“How long—”
“Weeks.”
Vale sounded weary. He looked weary, too—his hair unkempt, his eyes shadowed, like he’d gotten very little rest or food.
“I didn’t know if you would survive,” he said quietly. “You were very sick.”
Most don’t survive the process, he had told me.
The process.
Only now did it start to sink in, what had happened to me—what I had done. My human self had withered and died, just as it had always been destined to.
And I…
I rubbed my fingers together. Even my skin felt different. Smoother. Unmarked.
Gods. The shock left me dizzier than my illness. The words even sounded strange aloud.
“You Turned me.”
Vale nodded slowly. Hesitantly.
“I asked you—”
“I said yes.”
I want to stay.
And so, he’d helped me stay.
“Yes,” he whispered.
I met his eyes. He didn’t blink, watching me carefully—as if to make sure he saw every shade of my reaction to this.
“I won’t lie to you, mouse. It won’t be an easy transition. A part of you did die that day. A different version of you was born. There will be things you’ll grieve. There will be things about yourself you’ll need to learn how to embrace. Things that might be… uncomfortable. But…”
His hand fell over mine as his voice faded. He cleared his throat a little. “But you’ll have help.”
I took this in for a long moment.
He asked quietly, “Do you regret it?”
Regret it?
I felt… different. So wildly different than I always had in every way, shedding not only my humanity, but the ever-present looming threat of time.
Even through my illness, I felt the strength lying in wait, ready to be seized. This body wouldn’t wither. It would thrive.
But I couldn’t care less about that.
The prospect that overwhelmed me was the thought of time.
Time. So much of it. Time to collect knowledge. Time to see the world. I didn’t know what I might do with so much of it.
I felt strange, yes. I could already tell Vale was right that it would take me a long time to adjust to this new existence.
But regret?
“No,” I said. “I don’t.”
Vale’s shoulders lowered slightly, as if in relief. He avoided my gaze, rolling my fingers gently through his. My senses were so heightened, I could feel every wrinkle and texture of his skin.
“You… you came back,” I said.
“I know it wasn’t what you wanted me to do. But I was a general because I was better at giving orders than following them.”
Not true. I wanted it more than anything. For him to come back. Even if I didn’t know it at the time.
“Why?” I asked.
“You were right. The roses were special.”
I smiled a little. “You finally noticed.”
“They never died.”
They look exactly the same as they always have, he’d said, so irritated, like I’d tricked him. I’d thought it was funny at the time. Of course a vampire wouldn’t notice the absence of decay, the absence of time, when they lived beyond it themselves.
“When I was preparing to leave,” he said, “I was gathering the roses. And I noticed, when I held them, that one of them had begun to wither—just a little. I’ve held god-touched objects before. And when I was touching them, I—I felt it. It feels strange, for us to touch an object touched by the White Pantheon.”
Us.
Him and I. Vampires.
But that struck me less than the image of what he was describing. That Vale, when packing up his belongings, had not only taken the roses with him, but had sat there holding them. For a moment I could picture it so vividly, him cradling those roses, and it made my chest tighten.
His thumb rubbed the back of my hand.
“It was foolish that I didn’t realize you were god-touched, too. You strange creature.” A wry smile tugged at his lips. “Different from any human or any vampire I had ever encountered.”
Gods, the way he looked at me—a strange feeling shivered in my heart.
But then my brow furrowed.
“But how did you know?” I said.
Vale had pieces of the truth. Incomplete evidence. But not enough to draw a final conclusion.
He lifted one shoulder in an almost-shrug. “I didn’t know, Lilith. I felt.”
So few words, and yet they encapsulated something I had struggled to name in those final moments. Something I understood, against all reason and logic.
“I knew that—that I would be making a mistake, in leaving you,” he said softly. “I knew it, even if I couldn’t name precisely why. So I came for you.”
And he had saved me.
My throat thickened. I swallowed, though it was difficult through the dryness of my throat.
“And what about Adcova?”
“Ah, the best part.” He smoothed my hair from my face. He’d been doing that this whole time—touching me in all these little mundane, fussing ways. Smoothing hair, adjusting my sleeve, wiping beads of sweat. “It seems,” he said, “that Adcova has escaped its god’s ire at last.”
I let out a rough exhale. I almost didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want to hope it could be true.
“I asked my errand boy to send updates,” he went on. “There have been no new cases reported in town, or anywhere else in the area. And it seems a peculiar new drug has cured the cases that already existed.”
The pride shone in his voice. My chest hurt fiercely, a strange burning sensation. I couldn’t speak. He held my hand tight.
“It’s over, Lilith,” he said. “You saved them.”
Years. Years of my life. Countless hours in my study, countless hours of sleep stolen. Thousands of books, thousands of notes. Years-worth of pen-grip callouses on my fingers.
For this.
For…
“Mina,” I choked out.
I’d meant for it to be a real question, but I couldn’t get it out, not without breaking down.
Vale was silent for too long, making worry tighten in my stomach. He let go of my hand—somewhat reluctantly—and went to the door.
And when she appeared in the doorway, my heart cracked open.
She was bright and vivacious and full of life like I hadn’t seen her in years, as if all those layers of death she had shed in the form of dusty skin on our floors had left her a whole new person. New, and yet, the version of her I had always known.
She smiled at me through tears, a huge, sun-bright grin, and I opened my mouth to speak and let out a garbled sob.
She crossed the room in several clumsy rushed steps and threw herself against me in an embrace.
“I know,” she said, when I couldn’t speak, and neither of us said anything else.
Because for so long, I had struggled to connect with my sister. Struggled to show her the warmth beneath my cold. Struggled to let her see the love my face and words couldn’t convey to her.
I’d thought I’d die with her thinking I did not love her.
I did die, and that fear died with me.
Because here, in this moment, with me on the right side of death and her on the right side of living, lost in a tearful embrace hello instead of goodbye, we met each other on level ground.