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I moaned into his neck; lips smudged with blood. My tongue lapped against his slick skin as though I was a cat drinking cream from a bowl. It was glorious. The more I consumed of him, the more soothed I became.
“Darling,” Faenir spoke finally. It could have been seconds or hours since I had first clamped my jaw around Gildir’s soft neck. Time was pointless, a silly concept that meant little to me now. “That will be enough.”
A strange, unwanted feeling crept into my consciousness. Was it guilt? Disgust… no. It couldn’t be when his blood was so holy. So beautiful.
“Arlo,” Faenir said again, this time his voice harsher. More commanding. The shadows that spread around him shrunk with each passing moment.
Reluctantly, I withdrew my teeth from Gildir’s neck. He groaned, sounding more pleasured than pained. I could only imagine what Faenir saw. My lips were coated with dripping red gore, my chin and chest covered with my ravenous urgency.
“Abomination!” someone cried.
I cared little for the speaker. Words could not hurt me now. Faenir’s lip curled above his straight teeth in reaction.
“Your light.” Faenir reached out his fingers, toying with something unseen an inch beyond the skin of my arms. “It has gone.”
“Because I am dead,” I replied, mouth watering as the copper tang of blood teased my nose. My meal still waited, unmoving and spellbound, in my arms.
“That I can see.”
I searched his expression for revulsion. There was none to find. Even I was oddly calm with the deep-rooted understanding of what I had become. I did not fear myself or give room to contemplate just what I was doing to Gildir. It simply felt right. Just.
“Why did you not tell me of your sickness?” Faenir asked.
I dropped my gaze downward, suddenly feeling the creeping of emotion flood back into my chest—my empty, still chest. “I cared for you enough to hide the truth. I did not wish to watch you break if you lost me…”
Faenir pondered that, eyes glazed over in deep thought. He was silent for a long moment; I soon believed he would never speak again. “You are far from lost, my darling.”
I did not flinch as Faenir reached those gentle, caring fingers and brushed them across my jaw. His touch was featherlight and… real. Warmth like nothing I could have expected. It shocked me. I gasped, lips parting as the points of my teeth nipped at them.
“Skin as cold as forgotten marble.” Faenir’s voice trembled. His eyes traced across me as his other hand reached out, marvelling at how he did not kill me with his touch.
I groaned into his touch, hands gripping hard upon my prey so he could not escape me.
“I feel as though I should ask how this is possible?” Faenir’s question was no more than a whisper. He did not need to elaborate for me to know what he wished to uncover.
My desire tolivehad become my curse.
“Perhaps,” I replied, wishing to melt into his hands and forget the world. “We will discuss this soon.”
I sensed the presence of someone familiar join at my side. It was Auriol, I knew it from her scent alone. She smelled like home, dust and old wood with the undertones of freshly picked roses. I closed my eyes and saw a bunch of flowers within a vase on the table of our home in Tithe.
“What have you become?” she asked it aloud as though it would make it seem real. “I watched you die in my arms. Arlo, the one I knew has gone… haven’t you?”
Part of me longed to reach out and embrace her, to hold my sister close and never let go again but I feared what I would do. My eyes flickered between hers and then her neck. Her skin fluttered above the plump artery, as though enticing me to greet it with my teeth.
I gripped tighter on Gildir’s limp, living body as though to anchor myself.
“Perhaps I am still the same. Maybe not. Either way this is my doing.” My words came out in a hiss.
Faenir’s attention was drawn elsewhere to the clattering of metal and the shouting of an old woman whose voice was likened to the unimportant buzzing of a fly, one I wished to swat.
“How long have you suffered without me knowing? The way you coughed… that sound has haunted me for years. I would never forget such a noise.”
I nodded, tongue tracing my lower lip to savour the sweetness that coated it. Her eyes, those same eyes that had tied us together as siblings, watched my tongue as though it was the most dangerous thing she had ever seen.
“It began not months after Father died. I knew from the first spotting of blood that I could not put you through the suffering that still scarred you. Auriol, the choices I made were to ensure you were never left alone. And now I have become a nightmare of flesh…”
“I don’t know what to think,” Auriol replied, looking towards the limp elf in my grasp. “But I cannot say I am not relieved either way.”
