“Well, your mother is a cunt.”
I took a sip of my drink, holding it out in cheers. “On that, we agree.”
We were silent, the only sound a soft crackle of burning wood. Jasper meant well—I knew that—but there were no words to adequately express the depth of my despair. It mattered not. He would remain by my side, even if I refused to speak.
Out of every person in my life, he was my constant. He had been the only one to see the darkness I kept at bay and not balk. I should have listened when he told me to let Calia in, but I had been too scared.
Calia had been my soul—the very breath of life I never knew I was missing. In our short time together, she had begun breakingthrough the walls I had built around my heart clawing at them with her bare hands until she could offer an outstretched hand. I had forgotten what it felt like to allow that level of vulnerability, to know the comfort of physical touch that was not just a distraction from my past and the bleak outlook of my future.
But now I understood what I had been missing all this time, and the thought of returning to the life I had been living before terrified me.
“This isn’t what she’d want, you know,” Jasper whispered. “She’d be furious if she saw you right now, wasting away in your self-pity. It doesn’t matter what happened at the end of the day; the kind of love she had for you doesn’t go away. It doesn’t vanish. That kind of love?—”
“Does not exist,” I said, closing my eyes against the onslaught of memories which plagued me. The way she smiled, the way she laughed, the way she came with her sweet heat wrapped around my cock. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever encountered, and all that beauty slipped through my fingers like silk.
“That’s bullshit,” he shot back, leaning forward as his foot bounced ceaselessly. Jasper was shit at hiding his thoughts and emotions. If his face did not give him away, his body language would. I refused to look into his mind, regardless. “You’re using her death as an excuse to punish yourself for every shameful deed you’ve ever committed. This is about more than Calia. Her death has brought back memories of Corvina, too.”
I said nothing, clenching my jaw to stop the verbal lashing I wanted to give my best friend. Even if he was right, I could not admit it—not out loud.
Corvina’s death still weighed heavily on my soul. There were nights I woke up in a cold sweat, fingers clutching my sheets, reminiscent of how I had grasped her body to mine when I took her blood. I refused to let go, consumed by a medley of overly heightened emotions that refused to dissipate.
There had been a time when I thought I loved her, and perhaps some part of me had, but it was nothing close to what I had felt with Calia. In fact, the comparison was almost laughable.
Corvina and I had tried our hardest to make the best out of our situation, and for twenty years, we had succeeded. We were comfortable—happy, even. I would go as far as to say she and I were nearly as close as Jasper and I. Her companionship was invaluable, but the romantic aspect of our arrangement had often felt forced. Though neither of us truly knew if the other was who we wanted, we had no choice but to fulfill our duty to the curse.
While I could not speak for her, I knew I had never truly felt the tender caress of love. Not in the way I craved it. Perhaps that was why I allowed the lie to continue instead of accepting our reality for what it was.
Complacency.
But her death had always lingered like a stain on my very soul. I had known about my mother’s plans to break the curse, and while Corvina had eagerly agreed to help however she could, I had been more hesitant. Not that I did not wish to finally feel the sun’s warmth on my skin, but because some internal twinge told me it would not work.
Despite my unease, both women insisted. And when I had taken that first pull of her blood, I had felt how wrong it was. Yet no matter how hard I tried to disentangle myself from her, I could not stop. I took and took until all that remained was the husk of a body I had once known intimately.
Even through my hazy memories, I recalled the look of sheer terror on her face as she fought and clawed at my skin, how she had screamed for help and no one had come, and the panicked way she thrust a blade through my chest in a last-ditch effort to stop my frenzy.
Nothing had worked.
“You can’t let guilt rule your life, Rion. Gods above, man, it’s been nearly seventy years?—”
“Is that supposed to assuage my conscience? To know that I caused an innocent woman’s death? One that I once considered a friend?” I shook my head, pushing to my feet. The world tilted slightly, and I fought to keep my rising panic at bay as I caught myself on the fireplace mantle. “I should have been truthful to Calia from the beginning—I should have sat her down and told her every little fucking thing. But I let fear rule my actions, keeping her at arm’s length instead of showing her the darkest parts of me.”
Jasper was quiet momentarily, allowing the gravity of my words to fall heavy between us. “Why didn’t you?”
That was the question, was it not? Because it truly would have been so simple. Thinking back on all the things I could change—it was staggering to know that if I had just been honest from the beginning, I could still hold her in my arms now. My mother would not have been able to use my secrets against me to force Calia’s hand. And even if she wanted nothing to do with me, she still could have been alive.
But I was weak—terrified of losing something I knew was precious from the moment I saw her. There was something powerful about Calia—something she was oblivious to exuding.
I was immediately enamored by her.
“Because I assumed the worst of her instead of giving her the grace she was clearly attempting to show me.” I turned toward my best friend. His eyebrows were drawn tight, lips down-turned in a deep frown. “I assumed I was not worth loving—or fuck, even knowing—because of the secrets I kept locked behind a vault door in my mind. Opening that? It would have killed me, Jasper. I am a coward, unable to face the consequences of my actions, and that has cost me everything.”
His eyes softened, pity shrouding his gaze as he fought to find the words to soothe a troubled soul. But none held that power.
Instead, he reached forward and grabbed the bottle from the floor, uncorking it and filling my glass before pulling his own from the bar cart nearby. He thrust it into my hand when both were filled to the brim. “I’ll only say this,” he said, watching the flames dance through the amber liquid. “Find a purpose. Don’t let Calia’s death be in vain. Ensure that no matter what happens from here, there is meaning behind her sacrifice.”
CHAPTER THREE
The next morning, I awoke with a scream as a torrential downpour of ice water landed on my face. I sat up, startled by a wisp of a woman standing over me with a now empty bucket. Her blonde hair was tied back, piercing eyes staring down at me as she scowled. Jasper’s scream came next as she reached down for a second bucket I had not seen and threw it over his sleeping body lying draped over my sofa.
