Chapter 15 Dream
I lay on the massive bed, the silk sheets tangled around my legs. I was exhausted. My body felt leaden, drained by the magic I had forced out of myself earlier that day to enslave the prisoner. My mind felt bruised, the edges of my thoughts fraying into a grey static.
But I couldn’t close my eyes.
Because he was there.
Klaus sat in the high-backed velvet armchair near the window, positioned so he had a clear line of sight to both the door and the bed. He hadn’t moved in three hours. He hadn’t shifted his weight, hadn’t crossed his legs, hadn’t even turned a page of the book lying open on his lap.
He was a statue carved from moonlight and obsidian. The only sign that he was alive was the faint, rhythmic pulse of sapphire light in the veins of his neck.
It was maddening.
"Stop staring at me," I whispered into the gloom.
"I’m not staring," he replied instantly. His voice was low, a smooth baritone that didn't startle me but vibrated through the floorboards. "I’m reading."
"It’s pitch black," I pointed out. "You haven’t lit a candle."
"I don't need light to see, Nerissa. And neither do you, if you’d stop fighting your instincts."
I rolled onto my side, facing him. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could make out the sharp angles of his profile against the faint, sickly glow of the smog outside. He looked terrifyingly perfect. Cold. Unyielding.
"Do you ever sleep?" I asked.
It was a genuine question. In the days I had been his prisoner, I had never seen him close his eyes for more than a slow blink. I had never seen him lie down.
"Vampires sleep," he said, turning a page. The paper rasped loudly in the silence. "We enter a dormant state during the day to conserve energy. It is... efficient."
"But you don't," I pressed. "You're always here. Morning, noon, night. You're always watching."
He went silent. His hand paused on the edge of the page.
"The Emperor’s spies are thorough," he said finally. "If I sleep, the door is unguarded. If the door is unguarded, Vespera finds a way in. Or an assassin finds a way to finish what the maid started."
He gestured vaguely toward my bandaged shoulder. The burn throbbed in agreement.
"So you just... stay awake? Forever?"
"I rest my eyes when you are safe," he said.
I sat up, pulling the sheet around my shoulders. The air in the room was cold, kept artificially chilled by the ventilation system he controlled.
"You look tired, Klaus," I said.
He turned his head slowly to look at me. His eyes were glowing, two blue embers in the dark.
"I look like a three-hundred-year-old corpse," he corrected dryly. "Because that is what I am. Go to sleep, Little Fish. You have a fitting tomorrow."
"I can't sleep with you sitting there like a gargoyle."
"Then pretend I’m not here."
"That’s impossible. You take up all the air in the room."
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Then hold your breath."
I flopped back onto the pillows with a frustrated groan. It was useless. He was a wall. A cold, unmovable wall that had decided to make himself the furniture of my life.
I closed my eyes, determined to ignore him. I focused on my breathing.
I tried to think of the ocean.
Usually, thinking of home brought pain. It brought the memory of the black sludge, the dying coral, my father’s rejection. But tonight, my mind was too tired for grief. It drifted past the ruin and went deeper.
I thought of the currents. The heavy, pressurized silence of the Deep Trenches. The way the water held you, suspended and weightless. The way sound traveled for miles, a constant, comforting hum of life. Whales calling to their calves. Crabs scuttling on the rocks. The friction of water against scale.
The tension in my muscles began to unspool. The tightness in my chest loosened.
I didn't realize I was making a sound.
It started in my chest, a vibration that matched the rhythm of the imaginary tide. It rose up my throat, bypassing my conscious mind, slipping through my lips as a soft, continuous hum.
Mmmmmm... ahhhhh...
It wasn't a song. It was just the sound a siren makes when she dreams of the water. A frequency of comfort. A lullaby for myself.
I drifted. I wasn't in the tower anymore. I was floating in the kelp forest, the leaves brushing against my skin like silk ribbons.
Somewhere in the distance, I felt a pull. A heavy, dark anchor dragging on the seabed. It wasn't threatening. It felt... lonely.
My hum deepened, responding to the loneliness. Wrapping around it. Soothing it.
I don't know how long I lay there, lost in the trance of the dream. Minutes? Hours?
Something cold brushed my cheek.
