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“I will not use caution with my words,” said Sorin. “You will never reach your full potential if you continue to deny who you are.”
His words made me feel defensive, and a rush of anger reddened my face. “I know who I am, Sorin. Need I remind you?”
“I am very much aware, Your Majesty,” he said, his voice growing cold. “But in this room, you are my student. Do you know how hard it is to watch you mourn this change? To be given the luxury of time to accept it?”
“You act as if I should have expected to become a monster,” I said, frustrated. “I never asked for this.”
“I did not want to bethiseither,” he said, pointing at himself. His voice rose as he spoke. “I did not ask to crave blood or live for an eternity or fight battles for causes I lost sight of long ago, but sometimes we do not get a choice!”
I stared at him in silence. I had always suspected this was how Sorin felt about being a vampire, but he had never confirmed his feelings until now.
“Sorin—”
“Fuck!” he said, letting his head fall into his hands.
I did not speak, did not really know what to say or to ask. When he looked at me again, his eyes were red and watery and he swallowed hard.
“Did you want to do this?” he asked. “To come back to this world?”
“I…don’t know that I had a choice,” I said, but I had never thought long about it.
Sorin laughed humorlessly. “I didn’t either.”
“What happened?” I asked, posing the question quietly, afraid that it might scare him away.
He did not answer immediately, running a hand over his short hair. “It wasn’t even what happened,” he said at last. “It was how.”
I waited and finally he spoke.
“I didn’t even know he had been changed,” he said, and a sob burst from his throat. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
I shifted onto my knees and held him as he cried. “You do not have to tell me,” I said as he shook in my embrace.
“No,” he said, taking a deep breath. “You need to understand.”
Again I waited, and when he was able to speak, he continued.
“I did not know Daroc had been changed, and when he came to me, he was aroused and he touched me and caressed me and worked me into a frenzy. I liked it, wanted it—wanted him. I had not been ready for this before. We had never…” He paused. “It seemed right and then it wasn’t. When he bit me, I screamed and pushed him away. He took a chunk of my flesh with him. I ran, naked, into the night, and Daroc chased after me. My screams drew the attention of other villagers. Their intervention cost them their lives.”
I held my breath as Sorin described this horror.
“When Daroc caught up with me, I was barely conscious. He sobbed over me, he told me how sorry he was, and…he didn’t let me die.”
I did not know what to say so I stayed quiet.
“I do not wish to hold it against him. It’s just that I will never forget.”
“How could you?”
It was trauma, and it had happened when he had least expected, when he had likely been feeling emotions that far exceeded anything he’d ever felt in his life. At least I would have a choice when it came time for me to be changed.
“He hates himself for it, you know?” Sorin said. “And it has informed everything about our relationship. He treats me as someone he is responsible for, not as a lover.”
I mourned for him, and Daroc too, though I did not think either would want it. So much about their dynamic and personalities made sense now. Daroc, quiet, stoic, angry, likely blamed himself for everything. Sorin, soft, funny, energetic, was just trying to hide his pain.
“Why do you stay? Why do either of you stay?”
“It is not as if I do not love him,” Sorin said.
