We stood in silence for a while, until finally he said, “I loved Anna. She was human and we were to be married. It was back in a time when vampires killed more often than they left humans alive. I marked her, but back then I was too busy trying to hide what I was to fully be able control the vampire population. And so many vampires lurked at night and fed without care. I didn’t know if the mark would be enough to keep her safe.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “So, I turned her. Her craving for blood was uncontrollable. She killed relentlessly. Whole families were slaughtered.” He swallowed. “I tried for months to get her feeding under control. We were forced to move a dozen times, but she drew attention wherever we went. The humans went on a rampage and joined forces with the witches. And they slaughtered our kind mercilessly. When Anna took the life of two young girls, I knew I had to end it.”
Shards of metal tore through my heart for his pain, for the strength he’d had and the agony it had caused him to kill her.
He let out a shuddering breath. “It was my fault.”
“It was not your fault.”
He glanced down at me. He looked distraught, broken. “It was. I could read her mind. I knew she wasn’t the sweet thing she portrayed herself to be. It was her darkness that drew me. It captivated me. And I still turned her.”
I touched his arm; his muscles were as taut as stone. “You did what you needed to do to save your people. To save children.” I scrambled around for something else to say, something to ease his pain, but sometimes there were no words that could adequately convey the depth of emotions tearing through your body.
“Come here.” I took his hand and led him to the bathroom, then took in a chair. “Sit,” I ordered.
Numb, he sat down. I grabbed a washcloth, ran it under the warm water, and wrung it out. He stopped breathing as I gently wiped Mary’s blood off his neck. The washcloth quickly soaked red.
His brow flickered as I unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. His hands fell back limply to his side as if he didn’t have the energy, the willpower to lift them. Twisting back to the sink, I threw the bloody washcloth in the bin and took out a fresh one, running warm water over it. A red patch of Mary’s blood on his chest glared at me like a cyclops’s eye. He was silent, his chest rising and falling faster than normal. He remained silent as I worked slowly and diligently to remove all signs of Mary’s death from his body.
“No one has ever bathed me,” he said after a long moment, his voice hoarse.
Hurt panged in my chest. He was tough, so tough, no one realized he needed to be looked after too. How hard that must be, to only have yourself to rely on. How crushingly lonely the king of vampires—The Death Bringer—must be.
“You deserve to have someone take care of you, like you take care of everyone else.” I tried to keep the choke from my voice and failed. “I know Mary wanted that for you.”
Karson made a shaky, heart-wrenching sound and closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, they shone with tears. His fingers shook as he took my hands in his and kissed them. I sank to my knees between his thighs as he pressed my hands against his broken heart.
“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered. “You’re far too good, too pure, for someone like me. You should pack up your bags and leave.”
I blinked back tears. “I’m not going anywhere. I may not be your first love, Karson, I may not even be your second, but I plan to be your last.”
The words—the lie—hung heavy between us. We both knew I couldn’t be his last, not without him turning me or if I drank from the spelled waters. Neither of us would ever let that happen. Not while we had a choice.
“You are my brightest light. You are everything I want. Everything I didn’t even realize I needed.” A tear trickled down from the corner of his eye, racing toward our clutched hands. His fingers still trembled as he brushed strands of hair off my cheek. “In a perfect world, you would have been my first, my middle, and my ending.”
Through the darkness and despair, a small slip of light eased the clench of my heart. “You can’t end.”
“No,” he said huskily. “But if I could, my love for you would go on until my last breath, and even after, my love would still live on. It would stay living on while ever the stars still whispered to the night sky.”
Karson lifted me up and sat me on his knees. Our arms entwined, my face rested into the crook of his neck, his facenuzzled against my ear. We held each other, our bodies in tune, like the moon danced with the night.
“I will find a way to always be together,” he murmured, sucking in a shaky breath. “Because life without you in it, Amelia, is not a life worth living.”
He spoke so quietly I barely registered it. “What?” I whispered, pulling back and staring into his hazel eyes. I wanted to ask him what he meant, but Karson’s lips siezed my mouth and stole the question from my mind.
His kiss was soft, warm, and desperate.
His hold was tender, strong and safe.
His love felt like I’d finally found home.
Karson brokethe kiss and stood effortlessly, placing me on my feet.
“I need to go out. I will be gone most of the night.” His expression was filled with love. Something else flickered, something I couldn’t quite place.Guilt?
My hands reached for him, taking hold of his arms, not wanting him to leave, not wanting to let him go. “Where are you going? Can I come?”
His lips lingered on my forehead. “No. I will end this, and then I promise you, you will have the life you deserve.” He paused and drew in a breath. “No matter what happens, I need you to remember how much I love you.”
No matter what happens.Panic sparked inside, as panic did when I knew how much danger he would be in going against Sarah, especially if she had gathered an army of vampires and witches. Immortal or not. “Karson?—”
