Chapter 24 Julien #3
“But still, all the money in the world couldn’t beat death. Death came as it always does—merciless, indifferent. She died; we were left untethered. Two brothers with heartache, and without a purpose.”
I lean back, the weight of my mother’s death knocking me as though the centuries between it never happened.
“We took our anger at the world out on our opponents, and when I needed a new release, I joined in the fights too. But the money began to dwindle, we risked losing the family we’d built, the business, because crowds only came when you made a spectacle.
Made them bloody.” I shake my head, remembering the night my brother crossed the final line, the one that led us into damnation. “We began to fight to the death.”
Jasmine tries to hide her sharp exhale, but doesn’t manage it. The sound slices through me, my fingers finding the chain at my chest, sliding over it. It helps.
“With the promise of death, our fights became more popular. We’d made a horrific name for ourselves, not just in France, but in neighbouring countries too.
By then, we had more wealth than we could ever imagine.
But my brother and I… our relationship was rotting from the inside out.
I despised the way he was with our brothers, and he despised my loyalty to them.
And without our mother anchoring us… all we had left was the fight. ”
My voice dips lower as I remember the next part of my horrid past. “He became cruel, apathetic, just like our father. Even our closest brethren began to fear him. One night, he nearly beat one to death during training, he’d convinced himself they could fight harder. Only when I intervened did he stop.”
My throat tightens, the hatred in his gaze, the disgust, I’ll never forget it. “I decided to leave that night, but that was the night she came.”
Jasmine swallows, then whispers, “Who?”
My fingers move lower, gripping the item my chain holds.
“A woman. It was very unusual to see any women then, in these types of places, but especially a being like her. I sensed her before I saw her. Something not quite of this world. She watched, hidden among the crowds of bloodthirsty humans. She didn’t speak, only observed, waited.”
I let out a slow breath, bracing myself for what comes next.
“My brother won his last fight, and that’s when she stepped into the ring, demanding to fight. Everyone laughed at first, some thought it was part of the performance, until she grabbed someone from the audience and snapped his neck like brittle clay.”
Jasmine’s mug halts midair.
“And she said she’d keep killing, until someone stepped in.” I inhale, preparing myself for the fall.
“What followed was… a slaughter. She killed every person who entered, tore out the throats of my brothers. And I watched them fall, one by one, and I—” Breathe in. Hold… Exhale. “I couldn’t stop her, didn’t even try. I just stood there frozen. Useless.”
Their faces come back, half-formed shadows, twisted in panic. Then the sounds. The gurgling. The pleading. The wet splatter of blood against the ground.
“Then, when my brother stepped forwards, I followed.”
Jasmine sets the mug down with a soft clink, but I keep my eyes on the table.
“She said she’d been watching us, our operation, said we’d tainted the world. Told us humans were cattle, and that it was time they learned their place.” My jaw tightens. “Then she smiled as she said ‘vaincre ou mourir.’”
I force myself to look up as Jasmine’s brows knit at the French in confusion.
“Conquer or die,” I translate. “Only one of us could live.”
The colour bleeds from her skin, leaving her pale with parted lips.
“I refused,” I whisper, lost to it now. “I stood there thinking, maybe if I didn’t move, if I didn’t play her game, it would end.”
What a fool I was.
“But then she said she’d kill us both instead, and my brother lunged.” My jaw clenches, teeth aching at the force. “He gave me no warning, he just—came at me.”
“Hit me back!” He pushes my chest. “Come on, fucking hit me!”
“I didn’t fight back. I couldn’t, wouldn’t. My body just froze in place. But behind us, my surviving brothers begged me to fight.”
“Fight, Julien! Fucking fight!”
“Hit him!”
“Get him, Julien! Fight back!”
“And my brother kept taunting me…”
“You’re so fucking weak.” A hard crack to the side of my skull.
“You’re gonna let me kill you?” Another punch.
“Like how he killed our mother? Infecting her with his fucking sickness. You’re gonna let me do that to you?
” I fall, and a foot slams into my ribs.
“You’re just like her, so fucking loyal, it’s so pathetic, weak.
” Another kick. “I’ll kill you, and there will be nothing left of her.
Nothing. Nothing,” he snarls, kicking and kicking.
“She’ll have died for fucking nothing, you cowardly piece of shit—”
“And somewhere in that roar of grief, of rage and hate and betrayal, something took over me.”
There’s always been a beast inside me, my father tried to tame it with fists, but he only emboldened it. It was my mother, my smart, caring mother who could ease it, who helped me breathe through it.
But she was gone, and my brother just unchained it.
When the sounds of my memory slip through, Jasmine’s breath hitches.
The wet, sickening noise of fists on flesh, the spray of his blood, his gasps, then the feel of it soaking through my clothes, sticking to my skin.
Staining me.
“I didn’t mean to win,” I rasp, cutting the sounds away. “He always was the better fighter. Faster. Stronger. But there’s always been something in me, and when I had him on the ground, the ring red with our blood, I looked down and he… he smiled at me.”
My hand trembles, gripping the chain, letting it tether me to here, to this realm.
“And I—I couldn’t… I couldn’t kill him.” I take a shuddering breath. “So she did. Stamped on his neck, crushed it.”
