Chapter 36
Vastion
They watched me with a fear I no longer commanded.
I knew it the second I felt the thumping of my heart, a deafening reawakening after centuries of slumber.
The sound was a foreign percussion in my ears; a shadow of a memory, shocking me with disbelief.
It was in the first gasp for air that I was certain I was dying.
This, I thought, was the threshold of the Endless.
But as one breath became tethered to the next, my frantic heartbeat slowed. My lungs began to ebb and flow with forgotten necessity. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, and something new was cradled beside it.
A pulse.
Warmth flooded my limbs, yet the immense strength and energy I once possessed now felt entirely depleted.
Most jarring was the heat. My skin, once as cold as stone, began to perspire, an agonizing attempt to regulate this new internal fire.
Esiree’s brother and father stood back, each clutching makeshift weapons, unsure of the creature before them.
I, who had not known a moment’s weakness in centuries, now cowered within the fragile shell encasing my soul.
I tried to unsheathe my fangs. Nothing. Not even a twinge of pressure in my gums. I inhaled, trying to discern the air, but the symphony of scents had collapsed into a dull haze of copper and smoke. Blood. It was everywhere, on my tongue, on the table.
The table. Where Esiree lay, broken.
I moved toward her, but my legs were leaden, anchored to the floor by exhaustion. My throat burned with a dry, scratching fire. I needed water. I ached for it. My knees buckled, and I gripped the edge of the table to remain upright.
“Water,” I rasped, the word crackling in my throat. “I. Need. Water.”
Ari held out a pitcher at arm’s length, his eyes wide as he watched me gulp down the liquid my body now required.
I drank with abandon, water dribbling down my chin as my chest heaved. Then, too, came an indescribable hunger, beginning to well in the pit of my stomach.
The exhaustion I felt was incomprehensible, but I wrestled against the one truth I refused to name.
Human. I was human.
The truth was written in the heat of my skin and the beating of my heart.
Esiree’s blood had been more than mere sustenance; it was a biological undoing.
Every drop I’d consumed acted as a literal antidote; a rare and possibly singular cure that had hunted the disease through my veins until the Vampyr in me was starved out.
“Help her,” I uttered through my own denial. “Please, help her!”
“When will she start to hunger?” Ari asked, his voice tight with panic. “How soon will the Turning begin?”
“She’s not…afflicted,” I answered, trying to grasp the impossible logic of it. “She’s not going to turn. You must tend to her wounds! Now!”
Nile realized then that I was as lost as they were. He moved with a healer’s uncompromising purpose.
“We must cool her body. The fever will claim her if we do not break it.”
Ari held wet cloths to her forehead and chest, wringing them out and replacing them in a frantic cycle. But Esiree did not stir. My heart was a wild thing, hammering against my ribs with a measure of fear I was no longer equipped to handle.
In the flickering shadows of the corner, Nile worked with the hurried precision of a much younger man.
He crushed dried roots and whisked several powders into a shallow bowl, the mixture releasing a pungent, bracing aroma of bitter willow bark and sharp menthol.
As he approached the table, the medicinal sting of the paste hit my nostrils.
He gestured for me to lift the tattered, blood-soaked fabric from her abdomen. My hands trembled as I bared the ugly wounds.
“This will stave off infection,” Nile said, “but first we must prepare to cauterize the wound. The small punctures I can stitch, but these gashes are too deep. Fire is the only thing that will starve the bleeding.”
“You mean to burn her?” I asked, my voice a fragmented whisper.
“Better she be scarred and alive than smooth beneath a shroud,” Ari snapped.
Outside the house, the sounds of violence and chaos began to wane, but inside my mind a new war was erupting; one I had no weapons to fight.
If Esiree did not survive this, I knew with a terrifying clarity that I had no desire to outlive her.
I nodded at her brother, knowing her fate had slipped through my fingers and into his.
“Do whatever you must,” I said, the words nearly choking me as I fought back a tidal wave of trepidation.
She had been on the verge of claiming forever. We were supposed to have eternity—but in this brittle moment, I realized that even an endless life would never have been enough.
I possessed no healing skills, only a desperate curiosity and a newfound reliance on those with steadier hands.
I sank into a chair beside the table, unable to leave my wife’s side, pressing cool cloths to her feverish skin while the two other men who loved her prepared for the unthinkable.
Across the room, Ari thrust an iron into the open hearth, his face illuminated by the orange glow as he waited for the metal to reach its molten brilliance.
I knew that at any moment, one of my kind could barge through the doorway—seeking their queen or king.
And while her family may not have said it aloud, the truth hovered between us like a gathering storm.
Any one of the Vampyr would know immediately the truth of my condition.
Whoever discovered us first, their reaction would carry the weight of the entire kingdom.
“Ari, hold her shoulders down. You, squeeze her hand. She will likely awaken, writhing from the pain,” Nile warned. “I do not have the strength to do this to my daughter any more than necessary. You must hold her steady!”
The agony of performing such an act on one’s own child, whose life hung in the balance, manifested as a raw, quiet desperation unlike anything I had witnessed in all my centuries. Seeing it, I steeled my resolve for her father’s sake as much as my own.
Nile cleansed the area, sanitizing it as best was possible, and glanced at his son with a look that begged forgiveness.
