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I kept still, hoping they could work this out. Maybe with me out of the way, they’d be less difficult. The reality was that no one could force Kase to do anything he didn’t wish to. He was too old and too stubborn. He could resist any of us, and if he was done, if he thought he was losing himself, he’d end his life before doing anything he couldn’t control.
The same fear that had gripped me each time I’d left him simmered inside me—the worry that I’d come back and find him gone.
“We need your help,” Troy said, his voice softer. “We need every damn one of us to even hope to survive this, to keep her safe.”
“So I’m supposed to live like this forever? Because if I feed from you again, it will only make this worse, only prolong the inevitable.”
“So? You won’t endure it for Ava?”
Silence met that question.
Was it even fair to ask that of him?
I passed the entry, tired of sitting on the sidelines for what seemed to be a conversation that revolved at least partly around me.
Kase turned his gaze my way, his veins impossibly darker, as if the disease had spread, and his cheeks were sunken in. “I should have guessed you’d be lurking about,” he said.
“If you weren’t in such bad shape, you’d have smelled her from the doorway.” Troy sat back, as if my arrival signaled the end of his part.
“I’m not going to try and force you to do anything.” I hated the words as I said them. I wanted to force him. I wanted to make it perfectly clear that Kase needed to feed, to beg him to use Troy, to demand it, but that wasn’t fair.
I knew how it felt to be forced into things, so I couldn’t do the same to him.
Troy rose and nodded, as if letting us know he’d allow us to talk in private but wouldn’t go far.
When he left, I took a spot beside Kase, ignoring the way he sat, rigid and distant.
“I thought you’d try to make me,” he admitted.
“I doubt it’d work if I did. Besides, it needs to be your choice, because even if I could force you, it would just postpone the inevitable.”
He leaned forward, his elbows going to his knees. “My maker was a monster. I’ve often heard that vampires simply live until they become one.”
“And you think feeding from Troy makes you one?” I tried to keep up with that line of thought, but I had to admit, I couldn’t connect the dots.
“I’ve fought a long time to not turn into what made me, to not give in to that. There have been times I thought it would be easier, times when I tired of existence. It drags on for those of us who have been here through so much. It presents a temptation like you wouldn’t believe, the desire to feelsomething, anything.”
“That’s not you.”
“Of course it is. I have that in me, and it is so near the surface at times. Feeding from a werewolf, from Troy, it teases a line I have refused to cross.”
“But that isn’t where the line is. If you attacked Troy, if you forced him,thatwould be crossing the line. If he’s offering, what’s wrong with that?”
Kase didn’t look at me. His gaze was across the room, locked on nothing. “Do you know how I met Gran?”
I shook my head. “I assumed it was at her shop?”
“No. I have known her since I was young. When I went to face the god killer I told you about, it was Gran who stopped me. You asked what happened when I faced the god killer, and I told you it was a story for another time. The reality is that I faced the god killer to die, but when it attacked, Gran stepped between us. She was the reason I didn’t die that night.”
I crossed my legs and turned toward him, even though he wasn’t looking my way. “What happened?”
“Gran told me it wasn’t my time. I was so tired, but she said I couldn’t give in yet, that I had things to wait for.”
“For Lilith?”
He shook his head. “For you. She said I had someone who would not be born for a very long time, that I needed to wait.”
I thought about that, about how many people had been touched by Gran, how many lives she’d shaped.
