Ember's eyes grew wide, and her head whipped around to take in her environment
Through her weak gaze and the weak flicker of her lashes, she beheld a very familiar environment. One she had recently abided in.
Despite the odd defect of her body and a sprained neck, she craned her neck, hoping for a better glimpse of the room.
It was then she noticed a figure perched on a single-seater sofa, his gaze focused on a newspaper, his brows pinched in concentration, and his other free hand held a teacup, sipping elegantly from it.
The Duke rested back on the sofa. His pupils danced around the newspaper as he read gracefully, and even if he had noticed her awakened state, he simply ignored it.
Besides, why was she there?
The last she remembered, she prepared to retire to bed. No, she had met with the Duke, and he prepared to climb over the window back to where he came from. Then, her world went blank.
What exactly happened?
She seeks answers.
Ember slowly sits up in the bed, minding her weak spine.
Why does her body feel so numb?
"Your Grace, what am I doing here?"
Her voice was hoarse as if she hadn't spoken for days, and they sounded so foreign. Something was certainly amiss.
"Are you awake, love? Did you sleep well?"
She disregarded the Duke's question, aiming for the necessary.
"How did I get here?"
The Duke sets the newspaper aside, sipping from his tea. He threw his oceanic, beautiful gaze her way.
"You walked in yourself."
What? She did that? But, how?
"Three days ago."
The Duke finished, emitting a loud gasp from Ember.
She attempts to jerk off the bed, but she falls into a failed attempt as her numb muscles fight back.
She sank back onto the mattress, mouth widened.
"D-do you jest? Three days?!"
Her voice cracked, and her tone shivered. Surely, she had hoped the Duke only jested, probably pulling her legs, and it was still midnight. Which meant she could still dash back home and catch her trip with her brothers back to Hadham.
She hoped to the heavens that her brothers hadn't possibly spent three days in search of her.
"Three days and nine hours, frankly. That is if you count the night you came sprinting into my house wet and smeared with blood."
This forces Ember's muscles to instantly get back to work. She jerks up, her jaw dropping in an instant.
She came to the Duke wet and bloody.
What in God's name had happened three nights back?
Was it the vampire again? Certainly. She would only be stupid to still reduce that to a silly question.
It was the vampire. And, he had erased her memory again, unlike his promise in the letter. Now, she goes to the big question - what had happened?
No. What had happened during all of her time spent with the vampire? What did he do to her? What had they discussed?
"But, fret not, you are safe with me."
The Duke concluded, placing his cup on the table before him, and it made a soft clank noise.
Maybe it was due to her head and its emptiness, but the clanking had echoed in her head, and it was the only noise that she heard over her fast, beating heart.
She wore an undergarment - she noticed - grey and silky. It scented rose, and a shampoo aroma she had once whiffed off the Duke.
She began scrambling around to find her dress, like a mad woman.
Indeed, she was.
No one would be fed with the information the Duke had just fed her and remained sane.
She ought to go mad.
"What are you doing?"
The Duke questioned calmly from his sitting position, watching her go on a rampage about something he was entirely clueless about.
Surely, he had hoped she would accept her fate and chose to remain with him.
"W-where are they?!"
"What?"
The Duke was gentle in his response, ignoring her yell. Probably because he expected and suspected that kind of reaction from her. Who wouldn't?
He just informed her that she had been missing for three days and she might have been in the hands of the vampire before she went missing.
"My dress! I have to go to my brothers."
Her anxious scrambling proceeded as the Duke watched her in his calm state.
"I put them away. I've sent the housekeeper to grab a new one from the modiste. She won't be here in about five hours."
Ember halted in her search, throwing a menacing gaze at the Duke.
"Please, get them back this minute, I need to find my brother."
"I won't."
The Duke responded sharply.
"You won't get my dress? You don't suppose I walk out in this undergarment, do you?"
The Duke adjusted in his position.
"No. I won't let you see them."
Ember scoffed, watching the Duke sit back and watch her calmly as if he hadn't just dumped the biggest horror of her life.