That horrific sound rings in my ears, I lower my face, try to hide my wince.
“Ezekial has… offered to meld this memory away from me.” My lips pull into a brittle smile as I face her again. “But I don’t deserve that. I should feel it, I should remember it. Him.”
I don’t deserve to forget.
“I let her kill him, because I couldn’t. Just like how we let our father kill our mother.”
Because I was always too much of a coward to make the right choice. And now, that decision will haunt me forever.
“Julien…” she murmurs. “It wasn’t your fault. You were given an impossible choice and I’m… I’m so sorry you were put through that. No one should ever have to make a decision like that... I…” She clearly wants to say more, but she doesn’t understand there’s nothing more to be said.
Especially when her eyes say everything for her, the soft red brimming with tears that slowly trickle out.
I shift instinctively, stretching out my arm until my fingers brush hers, and she doesn’t pull away. She looks at my other hand instead, my fingers still wrapped tight around the chain.
“He wanted you to live,” she murmurs, stating what I realised only years later. The way he spoke to me, the things he said, it was all to make me live. “He chose you, Julien.”
I close my eyes. That smile again, his—bloodied, soft, resigned. A final gift.
Because he let me win.
And some days… Some days, I wish he hadn’t. Some days, I wish I had joined my mother.
“And after,” she swallows, being careful with her words. “After… what happened? How did you…”
“She drained me next,” I whisper, eager to have this part over. “Drank me to the edge of death, fed me her blood, turned me and then she just… left. But I wasn’t alone.”
I look away, fighting back that horrific memory, trying to calm the beast rattling inside. I can’t hold her gaze through this next part.
“A newborn vampire has no control. No mercy or conscience. Just a burning need to feed.”
“Julien… No… No don’t—”
Deafening screams, a room slick with my brothers’ blood, filled with half-gasping corpses as I sink my teeth into them, tearing away chunks of flesh, gnawing on muscle and bones until there’s nothing left…
“I fed on them.” Breathe. “My brothers, the ones who survived, who begged me to fight back.” Breathe through it, just breathe. “I… I tore them apart.”
Her fingers brush mine, caressing me in a soft, barely there touch, like she doesn’t see the monster I’m revealing. Then she shifts closer, her thumb stroking steady circles over my hand.
And Goddesses help me, I need it. I need her.
“I don’t know what to say.” Her voice wavers, eyes still locked on mine. “You lost everything, and then… you lost yourself too.”
I close my eyes and exhale the kind of pain that never really leaves. I don’t deserve her compassion, her understanding, but I can’t deny how good it feels.
“Do you miss him?” her soft touches never stop as she asks.
I nod, then add, “I miss who he was before.”
Before power twisted him, before grief carved him hollow, before he stopped being my brother and became something else entirely.
But I can’t escape blame. We both stepped into hell together. He simply left it sooner.
She leans in, even closer, so close the warmth of her knee brushes mine. “You don’t have to tell me more,” she says gently, too kind, so stark after what I’ve just revealed. “But I just need to know… did you find her? The woman who…”
The woman who turned me. Damned me. Killed my brother. Left me to feed on mine.
I turn my hand beneath hers, palm up and open. Waiting to see what she’ll do… and when she laces her fingers through mine like it’s the easiest thing in the world, my heart thuds.
I shake my head. “I never saw her again.”
“And you were alone.” Her words trail off, soft as dusk. “After all of that, you were just… on your own?”
I study her expression, trying desperately to imagine what she’s thinking. Wishing she would drop her mental wall, just for a moment.
“For the first few decades, yes. But it was a haze.” A blur of bloodlust, an unrelenting, feverish hunger gnawing at me. “Newly turned vampires often struggle with their needs, and I was no exception. I needed the solitude.”
Couldn’t risk being around others. Didn’t believe I deserved it.
“In time, cruelty became my nature too, just like my father.” Her fingers twitch around mine. “I lost most of my humanity. I indulged every whim and took what I desired, without consequence. The only sin I didn’t commit, was forcefully turning another. It seemed I had some… morality left in me.”
“Maybe it was your mother,” she whispers.
I stare at Jasmine, hearing the words but not understanding. The suggestion that my mother’s kindness still lingers in me… it feels like a lie.
But Jasmine believes it, I see it in her burning gaze, daring me to defy her, and somehow, that belief unmoors me more than any blade ever could.
“I also find it hard to believe someone so cruel, so evil”—her voice lowers, turning faintly mocking—“would save a random fae. A complete stranger.” She raises her brows at me, waiting for argument.
But I won’t, especially not when she’s holding my hand.
Satisfied by my silence, she gives a small smirk before asking, “When did you meet Sai?”
There’s something in the way she says it, like she doesn’t see the monster I just shared with her, like she wants me to see what she does.
“I spent long stretches in the Dark Realm, observing the chaos, but when the Dark War began, I left. I began wandering the Earth Realm—countries, districts—for a few decades. Until one day, I felt… a pull.”
The same pull I felt the night we changed our route to The Inferno.
“It was to a realm I couldn’t enter alone. But by then, I knew how. I visited Purgatory, seduced a high fae, persuaded her to invite me. And there I found… Sai.”