Page 111 of We Were Eternal Once

My memory starts to pulse, to fade. The edges of it go black.

“You were born on this altar. I fed of you, you fed of me, and you became eternal. We are eternal.”

My head swims and I sway, ready to collapse.

“Come, the sun will rise soon.”

“I took too much of your memory, but what were you? Not human, not yet made. It broke my heart to see you so upset, to have your first memory of this life so horrible. So I took it.”

My mind reels, the holes filling in once more. That time is no longer a patchwork of memories, but a linear moment. A beginning and end.

“How dare⁠—”

“Remember Alexandria.”

I rise just as the sun sets to find I am alone.

Where are you? I’ve never awoken without you. You are always here, the first and last thing I see. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

You slip into the room, the door closing quietly, and freeze when you see I am sitting upright.

“Where were you?” I ask.

“Fixing something,” you say, kneeling next to me in the grave.

“Fixing something?” I ask. “What?”

“A mistake I repeated, a mistake I said I would never make again. I will tell you one day of the cost of being elevated to a god.” You lift your hand to brush my hair from my face. The back of your hand is burnt, leathery from the sun.

“Aletheia!” I cry, grasping your hand to turn it over. “What happened?”

You lean forward and kiss my forehead. “There is only you and I, psiche mou. You are my moon and my stars, you are my past and my future. You are my greatest creation. Every time I forget that, I suffer. I will not have you suffer with me.”

This close, you smell of dirt and something sharp, something acrid. There is dirt all over your dress.

“Go to sleep,” you say, and my eyes grow heavy. “And forget you woke without me.”

“This next one will hurt.”

“What else have you taken from me? What other memories have you stolen?”

“This will hurt,” you say again.

“I am no child.”

“Remember Paris.”

Today I will meet Zora and turn her to a vampyr.

I have made my decision. I will drain her until she is too weak to fight me, and then I will tell her the truth of it all. What it means to be one of us, what her life could be like. Her strengths, her weaknesses. I will tell her the truth of it all, and once she knows, she can make a decision.

If she says yes, I will complete the transformation.

If she says no, I will kill her.

It will hurt. I do not want to kill Zora, but it is the only way to keep us alive. I cannot compel her, she is immune. So I must dispose of her, find a way to keep her from hunting us down. If this is a ruse, it is a practiced one.

I must be cleverer than her.