Blackthorne

32. Second Life

SECOND LIFE

NICO

The stars were closer than they should have been.

I sat at the edge of a tower that I had never seen before and that I had always known, my legs hanging over the drop, and the sky above me was not the sky of any city I had lived in.

There were too many stars. They burned with a clarity that felt personal, as if each one had been placed there by someone who wanted me specifically to see it, and the light they gave was warm instead of cold.

The tower was old. The stone beneath me was smooth from centuries of weather and I could feel the age of it through my palms the way I felt the age of antiques through my hands at the shop. This stone had been touched by a lot of people. It remembered all of them.

Someone sat down beside me. I didn't turn my head. I didn't need to.

“Cassiel,” I said.

“Nico.”

He was younger than the painting. That was the first thing I noticed when I looked at him.

The portrait in Draco's library had captured the composure but missed the warmth, the way a good restorer could capture the shape of an object but miss the way it felt in the hand.

He had dark hair and dark eyes and a face that was handsome in the way of someone who had never once stopped to consider whether he was handsome because he had better things to worry about.

He was sitting the way I was sitting, legs over the edge, hands on the stone, looking out at the stars like they owed him money.

“You're shorter than I expected,” I said.

He laughed. The sound of it was easy and warm and startled out of him.

“You're louder than I expected,” he said. “I could hear you arguing with Draco from several dimensions away. You called him a broody vampire and told him to bite you. Asshole was the word you used.”

“He was being difficult.”

“He's always being difficult. That's his entire personality. He has been difficult for a thousand years and he will be difficult for a thousand more, and every single day of it he will act as if his difficulty is a form of dignity rather than a deeply ingrained inability to express a simple emotion without wrapping it in three layers of legal architecture.”

“You know him well.”

“I loved him. Different body, different time, same man.” He looked at me. “Same infuriating, impossible, beautiful man who would rather eat silver than say the words 'I need you' out loud.”

“He said he loved me.”

“He never said it to me.” Cassiel's voice was soft. “I knew it. He showed it in every way a man can show it without using the words. But he never said it. I'm glad he said it to you.”

I looked at the stars. They blurred a little.

“He's going to be a massive pain in the ass,” Cassiel said.

“You need to understand that. He will try to protect you from things you don't need protecting from. He will make decisions for you and call them strategic. He will feed you without asking and rearrange your schedule without telling you and buy your parents an apartment and act as if all of it was a logistical necessity rather than an expression of love. And the house will take his side in every argument because the house is as emotionally repressed as he is.”

“You're not selling this very well.”

“I'm selling it perfectly. You already love him. I'm telling you what you're buying so you can't say nobody warned you.” He bumped his shoulder against mine, and the contact was warm and solid. “He's worth it. Every stubborn, impossible, cold-handed, warm-hearted inch of him. He's worth the fight.”

“Loving will hurt,” I said. “But it's all part of life. Even the parts that feel like they're going to break you. Especially those parts.”

Cassiel was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice had changed.

“Thank you for not giving up. For fighting Vane. For holding on. For loving him without needing to be me first.”

“I'm not you.”

“I know. That's why it works.” He smiled. “I was the memory. You're the choice. He needed both.”

The stars shifted above us. The light changed.

“Are you ready?” Cassiel said.

“Ready for what?”

“The memories. My memories. They're yours now. They've always been yours, stored in the blood, waiting for the door to open. When Draco turned you, the door opened. The memories are on the other side of it. All you have to do is step through.”

“Will it change me?”

“It will add to you. You will know what I knew. Feel what I felt. Remember what I remember. The battles and the tents and the snow and his face in candlelight. But you will still be Nico. The memories are mine. The life is yours.”

“Then yes. I'm ready.”

Cassiel stood. He reached down and took my hand and pulled me to my feet, and for a moment we stood on the edge of the tower together, looking out at the stars, and the night was vast and old and full of things that had been waiting.

He pulled me into a hug.

His arms went around me. I felt his face press against the side of my head and I felt the wetness on my temple and I understood that Cassiel was crying.

He pulled back. He put his hands on my face and looked at me with dark, wet eyes, and then he kissed my forehead.

