It would have been proper to protest. To object. But in my mind’s eye, the water around me had turned to red. A monster stared back at me.Blood and blood and blood . . . if there were millions dead because of me, how many will I have drained dry?
The wood splintered as Raphael came in. Still, I didn’t turn to look at him.
He pressed a palm to my cheek. “Your skin is like ice.”
“That won’t kill me,” I whispered, barely making any sound. Vampires wouldn’t die of hypothermia.
Raphael withdrew his touch. “All the same.” A second later, a thick white towel was wrapped around my shoulders, my body. Raphael pulled me from the tub, covering me to protect the modesty I normally required, and held me against his chest. His own shirt was immediately soaked from contact.
“Talk to me, viper. What’s haunting you?”
“I killed a man, Raphael.” The words were heavy on my tongue.
“I know.” He clutched me more tightly, taking me back to bed. “It’s not easy.”
“It is for you.” How many had he killed? Could he even count that high? Hundreds, undoubtedly. Thousands, almost certainty. But not millions. Even he couldn’t have done that.
“It can be. I won’t lie to you, Samara. If I had been there to deal with him, I’d still be torturing the worm now until he begged for death. I would feel no remorse. Not when it comes to your safety.”
What did it say about me that Raphael’s dark promises consoled me? He called himself a monster, but what was I that I was no longer horrified by him? That I considered him . . . not a friend, not exactly, but someone safe.
Fool. I was a fool to let myself think that even for a moment.
The same violence could be turned on me. If he learned I was the necromancer. The same hands that tenderly held me would be turned on me. Would he mourn me if he had to be the one to kill me? I suspected he would.
My thoughts were far too distant.
“But that would have come from anger,” Raphael continued. “You didn’t kill because you were angry. You killed because you needed to survive.”
Raphael set me on the bed. I loosely held the towel in my fingers. There was a chill. I hadn’t felt it in the water, but now my entire body shook.
“Is that any better?” A man was still dead. A witch. It was fine for Raphael to kill, in a way. He was no stranger to it, had no obligation.
But I’d been born from a goddess’s will to protect witches. Not to kill them.
I let him help me into a shirt, placing it over me. A hint of his scent still clung to it. The shaking didn’t stop, but it paused for a moment as I breathed it in.
“There’s no better, Samara. Life isn’t that simple.”
Life hadfeltsimpler before. Witches were good, vampires evil. The grimoire’s influence had cemented that belief—certainty I was right, that vampires like the librarian turning to dust was nothing to hesitate over. But this had been all me. My killing another witch.
“It’s okay to be conflicted over what happened. If you hadn’t defended yourself, you wouldn’t be here to grieve.” He clasped my palms in his own, kneeling before the bed so I was forced to look him in the eye. My skin began to leach some of the warmth from him, my awareness centering on that point of contact as his words refracted in my mind.
“Do you think it’s pathetic? To grieve someone who wanted to hurt me?”
“No.” He pressed more tightly against me. “I think part of that grief is for who you saw yourself as. As someone who wouldn’t use her fangs to defend herself. As someone who was a victim. Someone who would never have the power to fight back, and now you can, and have to deal with its consequences.”
His words jolted through the fog like lightning through gray clouds. “Are those my only choices? Victim or killer? Do I have to become a monster to survive them?”
“Sometimes we’re forced to choose. Sometimes we forget we ever had a choice. But you always do, Samara, and you made the right call. You can hate that you had to do it at all, but hate the witch who forced you into that situation. If it makes you feel better, you can hate me for bringing you here. Or for the fact that if you hadn’t killed him, I would have. And he would’ve suffered ten times over for that.”
There was a logic to the words, a truth. But I’d been the one to drain Ferro. No one else.
He let go of my hands, a gentle caress as his fingers slipped away. “Let me be the monster for you, Samara. I’ve met many of them, and you aren’t one.”
“But what if I become one? Is that what it takes to be a survivor?”
“You won’t. The years will make you harder, stronger, more ruthless. But they won’t make you a monster.”
