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Suddenly, I feel as though I can’t breathe.
I can’t be here without Asha.
I can’t survive in a world she doesn’t inhabit.
I know now that my father was right. That males aren’t meant to outlive their females. I’m not made for this, I’m not…
The vial is cold to the touch. Silvery moonlight swirls inside the mixture, and I find it difficult to look away.
“We’d have to burn the body,” says a voice from the corner. Blaise’s.
I turn to look at her, to challenge the judgment on her face, but there is none.
I can tell by the set of her jaw that she understands. That doesn’t mean she approves. But she won’t stand in my way. It’s her fault, after all. Her fault for planting the idea in Asha’s mind. Her fault for putting my wife in the hands of a lunatic.
But Blaise’s use of the word “we” tells me she’ll help.
I can decide how I’ll punish Blaise later, but first I need to know. “Is it so awful?” I ask. “Being what you are?”
Blaise looks down at herself, and for the first time I notice there’s something different about her. Something I can’t place. “I don’t think I can answer that for anyone else.”
A life without sunlight. Would Asha mind, in a place like Naenden, where most of us hide from the sunlight, anyway? In Naenden, where it’s the night that is the most peaceful?
She’d do it for me, I tell myself. She’d live this life for me. But then again, I’m not so sure. In all our time together, I never asked if Asha wished to be immortal. I thought it would be better to wait on that conversation until we knew there was even an option.
I should have asked.
But if I had asked, and she had said no, would I still be grasping onto this vial, thinking of burning my wife’s body to ashes so she might occupy another vessel?
Would I go against her wishes to bring her back?
But then I remember Asha walking in the sunlight back in Othian, enjoying the gentle breeze of the day. I remember Blaise describing the craving for blood, the desire to hurt others.
And I know—I know—this is not what Asha wants.
I crush the vial in my hand, but it’s not the flecks of glass in my palm that bring the tears to my eyes.
The liquid moonlight drips to the floor, slipping through my fingertips.
It’s so very cold.
“You fool,” Azrael screams, but I’m not listening. “It was the only way to bring her back.”
My head is buzzing, and I can hardly stand it.
Azrael cries out, and when I look over, blood drips from two holes in his neck, the same blood dripping from the edges of Blaise’s lips.
“If you’re trying to make me sleep with your venom, it won’t work,” Az sneers, blood slipping down his throat. “Not with the elixirs I’ve been taking.”
Blaise drops Az. While the venom won’t work to put him to sleep, it does seem to keep his legs from supporting his weight, because he crumples to the floor, his back hitting the wall.
Blaise isn’t paying attention to him.
“Not the only way,” she whispers to me.
My heart stops in my chest as Blaise and I lock eyes. As we’re transported by a common memory, back to a cave of shadows and a creature who feeds off the darkness.
“Blaise.” Her name is a warning on my tongue. Because I know what she’s about to say.