My eyes snapped open.
The dream vanished. The ocean receded, leaving me gasping in the dry, stale air of the tower.
I wasn't alone.
Klaus was no longer in the chair.
He was kneeling by the side of the bed.
He was so close that his knees were pressed against the mattress. His face was level with mine, inches away.
I froze. My heart gave a violent kick against my ribs.
His eyes were wide. The sapphire light was pulsing frantically, illuminating his face in harsh, blue relief. He looked... wrecked.
His hair was messy, as if he had run his hands through it repeatedly. His mouth was slightly parted, his breathing shallow and rapid. But it was his expression that terrified me.
It wasn't the look of a predator about to strike.
It was the look of a starving man watching someone eat bread.
"Klaus?" I whispered, my voice thick with sleep.
He didn't pull away. He didn't put the mask back on. He leaned in closer, his gaze dropping to my throat, then back to my lips.
"You were singing," he rasped. His voice sounded like it was being dragged over broken glass.
"I... I was sleeping," I stammered, pulling back slightly into the pillows. "I didn't mean to."
"Don't stop," he whispered. It was a plea. A desperate, broken plea.
"What?"
"The noise," he said, his hand twitching on the bedspread, fingers curling into the silk as if trying to keep himself from reaching out. "It... it stopped the screaming."
I stared at him. "What screaming?"
He closed his eyes, his forehead furrowing in pain. He looked like he was fighting a war inside his own skull.
"The silence," he murmured. "It screams. It’s always screaming. Static. White noise. It never stops. For three centuries, Nerissa... it never stops."
He opened his eyes again. They were wet. Not with tears, but with the glassy sheen of fever.
"But when you hummed... it went quiet."
He leaned his forehead against the mattress, right beside my hand. He looked defeated. He looked small, despite his size.
"Just for a minute," he breathed. "It was quiet."
My hand hovered over his head. I wanted to touch his hair. It looked soft, black as ink. I wanted to comfort him.
I realized then what had happened. My subconscious hum hadn't just been for me. The bond between us had carried the sound straight into his veins. I had soothed myself, and in doing so, I had sedated him.
"Does it hurt?" I asked softly. "The bond?"
He let out a shaky breath. "It feels like burning alive. And freezing to death. At the same time."
"Then why come closer?" I asked. "If my voice is the curse... why are you kneeling here?"
He lifted his head. He looked at me with a terrifying intensity.
"Because the fire is better than the void," he said.
He reached out. His hand was trembling. He brushed his knuckles against my cheek.
"You have no idea what you are," he whispered. "You think you are just a girl with a loud voice. You think you are a victim."
His thumb traced my lower lip. His skin was ice, but it left a trail of heat.
"You are a narcotic," he confessed. "And I am overdosing."
The air in the room was thick, charged with a strange, dark electricity. It wasn't romantic. It was survival. It was two drowning people clinging to the same piece of driftwood.
"Go back to the chair, Klaus," I whispered. I was afraid. Not that he would hurt me, but that I would let him stay. That I would hum for him again.
He stared at me for a long moment, the conflict raging in his eyes.
He pulled his hand back. He straightened his spine. He stood up, towering over the bed once more, blocking out the dim light.
He smoothed his coat. He fixed his cuffs. He put the wall back up, brick by brick.
"Apologies," he said stiffly. His voice was flat again, the emotion excised with surgical precision. "I... lost focus."
"You need to sleep," I said.
"I need to guard the door," he corrected.
He turned and walked back to the chair. He sat down. He picked up the book.
But he didn't read.
I lay there, wide awake now, my skin tingling where he had touched me.
I watched him.
His hands were gripping the book so hard the leather cover was warping. His eyes were fixed on the far wall, unseeing.
And I realized, with a sudden, sinking dread, that Rook was right. Klaus wasn't drinking blood. He wasn't sleeping. He was slowly, methodically starving himself to death while holding the key to my cage.
And the only thing keeping him tethered to sanity was the very thing that was killing him.
Me.
I rolled over, facing the wall. I pulled the blanket up to my ears.
I didn't hum again. I was afraid to.
I closed my eyes, and for the rest of the night, I listened to the sound of him not breathing, and wondered which one of us was truly the prisoner.