“I'll miss you. But if you need me, all you have to do is call. I'm not gone. I'm part of you now, the way I was always part of you, and I will come when you reach for me.”

“Thank you, for making sure the path led back to him.”

“Someone had to. He certainly wasn't going to figure it out on his own.” Cassiel wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Take care of him, Nico. Take care of Blackthorne. Take care of that horrible cat.”

“Drake is not horrible.”

“Drake scratched me once through a dream. The cat has interdimensional hostility issues.”

I laughed. Cassiel laughed. And the stars burned above us and the tower held us and for one moment, one breath, two men who shared a soul stood at the edge of the world and were glad.

Then Cassiel pushed me off the tower.

The wind took me. The stars blurred upward and the tower shrank above me and the dark came rushing in, and as I fell I heard Cassiel's voice, distant and warm and fading.

“Tell him I said the horse was smarter.”

The ground came up and I went through it and the dream shattered into light.

I opened my eyes.

The room was dark and Draco was beside me.

He was sleeping. Draco, who I had never seen sleep, was lying on his side with one arm across the space where my body had been and his face half-pressed into the pillow.

His hair was loose, which I had never seen, dark against the grey pillowcase, and his face in sleep was younger than his face awake.

The fire in the grate was not loud but I could hear each individual crack of the wood, each pop of sap. The sheets against my skin were silk and I could feel each individual thread. The smell of the room was a catalogue of layered components.

Remy and Evie were in the kitchen, one floor down and forty feet away, and I could hear them.

“Stop eating the bacon before it gets to the plate,” Evie said.

“I'm quality testing,” Remy said.

“You're quality testing a third of the batch.”

“Quality is a process, not a destination.”

Vampire hearing. I had vampire hearing.

I felt the bloodstone around my neck. I reached for it and the pendant was warm against my fingers.

the seam where it had cracked to release the blades sealed shut as if it had never opened.

I wrapped my hand around it and pressed it against my chest and thanked it silently, and it pulsed once in response.

A grey paw appeared from the end of the bed.

Drake climbed over the duvet and sat beside Draco's head. Then he raised one paw and smacked Draco across the face.

Draco's eyes snapped open. His hand came up in a defensive reflex.

“You,” Draco growled at Drake.

Drake looked at him. Then he hit him again. One more measured smack, paw to cheekbone, claws retracted, which was the closest Drake came to showing restraint.

“I will have you removed from this house,” Draco said.

Drake yawned, settled himself between our pillows, and began to clean his paw. He had won and he knew it, and the victory lap was a grooming session conducted two inches from the face of the most powerful vampire in the city.

Draco turned his head and saw me watching. His eyes, which had been narrow with feline-related irritation, went wide.

“Nico.”

“Hey.”

His hand came to my face, cupping my jaw, his thumb against my cheekbone, and his eyes moved across my features.

“How do you feel?” he said.

“Different. I can hear Remy stealing bacon in the kitchen.”

“Can you?”

“I can also hear your heartbeat, which is new and a little overwhelming, and I can smell the dust on the top shelf of your wardrobe, which you should deal with.”

“The wardrobe is fine.”

“The wardrobe has not been dusted since the seventh century.”

His mouth twitched. His hand stayed on my face and his eyes were wet.

“Nico, I have to tell you something and I need you to hear me before you respond.”

“Okay.”

He held my eyes. “Turning you was the only way to save your life, and I did it.” His voice cracked on the last three words and he let it crack and did not try to repair it.

“I know this wasn't a choice you made. I know I swore I would never turn you without your free and informed consent.

I know that an eternity you didn't choose is a cage no matter how much the person who built it loves you. But I looked at you dying in my arms and I chose your life over your agency and I would do it again and I will not pretend otherwise.”

“Draco.”

“Yes.”

“If I get to live with you for eternity, then I don't see a downside.” I put my hand over his on my face. “You didn't take my choice. You gave me the chance to keep making choices. Every morning. Forever. With you.”

His jaw tightened. His eyes spilled over.

“Besides,” I said, “I have vampire powers now. I can probably punch through a wall if I wanted to.” I paused. “Do I have to drink blood now?”

He looked at me. The tears were still on his face and he was fighting a smile and losing.

“Yes.”

“Like, all the time?”

“It will be your primary sustenance.”