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Valerie gestured to the blood stains creeping up her arms. “Because my heart sought the same. I do not regret anything, I am not ashamed. Killing was an option and I had chosen wisely. I took what was mine. The rest…they did this to themselves.”
She thought of the times she was ravished with blood, captured by something vital and undeniable, her teeth aching to stir and open wounds. The act was so freeing, so rapturous even, that she did not think it was prompted by a venom nearing her heart. It had always been a part of her, maybe long before she met Mircalla, but it was Mircalla who saved her when no one else did.
“When?” she asked. Words were eluding her throat.
Mircalla took on a haunted look, watching the group approaching. Her teary eyes were larger than she had ever seen before. Yet, surprisingly, nothing in them was fearful.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Living during the day will be like daydreaming: a prolonged unconsciousness rooted in and cured by wandering, glimpsing at the horizon and waiting for the dark veil of the night to fall. You will be fragile in those hours, hanging between collapse and exhaustion, but the night will heal you.
There came a pause, then Mircalla turned to meet her gaze, and to Valerie’s amazement, her eyes were misty again. “You will rid yourself of your human blood too. The venom will replenish the cold, insatiable vampire blood minute by minute. You’ll wake up stronger; you will wake up anew,” she said and laced their fingers together. The words were elongated and changed, and there was something cruel about them that made Valerie’s heart jump. “You will have no recognition of yourself. Hunger you will become, a hunger that leads nowhere but blank ferocity. You will not remember who you were at all.”
Valerie jerked. She wanted to free herself from her embrace, the lulling whisper of her voice. She could not lose Mircalla once again when she only found her.
“Will I remember you?” she asked, breathless, now gripping her lover’s arms so tightly her knuckles first reddened, then went white.
Mircalla’s cheeks glistened with tears. She shivered as Mircalla tucked her into an embrace and she came to rest on her chest.
“No,” she said. Then quickly added, “Not at first.” A ghost of a smile played on her lips. “But I will come back to you in a dream. I will bear my name with the wind, wail like a newborn baby, until you hear it and turn to it. I will whisper it to trees and mountains and lakes and maidens until one day, you remember me. A storm ravaging your house, a mark on your neck, a body in your bed. Then, we will meet again.”
She held her hands and kissed the blood-soaked tips. One by one.
“I am afraid,” Valerie whispered, picking at her lips. “I don’t have the strength in me to let you go. I can’t control it. How will I let you go, Mircalla? How will I be?”
“We will be okay. I will hold you close every day until you remember.”
“Promise me.”
Valerie pressed her lips against hers, locking herself in the fleeting moment before everything was lost.
“I promise. Do not be afraid.”
Valerie looked at her with a furrow, unsure of the direction they would take. The moment had passed, and the deed was done. She smeared her hands on the snow; her husband’s blood stared back at her, luminous and sinister. She had pierced the Vertigo Peaks through its heart and now it was bleeding, where it belonged until it drained all their history.
The group was waiting for them by the greenhouse. Valerie pushed a stray hair away from her face and smiled. Perhaps, she thought, she could be someone new. Mircalla kissed the top of her head when she spoke. “Know this, Mircalla. In all my memories, you burn the brightest. You painted a whole new sky and set it on fire so we could see the world ablaze. If not for everything, this alone is enough for me. I’ll always crawl my way back to you.”
For the first time in her life, she could choose to leave. The words were light as a feather on her tongue, rolling against the roof of her mouth as sweet as cream. Soon, she would carry another heart, unfamiliar to her, yet dearer than anything she had known.
Then, they, hand in hand with wandering steps, through the peaks took their way.
