18. Isolde #2
“After that, the transition started,” Bastian went on. “I don’t remember any of it, except the pain, which was worse than having all those Wolves tear into me, or all the hours I spent waiting for the moon to rise. When I woke up the next morning… well, it was done. I didn’t have a say.”
Isolde let the tip of one finger brush along the edge of his scar, gentle as could be as she traced the deepest gouge. Bastian tensed beneath the touch, and Isolde started to pull her hand away… but then he relaxed, shifting on the mattress to lean into her hand instead.
“I know what that’s like, in a way,” Isolde said softly, letting her hands drift slowly away from his shoulder and skate down the center of his back.
Bastian’s voice was rough when he replied, “You do?”
Isolde cleared her throat. She’d never talked about this, not even with Selene. She hadn’t wanted to—hadn’t wanted to give voice to the memory of that day.
But it seemed only fair to share it with Bastian, after he’d told her all of that. When she started speaking, her voice came out clear and steady.
“It wasn’t quite the same, because the people who did it to me weren’t people I knew and trusted,” Isolde explained. “That had to make things harder on you.”
He shrugged his scarred shoulder, but said nothing.
Isolde cleared her throat. “Anyway, I was twenty-three when I was turned. I was traveling home from Aaldenburg to visit my family—I’d been studying literature at the university there. It was amazing that they even let me in, considering that I’m a woman, but… that’s beside the point.
“So, I was traveling home, and along the way, I was ambushed. There were three men. They slaughtered my horses and the carriage driver, and drug me out into the snow. I was… a bit wealthier then than I am now, and the men took everything I had. My gold, my jewelry, my school books. Even the bodice of my dress, and my stockings and shoes. They left my skirt, though, because they thought it would be too much to carry.”
Bastian went so still beneath Isolde’s hands, she wondered if he’d stopped breathing. “Did they… touch you?”
Isolde couldn’t see Bastian’s face, but his voice…
it was cold and deadly in the same way it had been when he found her in the forest, bleeding from the poisoned wound to her chest. Who the fuck did this to you?
he’d demanded, the words a lethal growl, like he was ready to rip their head off himself.
“No,” she told him. “Not like that. One of them tried to make me touch him, but they lost interest in that when I started biting.”
A humorless scoff escaped Bastian’s lips. “Good.”
Isolde forged ahead. “Maybe, yes. But that also made them angry. They realized then that I might be wealthy enough for someone to listen to me if I told anyone what they’d done.
So they beat me, and left me there in the snow to die.
I think they thought I was already dead when they left, honestly.
But I wasn’t. I lay there for hours, freezing, paralyzed from whatever damage they’d done to my body, begging death to take me. ”
Isolde swallowed hard, the memory of that day a little too fresh in her mind, even all these years later.
She remembered the way the carriage had rocked and nearly tipped, how her head had knocked against the wall.
She remembered the roughness of the men’s hands when they pulled her out, and the bite of the snow against her skin when they stripped her.
She remembered the pain most of all—the way they’d kicked her, struck her, beat her, until she was bleeding and broken and unable to move.
“And then Selene showed up.” Isolde swallowed hard.
She’d never felt such relief as she did when Selene’s face came into focus above her.
The ends of her dark hair had tickled Isolde’s brow, the sensation so at odds with the pain.
“She asked me if I wanted to turn. I said yes, even though I don’t think I fully understood what I was agreeing to.
I knew Vampires existed, but nothing about them, really. I just wanted the pain to go away.
“It’s not that I’m not grateful to still be here. I don’t think I’d choose differently if I could do it again. But I never wanted to be a Vampire, either.”
“Are there things you miss about being human?” Bastian asked. His voice was gentle.
The backs of Isolde’s eyes prickled as she thought about it. She couldn’t look at him—not now. She’d been staring across the room at the cluttered surface of his desk while she spoke, and she knew if she looked down, she’d cry in earnest.
“I miss the sun,” she admitted softly. “And being able to really eat human food, not just taste things. I miss being warm—I’m always cold now, no matter how many layers I wear or if I just recently fed. I don’t miss the weakness, though. I like being stronger than the men who nearly killed me.”
On the mattress beside her, Bastian shifted to face her more fully. Isolde could see him out of her periphery, but she still didn’t dare look directly at him. “That first night we met, when I pinned you down and held that knife to your throat… I’m sorry, Isolde.”
Now Isolde couldn’t help but glance down at him, surprised. Of all the things he might have said, that was the last thing she expected. Something about it made the prickling in Isolde’s eyes worse, but now that she was looking at Bastian, she couldn’t seem to look away.
“It’s alright,” she whispered.
“It’s not.” Bastian’s jaw was tight, his eyes glittering with intensity in the dim light. “Not what those men did to you, and not what I did, either. I’m sorry I let Everett get his hands on you the other day, too. If I ever do anything like that again, you have permission to gut me.”
Isolde couldn’t help but chuckle.
She stayed silent for a moment after that, debating whether to tell him this next part.
Finally, she whispered, “I did gut those men. Later.”
“You did?”
Isolde nodded. “I hunted them down once I got acclimated to being a Vampire. They’d already spent or sold everything they took, but I cut them open and left them to bleed, like they did to me.”
One corner of Bastian’s mouth curved upward, and then the other, until he was staring up at Isolde with a wicked smile. “Good girl,” he said.