Celeste said that. In the training room, when I was trying to push her away. She said controlling everything doesn't keep people alive. It just keeps them alone.
She was right. I've been alone for so long that I stopped noticing. Stopped feeling the weight of it. Built walls so high that no one could reach me, and told myself it was strength.
Then she appeared in that alley. Dying, defiant, insulting me with her last breaths. And something cracked.
I wanted to save her. Not for strategic reasons. Not because she was useful. I wanted to save her because she looked at me like I was a person, not a monster or a myth. Because she didn't beg. Because even facing death, she was still herself.
And I've been running from wanting her ever since.
I go to the bathroom and finally wash my hands. Watch the dried blood turn the water pink as it swirls down the drain. Their blood, the vampires I killed. I try to remember their faces and can't. They were just obstacles between me and Celeste. Just things that needed to be destroyed so I could reach her.
That's what frightens me most. Not the violence itself, but the complete absence of thought behind it. I didn't decide to kill them. I simply did, the way a predator kills prey, without hesitation or consideration or mercy.
Is that who I am beneath all the careful control? Just a monster wearing the mask of civilization?
Or is that who I become when someone threatens the people I care about?
I dry my hands and return to my chair. The fire has burned low, embers glowing orange in the darkness.
Tomorrow night, I'll face her. I'll tell her the truth, all of it. About the plan. About why I made the choice I made. About the fact that I killed six vampires instead of capturing them because seeing her hurt made me lose every shred of the control I've spent my whole existence building.
I'll tell her about the field duty restriction, and I'll be honest about why. Not because she's incapable, she proved tonight just how capable she is. But becauseI'mnot capable. Not of watching her walk into danger. Not of maintaining the cold detachment that command requires when she's the one at risk.
I'll tell her that I don't know how to do this. That I don't have a strategy for earning back trust I never deserved in the first place. That the great master tactician is completely lost when it comes to something as simple as being honest with someone he cares about.
Maybe it won't be enough. Maybe she'll never look at me the way she did before.
But at least I'll have given her the truth. And maybe that's where it has to start.
The first gray light of dawn creeps around the edges of the blackout curtains. I feel the pull toward dormancy.
I don't fight it. I let consciousness slip away.
My last thought before sleep takes me is her face. Not the betrayal. Not the anger.
The moment in my study when she leaned into my touch and looked at me like I might be worth believing in.
I don't know if I can earn that look again.
But I have to try.
Chapter
Fifteen
Iwake with the sunset, my body pulling me from dormancy the moment darkness falls.
For a moment, I don't remember where I am. The ceiling is wrong, too high, too white. The bed is too soft. The sheets smell like lavender and something antiseptic.
Then it all comes rushing back.
The alley. Six vampires emerging from shadows. The fight, brutal, desperate, knowing I was outmatched but refusing to go down easy. The bald one's hand around my throat, lifting me off my feet, the world starting to gray at the edges.
And then Maximus.
I close my eyes, and the memories sharpen. The sound of him arriving, not footsteps, just sudden violence, the bald vampire ripped away from me so fast I didn't see it happen. The screaming that wasn't mine. The wet, tearing sounds that I understood on some primal level without wanting to examine too closely.
Then silence. And him standing in the middle of it,surrounded by bodies, his eyes completely black and nothing human left in his expression.
