Chapter Seventeen
CLARA
Iwoke with a cry trapped in my throat and iron on my tongue. Sweat beaded my brow, and my heart raced.
I was back in my own body, in my own time, and in Ivan’s castle, but I felt intrinsically different in every aspect.
I was alone in bed, but I knew Ivan was close. I felt his presence. The fire had burned low, but I could tell fresh wood had been added to bring life back to the flames.
The sheets clung to my damp skin as my pulse raced so hard I half-expected to see it rippling the blanket.
It was a dream, but it wasn’t. I had to assume Ivan’s blood sharing had somehow unlocked something supernatural, allowing me to see into another time long past.
Memories that weren’t mine in this lifetime roared through me in a great, cold wave. Not pieces. Not flashes. A life. My life. I was once named Mircalla.
I closed my eyes and envisioned the castle over five hundred years ago. Snow on the cornices. The garden was warming and growing under the sun. And that last evening, I fed the birds in that garden.
The scent of leather and steel was so strong that I swore I was right in the middle of when my husband was training.
I remembered everything. Not just my last night with Ivan but the many years we shared before that.
The lovemaking, the dirty talk Ivan spoke so well, and the long conversations about starting a family.
But my death was at the forefront. The heat in my chest. The way the world slid sideways. His hands so careful when he held me and cried. That had been the first time I had seen my warrior shed tears.
And then I’d gotten the gift—or maybe the curse—of seeing and feeling his pain after I’d grown cold and lifeless.
The way he’d dug my grave and lain over it for days. The aftermath with Raducel and his transformation. And all the others he’d killed thereafter.
I saw the part of Ivan that broke. His grief carved through me as if it were my own. He had given everything, bartered his soul, clung to the hope that death could be undone. The thing that answered him—darkness, entity, evil—was not merciful. It wanted everything he was, and it took it. Forever.
His heart stopped, then rose again, but not for himself. For a vow that refused to die. Centuries swallowed him whole, hundreds of years of blood and ruin, and every life taken for the promise that one day the curse of immortality would give me back to him.
I was both his salvation and his damnation, the anchor that bound him when nothing else remained. The knowledge wrenched a sob from my chest, raw and bitter.
I pressed my palm to my sternum as if I could hold the pieces together. A chair shifted near the hearth. He was there, half-hidden where the firelight faltered, watching me with those terrible, beautiful eyes.
Ivan leaned forward, forearms braced on his thighs, shirt open at the throat, the glow of the coals painting him in equal parts saint and monster. And all I could see was the moment he’d begged the darkness to give me back to him, the scream that cracked the heavens and opened hell.
“You saw,” he said, voice so soft it barely touched the air.
His warning from before came back… that I would remember tonight. I forced myself to breathe, forced the words past my throat. “Yes. All of it.”
He didn’t move, didn’t argue. He let the truth hang between us like a noose. The woman he had loved—me—had died in his arms five centuries ago. And now, I was here again.
“You are her,” he said at last, his voice roughened with hunger and ache. “You see now?”
I did. Not completely, not yet, but enough to know who I was and what I was to him.
He tipped his head, his gaze steady as judgment. “And you’re also Clara. Both things are true.”
A quivering laugh broke from me, half sob, half release. My cheeks were wet when I swiped at them, though I hadn’t realized I was crying. Silence settled, the ancient castle breathing around us. This place had been my home but also the place where I’d died.
The fire cracked, and I flinched, strung tight as wire. “I saw you bury me,” I whispered, the words tearing open a wound. “No priest. No rites. Only you. You stayed,” I murmured that last part.
Ivan’s fists curled on his knees. His gaze dropped to the stone floor. “I wasn’t going to leave you. I couldn’t let you be alone.” A hard swallow scraped my throat raw. His jaw flexed tight with grief. “I regret nothing,” he rasped. “Except that all I did wasn’t enough to keep you by my side.”
It should have been too much. But something inside me eased, a knot uncoiling. I was two women with two names but the same face, the same soul.
“Come here,” I said, startling myself.
He looked up, pain etched deep in his features before it broke into something softer.
Slowly, he rose and walked to me, every step hesitant like he thought I might change my mind.
He sat at the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping beneath his weight.
He didn’t touch me, so I reached first, brushing my fingers along his wrist.
