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“Oh, Horris.” I touched his hand in comfort, but he smiled.
“You say that like you wouldn’t have given poor Will the same answer! It was alright. I loved her until her last breath. She was laid to rest quietly and I keep a little piece of her with me everywhere I go.”
“Did she know when we came to Charleston?” I mulled aloud, bringing my knees to my chest.
“She did, she advocated that you know as well–we all did. It was not fair of William to keep that from you, especially with the nature of your relationship.” Horris let out a long exhale, finishing the remainder of his wine. He sat up, grabbing a pack of cigars from his coat which hung on the arm of the chair beside us. Lighting the cigar, spicy tobacco smoke swirled around his head. He looked at me and laughed. “If you think any harder, I believe I might be able to hear your thoughts.” I hadn’t realized how hard I was scowling.
“I was just pondering about what that would have been like for you,” I said. Horris considered this, the crease between his brows deepening as well, he puffed fiercely.
“It was difficult, of course. I loved them all, but they were never my Fated, not in the way that you and William are. I could mourn them, move on, fall in love again.”
“Excuse me?Fated?” I laughed humorlessly, “What sort of vampyre absurdity is this?”
“Rosemary, come now. You must know. Your Fated is like your mate, you are bound together in a sort of mystical way–a way incomprehensible to human and unFated vampyre alike.”
“No, you can’t be serious. That can't possibly be, it sounds like something out of a fairytale!” I was panicking. It made too much sense, it filled in all the holes I’d been attempting to ignore for years.
“Have you fallen in love again? I don’t see you with another. I don’t imagine you’ve been with anyone in ages and neither has William. He has spent much of this time lost, spiraling. I think he’d rather theultima mortem.”
My heart seized, aching that I would have caused him such pain. The years of self loathing, of loathing him, grieving over what had been done to me had been washed away knowing that this could be why he’d acted in the way he did–something so far out of our control.
“I have been with others,” I said as a poor excuse to fight it.
“Sex is one thing, Rosemary. But love is another–beingFatedis another.” Horris took a long drag, rising from his seat to pour more wine from the bar’s decanter by the fireplace. “Think about this, Rose: you were nearly dead when we found you. He didn’t have time to ask you for permission, and frankly he didn’t care. He was losing you.”
Horris’s voice grew serious, “What is between you two is different from what I had with Clementine. If she’d have been my Fated, I’d have Changed her, too. The only other option would have been to die alongside her. You see, you’re well aware of the particular set of gifts vampyres are in possession of, and one of those is the ability to know when we find the one our soul truly yearns for.”
“Who knew you were such a romantic, Horris,” I joked, draining my glass. It was a lot to consider, overwhelming almost.
He laughed lightly, “Call it what you may, but I know that William only Changed you because losing you meant losing everything, including himself. You didn’t see him, didn’t hear the grief overtake him when we found you, gaping and bleeding on that bed.”
I flinched.
“Your heart was hardly beating, you were white as death, and the house was burning down, we couldn’t find the baby anywhere. It was too much. He’d rather live in a world where you hated him, ran from him at every turn, than live in a world where you didn’t exist.”
I let it sink in, let myself process it slowly, in little bits. It crushed the poorly built wall of resistance around my heart, weighing heavily in my gut. Had he really been as miserable, if not more so, than I had? I hadn’t stopped to consider what the sight of me on that bed did to him, it was difficult to pull myself back to that memory as it was.
“I feel badly,” I finally muttered, bringing my hand over my eyes.
“It is okay to feel that way, I think it may do some good for you to find him, seek him out and speak with him.”
“I’ve been looking for him for months, since my mother told me something similar as she died.” I explained.
“He has always been behind you on your journeys, mostly unbeknownst to him. He’s always been a step behind simply because you two are tethered. You know it. Youfeelit. I assume that is why he was called to America after being here for so long,”
“I hate him for Changing me, though,” I whispered, setting my emptied glass on the table. “Our daughter died, and I never wanted to be without her.”
“If you hate being a vampyre so much, then why haven’t you allowed yourself theultima mortem? You can hate him for Changing you, yes, you are valid in that. But you can’t hate him for your daughter’s death. And you continue to live, you maintain your humanity. I assume you don’t just feed on anyone, correct?”
“I try not to. I try to feed on the low lives,” I muttered.
“Do you hate him forthat? For the impact you make on humanity, a positive impact? And if the situation—”
“Yes, yes, if it were reversed wouldn’t I change him? I–I think I would.” I snapped, short because he was right.
“We will find him, he cannot be far from London if you’ve been here for a few months. The two of you will only continue to suffer if you do not. Do you even remember what it’s like to be free of that?”
I got up and stood by the dark window, running my fingers over the velvet curtain as the tension built inside me. I did not want to wait anymore.
