Chapter 136: Within reach

In Sexton, Ruelle quickly pulled her hand back to her chest with a deep flush spreading across her cheeks and her eyes widened in stunned silence. The place where his tongue had brushed along her finger still tingled, a strange warmth travelling from her hand up her arm and settling somewhere beneath her ribs.

“I—I gave you the fruit to eat…” her voice came out unsteady as they left her lips.

Lucian, however, looked entirely unaffected. He leaned back against the chair with calm ease, as though nothing unusual had occurred.

“I know,” he answered. For a fleeting moment, she thought she saw something shift at the corner of his mouth. His eyes did not leave her as he spoke again, his voice low, “It wasn’t the fruit I wanted.”

Her heart almost tumbled at his words.

Was Lucian trying to kill her today? He was telling things she would have never imagined him speaking. But then she remembered how he liked to ace his classes, and she could only imagine that the pureblooded vampire was a master in seduction techniques.

Ruelle quickly gulped down the strawberries before placing the used plates back into the trolley and placing it outside the room for them to be picked up.

When it was time to sleep, she climbed on the bed in time to catch Lucian taking the other side of the bed too. Her heart began to thud in her chest and he heard it loud and clear.

“Whatever you are imagining is not going to happen tonight,” Lucian remarked, pulling the covers, and he jerked his head to the bed. “You need sleep. Get in.”

“I wasn’t imagining anything improper,” Ruelle defended herself as she carefully lay on her side and a moment later, she felt the blanket shift. Lucian pulled it up slightly, covering her shoulder properly so the night air would not reach her and the gesture made her toes curl. “Thank you.”

He gave her a nod.

Ruelle watched his hands return to his side before he moved away from her and walked to the other side of the bed. The mattress dipped slightly as he lay down on his back, one arm resting beside him and the other lifting slowly into the air.

For a moment, she did not understand what he was doing. But then with an almost careless motion of his fingers, the flames in the candles faded instantly, letting shadows grow longer in the room.

“How did you do that?” Ruelle asked in awe. “Is it the corruption?”

“Yes,” Lucian answered. “Dane did a lot of things while trying to fix my corruption, and he didn’t write down what he did. It was like cooking and adding ingredients as he wanted.”

“Your corruption is very impressive, Lucian,” Ruelle murmured softly and she caught a slight smile on his lips.

“Most people find it unsettling,” Lucian turned his head to her side so that he could gaze at her.

Usually corruption in vampires was feared among humans, not that the other vampires didn’t worry about it. As a bite from a corrupted vampire was like spreading disease. But Lucian’s corruption wasn’t like it.

“You are kinder than the ones whose hearts are not corrupted,” Ruelle stated, her voice soft. “You only hurt people when you have a reason. If you wanted to hurt me, you would have done it long ago. No?” A small smile appeared on her lips while her eyes began to grow heavy.

Lucian did not respond immediately. He simply looked at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. His voice was serious when he spoke,

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew the things I’ve done.”

“I know some of the things you have done,” Ruelle said softly. To live with something that didn’t entirely belong to the person was hard. “You have killed people, but it was to end something, not start it. And when you hurt someone…it is to make sure they never hurt anyone again. They are all very reason…able,” she gave a nod to herself as if agreeing to all her points with her eyes closed.

Lucian wondered how she would look at him when she would learn that he had burned down her house. It had seemed like the simplest way to erase the memories of pain that she had lived around those walls.

“…sonable…” a small murmur escaped from Ruelle’s lips as her heart steadied behind ribs.

As the hours of the night continued, the wind outside was relentless as it shook everything that stood in its way. The windows of the room shook strongly, while Ruelle continued to sleep.

But the young woman’s subconscious mind was steered to the darker parts of her memory while borrowing what occurred in the evening.

Ruelle walked into a house that she was unfamiliar with. She followed the carpet trail until a man suddenly appeared before her with a sharp wooden log in his hand. His lips moved but she couldn’t hear what he was saying over the screams that erupted from outside.

’What do you want?” she asked him.

The man chuckled. “I am here for you,” before he began chasing her and she ran as fast as she could, but for some reason she didn’t get too far. And the next moment, she found herself sitting on the floor.

When she turned her head, she caught sight of a fairly elderly-looking, dead woman leaning against the wall and not far from her was the man who had been chasing her. The woman seemed familiar, and Ruelle carefully inched closer but the moment she moved closer, the dead woman’s eyes snapped open and she screamed, ’RUELLE!’

Back in the quiet room, Lucian lay awake when he heard Ruelle’s breathing quicken. It had grown shallow as though she were running somewhere in her dreams.

He noticed her eyebrows drawn and every few breaths, a small, almost soundless strain left her throat as if she were trying not to cry out.

He moved, reaching out and placing his cold hand against the side of her face. A small, inaudible gasp escaped her lips at the sudden chill, but the tension in her face eased almost immediately, as though the cold had pulled her out of whatever nightmare had been chasing her.

Her breathing began to slow.

Lucian did not move his hand away immediately. He left it there for a few seconds longer, watching as her face relaxed and the faint crease between her brows disappeared.

Only when he was sure she was sleeping peacefully again did he withdraw his hand before falling asleep to the lullaby of her heart.

By morning, before the windows and doors were opened, a thin layer of snow had settled over the ground and the rooftops, and the air had turned colder. Ruelle stirred slowly, her eyes moving beneath her eyelids as sleep began to loosen its hold on her. She pried her eyes open, her vision still blurred with the last traces of sleep.

Then she froze, noticing Lucian’s face inches away from hers, and his red-wine eyes were already looking at her. She noticed him part his lips and he uttered, “Just like a caterpillar.”

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