with me in this investigation—he’s worried I can’t handle it?
“I can stomach whatever monsters are lurking in the dark,” I tell him. “It’s you I want to know about. Tell me something about yourself.”
“You still fear I am a creation of your mind?”
“Even an imaginary partner would be better than no partner.”
I don’t break our stare, and I know this is it. The moment that determines everything between us. Whatever he says next will decide if I can trust him.
“I do not recall the exact instant I woke up here.”
It takes me a second to realize he’s spoken. The shadow beast’s voice sounds so far away, it’s almost small.
“It felt like my existence was coming in and out… flickering, how you described the lights.”
I sit down on an edge of a wooden beam while he speaks.
“Once I managed to get a firm grip on this dimension, I knew something was off. Yet I could not figure it out; it was as if I could not access my full range of thoughts. Then I caught the scent of human blood.”
Sebastián’s gaze drifts from mine, enough that he’s not looking me in the eye. “I did not have to think to make that kill. I acted on pure instinct. I yanked her head back by the hair and ripped into her throat, crushing her windpipe in one quick bite—or I should have.”
“What happened?” I whisper, breathless.
“She went right through me. I thought she must be a ghost. Until I realized she had not reacted to my presence at all. She was glued to the news being broadcast of an attack on a train with a sole survivor, a teen girl. I was the ghost.”
“And I was the teen girl.”
He nods in assent. “I remember humans coming to the door every evening to drop off food, each new visit a fresh torture because none of them entered the house. I could not even attempt to taste them. Even more infuriating, they could not see me when I would get near the doorway.”
Then it’s true that only I can see him. Just like the black smoke. What does that mean?
