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“I got it when I trusted the wrong vampires,” he explains mysteriously, tilting his head a little. Instinctively, he lifts his hand to his scar and caresses it, almost as if he doubted it was still there and wanted to check.
“Would you want it removed if you could?” I ask again, unable to take my eyes off of it.
“Would you want to remove everything that has made you the person you are now, standing before me?” he asks in return.
“No,” I immediately say. “Because then I wouldn’t be that person anymore.”
“Exactly,” he nods. “There is your answer.”
I understand. I don’t say anything. He gets up, and just like me, gets dressed by pulling up his pants. A minute later, and we’re both as if nothing has happened. Nothing at all. But there is something in the air around us, which only a shrewd person would be able to recognize.
“Let’s go,” he tells me.
I follow immediately, knowing that at this moment, I would follow him to the end of the world if he asked me to.
Chapter Ten
Edmund
On the way back to the hide out, I feel torn.
No, scratch that. I feel guilty.
No. It’s not even that. There is a storm of emotions inside of me. I know I shouldn’t be doing this. Any of this. I shouldn’t be running after this girl. Vampires and human don’t mix. To make it clearer, vampire kings and ordinary human girls don’t mix. I have no idea what I’ve been thinking.
All of this is in my mind as we’re walking back. We’re not talking. I know I should probably say something, anything. I don’t want her to think that I’ve just taken advantage of her and that I won’t give it a second thought. This situation isn’t something I planned, but it is obviously something I have pursued with intention. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t be here. I would simply mind my own business, which is the well.
She’s walking behind me. I can hear her footsteps and the dry branches crunching underneath her feet. I expect her to say something. Women usually want to. They have this innate need to talk, even when the situation doesn’t call for it.
Somehow, she doesn’t. This makes me even more curious about her. She is so different from anyone else I’ve ever met. It makes me want to know all there is to know about her. This is when I surprise myself by being the first one to start talking.
“How did you end up in this place anyway?”
The sound of my own voice startles me. It almost sounds as if it’s not my voice at all, but someone else’s voice, someone who wants to sit down, right here, and listen to her talk for hours and hours. But we can’t do that. No matter how much I’d like to.
I turn to her, to wait up, because she’s started to lag behind. She lifts her long eyelashes at me, fluttering them like a butterfly’s wings. Only, it’s not to arouse me or to tease me. She’s trying to remember something. Her mind is working behind those eyes, working hard at something that is obviously difficult for her.
“If it’s personal, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” I tell her.
Shit, I think to myself. I wanted to ease the tension, instead I made it worse.
“No, it’s not that,” she suddenly tells me, with a dismissive half-shrug. “It’s just that I don’t really have much to say on the subject.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, frowning. Her answer makes no sense. “How can you not know how you ended up somewhere?”
Now I’m even more curious than before.
“I was too little to be aware of it,” she explains, as we keep walking.
She catches up to me, and now, our bodies are aligned, our feet moving together, slowly, as if neither of us is all that willing to reach our destination. I want to ask again what exactly that means, but she continues before I get the chance to do so.
“I was told that they found me by the side of the road, as a baby,” she explains, as if that makes all the sense, while in fact, it doesn’t. It makes an already mysterious situation even more enigmatic.
“What about your parents?” I can’t keep myself from asking.
She looks ahead of her, into the lush greenery around us, the same greenery that is keeping me and my vampires hidden from plain sight.
