Page 1 of We Were Eternal Once

Prologue – Cologne, Present Day

There you are.

I would know you in any crowd. You are the most ruinous of beauty, the most venomous of vipers. Yours is the first face I remember, and the last thought before I sleep. Even now, centuries later, after your love soured and turned to rot in my mouth, I seek you out.

You cannot run from me, just as I cannot forget you.

“It’s amazing what humans can do,” you say, your voice nearly lost on the raw winter wind. The clouds overhead churn, thick with the promise of flurries that will melt before they touch the ground.

You don’t look at me.

That will make it easier to kill you.

“Last time we were here, she was a ruin,” you say. A pale hand extends from your coat, resting on the dark stone structure. It’s delicate, deferent—a touch of affection for a building.

But you’ve always been sentimental about broken things. You like to be the one to fix, to see the potential, to mold and mesh into a design of your favor. If only the world was made in the image of you and your whims and not the silent god the building was built to worship.

“I was never here with you,” I say. I didn’t mean to speak. I didn’t mean to listen to you, because I know how your words twist and fog the mind. Even now, centuries removed from your poisonous influence, you are my guiding star. I am not the stupid girl in the temple, or in the streets of Paris, or any of the other times you destroyed me so you could remake me into something unrecognizable.

I am not her I am no longer her I am me me me me

“Hmm,” you say, your red eyes cast to the city below. Humans scatter in the streets, coats drawn up against the biting evening cold. Even this high up, I can hear their shuttering breaths and mumbled curses. If I focused, I could hear their heartbeats.

But I don’t need a distraction.

Your fingers trace the stone as they used to trace my cheek—slow, comforting. Hush now, you’re safe.

I am no longer on the rooftop of the Dom Cathedral—I am in your arms, I am in Greece, I am in Rome, I am raging, crying, screaming, loving.

I shake my head to clear it. Get out, I will you. As if you were a silly thought or an errant memory, and not written into the very code of my being. As if you are not my maker, my savior, my damnation. My everything.

And in the end, I was nothing to you.

“Melinoë,” you say, and I close my eyes to block out the words.

“That’s not my name,” I say, my voice a tremor. “That is the name you gave me when you stole my life.” I have to get it out, I have to say it. I meant to come and to kill, to end us both at last. I’ve said too much, but I can’t keep it in any longer.

It’s festered in me. I am gangrenous with hatred and truth and secrets, all because of you. Your death will carve it from me and I can heal at last.

I deserve that.

You deserve this.

“Stole?” you ask, and at last you glance at me. Your profile is exquisite, made all the sharper by the fragment of moon through the clouds. The aquiline nose, the sharp cheekbones, the straight blonde hair. My fingers twitch at my side, replaying all the times they’ve journeyed over your face. I could map you from memory. I could draw you blind and senseless. I know you more intimately than I know myself.

I did. Long ago. Not now.

I am not Melinoë.

I bite my tongue until copper fills my mouth. I will not let you talk me out of this.

“Ah, I see,” you say, your gaze raking over my body. It does not stop on the wooden stake in my hand, does not fixate on the weapon I don’t bother to hide. Instead you dissect me, cutting through each layer of my clothes, my soul, seeing me as plainly as if I’d confessed my intentions.

You do see, that has always been the problem. You’ve seen what lies beneath, what haunts me, and it became your weapon.

You turn in a flourish, your coat spiraling around you like a great spinning top. Your back rests against the stone pillars of the cathedral, one leg cocked to rest against it.

Your cavalier attitude infuriates me.