Free Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence by A.M Hudson

from their fold. This was the turning point—the moment in our conversation that I let him think he’s just swayed me into staying. That way, it’s his idea; not mine.
    “If you do not feel safe here, with me, I will take you somewhere else,” he said, approaching me like a drover to a wild horse. “But for the love of God, child, do not walk. Let me get the car.”
    I looked back at the castle. From out here I could see how the thick, wildly grown pines formed a foreboding border between Drake’s property and the human world—see the other clock tower and all four quadrants, each as long as the other, joined at the corners by square towers. There were smaller buildings dotted randomly around the grounds and even a few stables along a wide fenced paddock with horses and sheep. And in all its rolling green beauty, above the mysterious placement of the forest and the wonder of the unknown beyond the castle walls, or the fact that there were so many people walking its grounds, the only question that came to my mind was, “What are the sheep for?”
    Drake laughed. “Pardon me?”
    “The sheep.” I pointed to the paddock.
    “Oh.” He frowned at it then looked back at me. “To eat.”
    “But you’re all vampire. Who here eats?”
    Very slowly, like a timid child, he put his hand up, and he looked so human and so normal that I laughed.
    “You eat?”
    “I may be vampire, Amara, but I am also an original and, so, very human—just like you. A condition inherited, unfortunately, from my father.”
    His father?
    It hit me then, sinking through me like worry. I had always known Vampirie was Drake’s father, but to hear it in those words—to hear us all likened to one another in the same sentence—the truth took on a new meaning. His father. My dad was his biological father.
    And that was it, wasn’t it? The truth, cold and hard and staring right at me: Vampirie was an original too. He’d loved and cared for others before me—for centuries before me. I was not, nor would I ever be his only priority, because he loved Drake as much as he’d loved Morgana. And above all, he saw the absolute and vital need to protect the human race: which is why he would not want Anandene alive—why he would keep the soul of Lilith from Drake for centuries and why he would refuse to put my soul into this child. It wasn’t worth the risk to him. Not to have all this repeat itself again and again.
    I suddenly felt very alone.
    “Perhaps you would like to eat,” Drake suggested. “Then take a short tour around the castle—and David’s old chambers. Who knows?” he added with a very modern, youthful shrug. “You might even decide to stay.”
    “Fine.” I shoved past him, with my nose slightly tilted to the air. “But only because I’m hungry.”
    “You and me both,” he said, following me from a safe five paces behind.
     
    ***
     
    Pointed arches stole my eyes upward to the highest point of the entrance hall, and almost as quickly the gothic twin staircase led my mind ahead of my body to a brilliantly lit second floor—the giant windows trapping the greyish sunlight and splashing it in wide columns at odd angles across the chequered tiles.
    While the History student in me had imagined grey cobblestones and wooden fixtures, I was quite surprised to find exposed oak beams crowning pure white walls, and the rather pleasant and homely smell of smoke lingering along the draughts. Ancient coats of arms, swords, and shields proudly marked their place in the castle, and as Drake led me up the staircase I stopped and stared down the hall of shining knight’s armour, guarding both sides of the corridor.
    “I’ll show you to the drawing room,” Drake said, his voice small in the large surrounds, prompting me out of my pause. “We can eat, then I’ll give you a tour.”
    “I’d like that,” I said, a little distracted by it all. None of it was what I expected; the brushed red carpet under our feet, and every other surface