“Julian—”
I killed them. All four. It took eleven seconds.
Eleven seconds I didn’t have.
By the time I reached the concert hall, it was burning. Damien knelt in the street outside, cradling something gray and still. Something that had been Katya twenty minutes ago.
He looked up when I approached. His face was wet. Empty.
“I couldn’t reach her in time,” he said. “I was across the city. I couldn’t—”
Damien’s eyes found mine. Found the blood on my hands. Margaret’s scent on my coat.
His voice went flat. “You were close enough to save her, weren’t you?”
“Damien—”
“You chose her.” He stood. Katya’s ashes fell through his fingers. “You chose Margaret over Katya.”
“I didn’t know—”
“Is Margaret alive?”
“Yes. There wasn’t time—”
“There was time for you to save one of them.” He stepped back. “And you chose yours.”
“I’m sorry.” The words tasted like ash. “I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t respond. He just looked at me—his sire, his friend, the man who taught him what immortality meant—and I watched the last of the Damien I knew disappear.
“Damien, please—”
“Don’t.” He turned away. “Don’t say anything else.”
He walked into the burning night.
I didn’t hear from him again until he left me the note with Anya’s body.
I wake gasping.
The resort bedroom is dark. The ocean whispers through the window. Poppy sleeps beside me, her breathing steady.
I ease out of bed. Pull on clothes. Leave without waking her.
The beach is empty at dawn. Just me, the ocean, and what I did in 1878.
Damien sits on a piece of driftwood fifty meters down the shore. Far enough that a human wouldn’t notice him.
I leap over the balcony and walk toward him.
“Julian.” He stands. “I was beginning to think you’d make me wait another fifty years.”
“What do you want?”
“Direct. You were always direct.” He gestures to the water. “Beautiful morning. Not like Vienna. Do you remember the light in Vienna? The way it came through the concert hall windows before the fire ate them?”
“Every night.”
