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My mind was a storm, but in the eye of it I sensed that the name brought me comfort. It warmed my insides. Cooled my throat like the gulp of ice water. The name, it calmed me.
I opened my mouth, lips moving in the shape of the name. Again, I tried to force the word out.
“M… ari… us.”
“Not in the sense that I have long des—” The voice spluttered to a stop. It happened quickly that I felt as though I had simply stopped listening. But I sensed the presence, its closeness to me as something joined the dark around me.
One moment I was alone, the nexthewas with me, weight shifting the coffin, forcing my body to shuffle to the side; the wood creaked in warning, threatening to break beneath the sudden presence beside me.
“Jak.” Hands reached for my face and could I do nothing to push them away. Then a face materialised through the shadows and my entire being melted into his touch.Marius. Looking into his ruby stare brought everything back. I spluttered for breath, crashing through the hazy surface into the world of reality.
Marius. His eyes did not stop searching my face as though he had lost something and still longed to find it. His hands took a hold of mine with such urgency and squeezed, anchoring me to him, as though some strange wind would come and simply blow me away.
“You…” I forced out, swallowing to try and lubricate my throat enough to speak. “Found me.”
I closed my eyes and relaxed into his hands as he cupped both my cheeks. When he replied his voice cracked, and I was certain a splash of wetness clashed against my chin. “You were never lost. Only misplaced for a moment.”
He was different, his touch no longer cold. He just felt… normal.
“You are different…” I said, my voice no more than a rasped whisper.
“No, Jak.” Marius’s eyes misted, his thumb brushing my cheek as though it was a petal. “You are the one that has changed. I am sorry for what I have done. It was selfish not to let you go, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t not try.”
He spoke so fast it was close to impossible to truly take in his words. I scrunched my face and sighed. “What happened, Marius?”
He leaned in, closing the space between us and placed a kiss upon my forehead. A shiver raced down my spine at the touch. He pulled away as he retorted, “What do you remember?”
I blinked, looking into the shadows beyond him. The feeling was like unlocking a gate that had been kept closed, his questioning was the key that unlocked it.
And the memories, the pain, the truth… It all returned.
“She killed me. My mother, my own blood, killed me.”
I stared deeply into Marius’s gaze, remembering how he had violently winced as the blade sliced across my throat. It was the last thing I could remember before the cold, endless nothingness.
“I am sorry, Jak,” Marius murmured, looking down at his hands that now threaded my own and held them. “For everything.”
“How… I mean… what happened? I died and… no, Marius, this is too much.” The pain in my gut, my jaw, my head, all exploded in one large crash. It rocked my core from the inside. If it was not for his hold my hands would have shook where they lay.
“I watched you die. And I acted upon selfish desperation. I took your choice away from you and made you… this. I made you, turned you like…”
“You.” My word was as sharp as a blade. “You turned me, to keep me alive?”
“Jak,” he sighed, sorrow and guilt rolling off him in battering waves. “You are not alive, and nor am I. You are… eternal.”
* * *
Marius was wrong.He had not taken my choice away from me. My mother had. He simply had reinstated what she tried to steal from me.
Life.
Not in the sense of how I had it before. Now my life was different. Never-ending like the man whom had provided me with a second chance.
Night swelled around us as we stood at the boundary of the castle, my hand in Marius’s as we both looked down over Darkmourn far below. Not a single home was without light. Perhaps they prepared to come for us, or they knew what was coming for them. My stomach jolted at the promise of what waited within those homes, what pumped within their fine, pathetic, disposal veins.
Katharine waited far behind us, but the nightly wind blew her scent my way. The smell of her sweet, delicious blood. I longed for it. But she was off limits. Marius had said so when she finally burst into his chamber in the bellies of the now ruined castle. I had nearly thrown myself from the coffin in desperation to… feed.
That was what Marius had explained, lending me a sip of his blood that only curbed the desperation enough for me not to rip her throat out.
