“You get used to it,” said Sorin.
“This all seems more like a punishment,” I said.
“You can choose to see it as a punishment, or you can choose to see it as a tool,” he said. “A weapon.”
I might have scoffed had he called it a gift. There was a part of me that was still angry with Adrian for how excited he had acted in the aftermath of my change when I had been so devastated, so frightened.
“I have yet to see the potential in this power,” I said.
“You have yet to actually live in the skin,” said Sorin. “All you have done is pout as if that can change what you have become.”
“Excuse me?”
“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 be this either,” 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.
Silence followed and I struggled to remember how we had even gotten here.
He took a deep breath. “I did not mean to burden you with my problems.”
“It is not a burden.”
Once again we were quiet, and after a moment, Sorin looked at me, changing the subject, likely not wishing to entertain any questions about what he had just told me.
“Do you remember how it felt when you first shifted?”
It had started out fine. I had not minded the fever or the desperate sex with Adrian. It was everything after that I hated.
I winced, recalling it. “Painful,” I said. “It was…horrible.”
“I understand why you would feel dread around shifting, and I cannot promise it won’t feel like that again, but until you come to accept who you are now, what you have become, no amount of training will help you.” I was surprised when he took my hand. “You are an aufhocker, Isolde, and monster or not, you have the potential to save far more of us in that form. So what do you want?”
Emotionally spent, Sorin and I ended training for the day, and I left with his words heavy on my mind. Of all Sorin’s abilities, shifting seemed to give him an element of escape as the trauma of his change into a vampire far outweighed how he’d discovered he could turn into a falcon.
Still, his words filled my veins with an eagerness to truly know the monster I had become. I wandered into the library and found Lothian at the desk.
“My queen,” he said and bowed. “Can I help?”
“I need information on aufhockers,” I said.
“Of course,” he said and came around the desk. “Is there…reason to believe there will be another attack?”
“I think there is always reason to expect another attack,” I said, though I could not ignore the guilt twisting my stomach at his question. It was just another reason I needed to learn my potential when shifting.
“The thing that unnerves me about them,” he said as we ventured into the stacks, “is that they take on various forms.”
“What do you mean?”
“The shape they took to attack Cel Ceredi was just one iteration. They’ve been known to present as spirits, ailing elders—anything, really, to lure their prey.”
I swallowed hard. Did that mean I too possessed that ability?
“I never knew,” I said.
“Many do not,” he said. “I think their forms have been given other names.”
“What is their true form?”
“That is ambiguous,” he said, and he stopped, choosing a book from the shelf. He checked the index and then handed it to me. “If I had to guess, I would say their original form was spirit, given that I think they can transform into just about anything.”