"Why is that?"
"You are safe with me, Ember. I will keep you safe."
"Well, I don't need your protection. I need to see my brothers and assure them that I'm quite alright."
She almost proceeded with her search when the Duke dumped another bombshell on her.
It wasn't intended, but it made Ember numb for the second time that graceful morning.
"They know you are. As we speak, Barrett plans to hold a funeral for you in a few hours."
Ember's lips parted, her face white in horror. She waited for the Duke to crack a smile or even a smirk and call it a joke, but his eyes were dead serious and icy as the ocean.
"Tell me you simply poke fun at me, please."
Tears found her gaze, watering and blurring it that she saw the Duke in a blurry state, sitting back on his chair and looking unbothered.
"I do not—" the Duke jerked to his feet, closing the space between them. "—poke fun at you. It is true. They believe you are dead. Barrett sent me an invite to your funeral ceremony."
What? Ember gazed back at the Duke, dumbfounded and gawking.
Duke Dallas places both his palms smoothly on either of Ember's cheeks, stroking it gently.
"It is over, my love. This is the perfect alibi you need. Now, we can proceed with our love without any care in the world."
Ember steps away from him, from his touch.
"N-no. I need to find Barrett. I can't have him grieve over another relative. I need to—"
Ember starts leaving, but Duke Dallas hurls her back, slamming her against his chest.
"You don't suppose I would let you leave, do you? That I would watch you slip away like you almost did the other time?"
She stared back at Duke Dallas, stunned. She hadn't seen him in this state. She almost couldn't believe he was the same charming Duke everyone regarded as meek and compliant.
"Did you tell them?"
She suddenly blurted, feeling almost irritated at the way his fingers caressed her.
When she realized the Duke hadn't gotten a hang of her question, she tried again; "Did you tell them? That the vampire took me?"
The Duke's silence, the darkening of his gaze, and the clenching of his jaw were answers enough.
She stepped away from his touch again. And, this time, he didn't reach out for her. He watched her step away, glaring at him.
"You did? How could you?!"
She didn't bother to figure out how he had discovered the vampire being after her. She didn't care. It was not the time to care.
"Oh, blame me for grasping at the last glimpse of opportunity! It was the only option I could sort out for her!"
"No, Brooklyn! It wasn't!"
Duke Dallas' gaze had softened at his middle name slipping through Ember, but she was far from realizing that. Other pressing matters were positioned before her.
"I freaking had a plan! I was going to tell them I was compromised by you right before the carriage took off! You should have let me handle it!"
"And, should I have trusted that silly plan of yours? Do you think Barrett would allow you to stay behind even after telling him that?"
Ember straightened.
"You speak as though you know him."
He stayed mute for a while, searching for a retort. He hadn't expected that discovery from Ember.
"Anyway, that was the safest option. If you leave now, I'd be forced to opt for the other one. And trust me, it'd make you hate me."
"What other one? Would you kill Viscount Bryne as you threatened?"
It was a mockery, and she had expected the Duke to clap back, explaining that he was the Duke and that even if he didn't have the power to kill Viscount Bryne, he could still do something else to hurt him.
But rather, the Duke had stayed silent to her interrogative question. He said nothing to debunk the fact that he would have killed Viscount Bryne if he wanted to.
Ember's gaze hardened.
"You wouldn't, right?"
He said nothing, no retort of any sort. And, when he finally found his words, there came a bang on the door.
"What is it?!"
He shouted over at the door.
"It is I, Your Grace. You are set for the funeral ceremony, I believe."
The Duke holds Ember in place before she starts moving.
"You are to remain here. My help would run a bath for you. As for this conversation, we are not done yet. When I'm back, we will continue where we left off. For now, see you later, my love."
He leans forward, presses a soft kiss on her forehead, swirls around, and heads out. To her freaking funeral ceremony.
Her funeral ceremony was being held while she was alive and well.
Ember fell back onto the mattress, screaming into the pillow in frustration.