His steady pulse stole my breath. His chest hitched, his eyes fixed on that small connection like it was everything. I remembered every time I’d done this before, every time I traced the pulse at his wrist after he made love to me. He inhaled like a starving man.
“I remember our home,” I said, voice warming. “The garden in summer, heavy with flowers. And in winter, frosty and alive with birds hopping after the seed I scattered. I remember the sound you made when you were almost laughing.”
He exhaled a sound that wasn’t laughter and wasn’t pain but lived somewhere in between. “Tell me more.”
“Our wedding night.” Heat climbed my cheeks.
“You were careful with me, your touch so light it was almost hesitant. I told you I was afraid, that it would hurt, and you promised you’d take care of me.
That you wanted to love me in all ways.” My lips curved faintly, the memory vivid.
“You worshipped me that night… and every night after.”
His pupils blew wide, an inaudible sound rumbling in his chest, too deep to be human, too heavy not to be felt. He leaned in, pressing his brow to mine. “Draga mea.”
The endearment slid into me like a key turning in a long locked door.
I knew the language as if it were my native tongue.
I knew him. Every syllable was as familiar as my name.
I closed my eyes, letting his warmth swallow me whole.
It felt like sunlight, as if I were back in our garden, letting it consume me.
“You never stopped believing,” I whispered. “Every year, decade, and century… you looked into crowds hoping to see my face.”
Ivan lifted my hand and pressed a reverent kiss to my knuckles. “You’re all that matters. You’re all that ever mattered. Without you, I am nothing. There are centuries I can’t even account for. Just a blur of blood and pain. But I remember every second of false hope.”
“And now that you’ve found me?” My voice cracked into a breathy whisper. I leaned closer, unable to stop myself.
His answer came instantly, and I knew it was because he’d carried it through lifetimes. “Make up for every lost year. Make sure not a single day passes without your happiness. Keep you forever.”
He pulled me onto his lap until I straddled him, our breaths mingling. “I want you to keep me forever.” The words slipped free without hesitation, and they felt true.
A tremor tore through him. “Say it again.”
“I’m yours,” I whispered. “In every life.”
His mouth found mine, and at first, there was no rush, no demand. It was a slow, aching press of lips that felt like coming home. He tasted of everything lost, of centuries that had stolen us apart. His tongue, his scent, the very flavor of Ivan was peace, even in its hunger.
When we parted, the silence between us felt sacred, like a vow spoken without words.
“You should rest,” he murmured, though he didn’t move away. His thumb traced the line of my jaw with a tenderness that betrayed the predator beneath his skin. He looked at me as though memorizing me, terrified I’d vanish again. “We’ll go slowly.”
“Ivan.” My hand cupped the scruff of his cheek, grounding myself in him. His eyes met mine, glowing softer now. “I love you in ways I can’t explain.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “You don’t have to. Our love goes beyond anything that can ever be explained. It goes beyond time itself. We have eternity to reclaim what was taken.” His gaze deepened, intent heavy as stone.
“Take me to our bed.” The words tumbled out of me before I could stop them.
He understood. This room wasn’t ours. But now that I knew who I was, who I had been, all I wanted was what had been stolen.
Something raw and profound shadowed his face, and then he was lifting me and carrying me into the chamber we’d once shared. The air shifted as he sat me down beside him. I closed my eyes letting the weight of it all—our history and now our return together—sink in.
His hand sought mine beneath the blankets, palm to palm, fingers locking tight. “Tell me something you still see,” I whispered.
“I loved watching you braid your hair after you bathed,” he said, voice low, tender. “You are the most beautiful creature alive. I couldn’t keep my eyes off you. And when your hair dried… I undid every braid just to watch it fall.”
The memory struck vividly as if I’d lived it yesterday. I smiled faintly. “I remember you trying to braid it back. You struggled so much. It made me love you more.”
His laugh was rough, quiet. “It was the best struggle of my life.”
“What happens now?” I asked after a moment of pause between us, voice hushed, heavy with truth.
His fangs glinted in the firelight, his hunger laid bare, and still I couldn’t look away. My pulse thundered when he shifted closer, when his hand slid to my hip and anchored me against him. The heat of his body, the weight of centuries of longing in his eyes… it all broke through me at once.
My breath stuttered as his mouth brushed my throat possessively, and I tipped my head back without thinking.
The last thread of resistance snapped. The night, the castle, the world itself fell away until there was only Ivan and the promise of being his again.