“What else did you see?” I ask, attempting to steer her thoughts away from the worst day of my life. She pulls out of my arms slightly and wipes the remaining wetness from her cheeks away. I lean against the foot of her bed, and she sits with her knees tucked to her chest, facing me.
“It was awful,” she finally says. “It felt like I was trapped underwater. It was so dark. I couldn’t breathe. All around me, demons and monsters circled and lunged for me. There was…a woman dressed in tattered robes and a broken headdress. In between the rips of the fabric, I saw rotting flesh. Maggots falling from her eyes. She reached out and pulled me away from the monsters. She pulled me close and wept as she stuck a silver dagger through my chest. I fell to the ground, but the ground wasn’t there. I was falling and falling into a void with no end until I finally landed and saw you. I…I tried to call for you. I asked for your help, but you couldn’t hear me. You were holding that woman and crying.”
Something compels me to take her hand in mine. She lets me line up our palms. “Are you okay?”
She nods. “I think so.”
We both observe where our hands are touching, and then she asks, “What are these markings?”
My hand, wrist, and forearm are covered in black swirls, extending from my forefinger to my elbow. The intricate patterns take me back to a time in my life centuries ago that I’ve spent so long wishing I could forget.
I sigh. “They’re the sign of…a broken promise.”
She huffs in frustration. “You’re not good at giving straight answers.”
“Well if I told you all my secrets, they wouldn’t very much be secrets anymore would they?” I tease before my face falls. “I have a lot of them, Adelasia. A millennium’s worth.”
“Keeping your pain bottled up inside isn’t the same as having secrets. It just means you’re suffering alone.”
She’s right. Of course, she is. She’s more observant and empathetic than she has any right to be. I expected her to be half-witted and frightened, but she stood up for herself and others and asked questions where anyone else would have cowered. She even stood up to Dravon and lived to tell the tale. That alone is an extraordinary feat.
I envy her; to be so needed without even knowing why. A feeling of guilt settles heavy in my chest and I hate it. I’ve waited over a thousand years to find her, guilt should be nowhere on the list of emotions I have.
“Was she a lover?” Adelasia asks.
My sorrowful thoughts pause as my brow furrows. “What?”
“The woman you were holding…was she a lover?”
I sigh and place my hand at my side. “No. But I did love her.”
“I’m very sorry. I’ve known the pain of losing someone you love, too. And I know it never gets any easier.”
“Did you lose a lover?”
“No. My father and brother. My brother was a free spirit. Where I enjoyed the vanity and attention of being on the stage, he was more in touch with his wild side. He always wanted to be outdoors. He would wade through the forests barefoot, and come back covered in dirt. My mom would always get so upset when he would trek mud into the house. He had an eye for fruits and mushrooms and could always tell which ones were safe to eat and which were poisonous. He was only two years younger than me and made a decent living foraging for the merchants in the marketplace. My father would go out into the forests with him and hunt wild game. They were chased and mauled by werebeasts, left to die in the streets of my town. My father was already dead, but I was holding my brother when he died. I’ve never forgotten the way it broke me to feel him exhale only to never inhale again.”
“Werebeasts, not vampires?” I ask. “Then why do you hate vampires so much?”
“I hatealldemons. They were created only to bring humans misery, and that’s certainly all they’ve ever caused me.”
My shoulders sag, and for the first time in a long time, I feel vulnerable. “I feel the same, you know.”
To my shock, she reaches forward to place her hand over mine. “You never wanted to be a vampire.”
She’s so smart. It doesn’t surprise me that she came to that conclusion so quickly. I tilt my chin down slightly. “I was cursed.”
My eyes close and I find myself soaking in the feeling of her warm skin touching mine so softly. Her thumb lightly brushes across my knuckles. I haven’t felt something so tender from a human in a long time, and never would have expected it from her.
“It was my mother,” I say quietly.
Her thumb stops stroking along my hand. I feel the new rigidity in her body. I feel her slipping away again, ready to damn me and call me a monster.
“She was my first victim. I was newly changed and had no understanding of what I had become. I felt…sick. Shaky and feverish. Hungry yet nauseous. This was long before modern medicine had become common practice…when a fever easily meant death. I went to my mother for help because I was terrified. She took one look at me and knew something was wrong. I fell into her arms and my head landed in the crook of her neck…and I felt her blood pulsing through her skin. I could smell it. I could taste it in the air. I didn’t even know what I was doing when I sunk my teeth into her neck.”
I feel an uncomfortable burning sensation behind my eyes and a pain in my chest, built on guilt and anger and regret.
“She was dead and cold in my arms before I even came to my senses and realized what I had done. If killing her wasn’t bad enough…the state I left her body in was horrific. Her throat was ripped open. Her nails were broken and bloody from trying to claw at me to get me to stop. She had bald spots in her hair from when I grabbed it so tight to keep her head still that I ripped it clean out of her scalp. Her lifeless eyes were filled with shock and betrayal.”
