I ripped his head from his shoulders.
When it was over, I felt nothing. Just silence. Something that had been very loud for a very long time, gone quiet all at once. I pulled the ring off what was left of his hand.
It was the first moment since my life was stolen that something had returned to its correct position.
I wore it for nearly four and a half centuries after that.
I put it on a chain at her throat. She took it. She wore it. Every vampire who saw it knew what it meant.
Konstantin has it now. She couldn’t stop him, and I was dormant. I turn from the window. I sit down.
The chair is exactly what this apartment is. Built for use and nothing more. The compound started that way, too, but it became more than that. People living, working, and making decisions that matter. I called it headquarters, not home. Operational infrastructure.
At some point, it became both.
She’s there right now.
Her end of the bond is heavy and still.
I keep thinking about how every dusk, I reached for her in the dark, and she was there. But she had already been outside. Had already come back. Was already lying still beside me, pretending.
And I didn’t know.Why didn’t the security team catch it?It was something I would need to look into.
She made decisions about us without me. The only reason I found out was because Konstantin was in those woods.
That’s what I can’t reconcile. How many more days was she going to hide it?
She carries her burdens alone. She has to see that. Yet she keeps doing it anyway. And I’ve been letting her, standing still and calling it patience.
I don’t wait. I’ve never waited. I built this territory through forward movement and the willingness to commit. I claimed her. I gave her my father’s ring.
The ring will come back. I’ve killed for it once. I’ll do it again.
What matters is her. The mistake comes from something old in her, and we are going to have to work through it together. Which means staying. Which means going back.
That doesn’t change because it gets difficult.
Dawn presses in. The sun rises. I feel it through the walls, the shift in pressure that every vampire senses, whether they see the light or not.
I lie down and look at the ceiling.
My last thought is of the chain on the nightstand.
I surface hours before dusk.
I feel the shift toward evening, but the sun hasn’t set.
I lie still. Feel for her.
She’s awake. That’s all I get from this distance.
I wait for sunset.
She’s immune to dormancy. Whatever Konstantin built into her, whatever the bond is doing to me, morning by morning, I’m becoming resistant too. She walks in sunlight, and I lie in the dark waiting for it to pass.
The sun sets.
There’s a knock at the door twenty minutes later. Kyle. Marcellus must have sent him. We take the drive back to the compound and the gates come into view.