The moment he pressed the scalding metal to her skin, my nostrils flared at the scent of burning flesh.
Esiree’s body seized, her muscles coiling violently against the heat.
Her eyes burst open, and she fought against her brother’s grasp, pure instinct driven by the need to flee the burn.
“It’s okay! Es, it’s going to be okay!” I wanted to cup her face, to shield her, but I needed both hands to keep her arms pinned while her father performed the brutal work required to save her.
As the second burn connected with her skin, she let out another harrowing, broken cry.
“I promise you’ll be okay. Just one more,” I whispered, as much for my own benefit as hers.
Her eyelids flickered, struggling against the undertow of darkness.
My fingers interlaced tightly with hers as Nile prepared the final strike.
Her head lolled to the side; her gaze met by my silence.
In that momentary stare, we spoke a thousand words.
Her body recoiled once more from the final marking, and tears trickled from her lashes before her eyes mercifully surrendered to the dark.
I thanked the Gods that Alyric, after all her years of service, had not beheaded me on sight.
Whether driven by allegiance, fear, or some other flicker of hope, she did as I instructed and brought Orin directly to me.
When he arrived, he was drenched head-to-toe in the pungent blood of the Forlorn.
I wondered how long it would take for his predatory senses to catch my unmistakable human scent.
“Impossible…” he uttered in disbelief. Even then, he dipped into a low, instinctive bow, though he could not take his eyes off me. “You’re…you’re human?”
The words teetered between a statement and a question. He was the first to speak the truth aloud, shattering the silence we had used to shield our own denials.
Nile confirmed Orin’s suspicions with the dry detachment of a chemist reading a litany of tedious facts. “He has a pulse. He bleeds yet does not heal. He requires true sustenance. I have found no evidence to suggest he retains a single Vampyr trait.”
“But how?”
The answer was more confounding than the transformation itself.
In the few hours we remained hidden, we’d managed to stabilize Esiree.
While she rested in a fitful sleep, I allowed her father to poke and prod at me like I was one of the Parcaetes’ experiments.
In truth, I would have preferred the skillful hands of Tyber, but a retreat to Eventide in this state would have invited the kind of scrutiny that would undo the kingdom.
“Her,” I answered, jutting my chin toward my resting wife.
Orin glanced at Esiree’s still form. “Alyric said she’d been attacked. That she was not expected to survive the night.”
“She was clawed, not bitten, though her wounds were still grave,” I said, wincing as the phantom heat of her blood returned to my tongue. “I tried to turn her. To save her!”
“You did what?” Orin’s eyes narrowed, the unmistakable glare of accusation radiating from every feature. “It is treason, you know that!” he roared, appalled at my disregard for our laws. “You risked everything for—”
“—I’d do it again!” I interrupted, my own voice rising to meet his.
“And now you will lose your kingdom and your crown. Through some foul witchcraft, you have lost your power!” he snarled, like a brother scolding their reckless sibling.
“And I have regained my humanity,” I stated, letting the glaring truth settle between us. “Don’t you see? She is the cure!”
Orin’s posture relaxed. “How do you know this isn’t a fluke? My King, you could be sick. You could succumb to death at any moment. We have no idea what has transpired here.”
“That is why I need your help.” I had been feverishly crafting a plan, one that required us to escape from Leto uncaptured. “We must return to Eventide. The Parcaetes are the only ones who might provide the answers we seek.”
Orin’s brow furrowed as he pressed his thumb to the bridge of his nose, trying to grasp the magnitude of my request.
“You want me to sneak the now-human King of Devana back into the Heart? Into a city of Vampyr, who would behead us all for concealing such...necromancy?”
“Yes. You will tell them we were both gravely injured. We head back as quickly as possible, and we set sail with only those we can trust. You and Alyric must determine who can be sworn to silence.”
“You’re not taking her without us,” Nile insisted, suddenly commanding the conversation. “I will not be parted from my daughter until I see with my own eyes that she has recovered.”
Her father was an older, frail man who had spent the last hour hobbling around with a single crutch, the urgency and speed with which he’d moved earlier gone now that adrenaline had escaped his body. He was no match for my human form, let alone Orin’s strength.
Skepticism lined my face, which Nile took as an invitation to speak further. “I am the only person equipped to monitor you both on this journey, and you would benefit from having me nearby should your health deteriorate further.”
His argument rang true, and I could not deny a father the opportunity to care for his wounded daughter. With no other healers nearby, I agreed to Nile’s terms—an accord that only further frustrated Orin.
“Four humans?” He threw his hands in the air, his voice an exasperated whisper. “You want me to sneak four fucking humans into the Heart. This new affliction has turned you mad!”
“I am doing this for our kingdom!” I shouted.
Why couldn’t he see the burden I still shouldered?
“I could easily disappear with my wife and leave this realm to unravel. I am certain I will be dethroned, if not executed as a traitor the moment the truth is revealed. But I am choosing to navigate this instead of fleeing. Do you not see that?”
Orin’s posture shifted, a flicker of his usual deference returning at the sound of my royal tone. I stepped closer, looking him in the eye with a gaze that had commanded legions for centuries.
“I am still the king. She is still your queen,” I stated, my voice low and unwavering. “The only question that remains, Orin... Are you still my loyal commander?”