“I’m not entirely sure,” Oriana answered honestly. “Something happened tonight, and it made me…” Oriana paused, mulling over what she was about to say, surprised by her own thoughts. “It made me feel things I haven’t felt before.”
“Whatever happened, child?” Haldis continued to stroke Oriana’s hair as she listened.
“Garren kissed me tonight,” she confided, trying to understand the way she had felt in that moment. “I haven’t been with a man since…”
“I know dearest, you don’t have to tell me,” Haldis soothed. “How did it make you feel?”
“It…it felt as if the very essence of my being had settled, finding contentment, finding that piece of itself that had been missing. I felt whole again for the first time in these six centuries with the curse.” She stared into the dancing flames of the fire. “But how is that even possible? I’ve known him but three days. With Darragh it took time. It took getting to know one another intimately before I felt any sort of affection, and even that feeling, that…love. It was not the same. Maybe it was not true love at all.”
Oriana thought back to the first time she had met Darragh. His eyes had sparkled like the Winter Sea, dark and captivating. She remembered thinking how attractive he was, but his body language had put off an heir of haughty arrogance that she had instantly despised. Eerily, It had reminded her of her brother. How incredibly wrong her first impression had been. He was the most loving, caring person she had ever met. A single tear escaped from the corner of her eye, and she flicked it away before it could roll down her cheek.
“With Garren, there is a connection of sorts between us, like a tangible thing that I can feel tugging at my core.”
“He is different.” Haldis began. “I felt it as soon as you brought him through these doors. That wound should have killed him. Anyone else would have perished within hours, but he endured the injury for days. I’ve been searching through my notes and texts, but nothing I did should have saved him. It helped, but his own body healed itself of that wound and the poison in his veins.”
“He was lucky.” Oriana offered, not wanting to think about it, not wanting to understand why he hadn’t died or how he had made it through the Phantom Wood and into her utopia.
“He is different,” Haldis said again. Oriana looked up into her tender clear-blue eyes and thought back to the first time she had met Haldis, many years ago.
Haldis had been only a child, barely in her tenth year; it had been on the eve of the last blood moon. When the monster attacked, she had been hiding beneath her family’s home, peering through a small hole in the crawl space. She saw Oriana kill her entire family. Saw the slaughter of so many of the village people, and she saw as Oriana transformed from the hideous deformation of the demon and back into her true self.
When Haldis had ventured out of her hiding spot in the crawl space of the very home they sat in now, she had grabbed a discarded shovel on the ground and screamed, running for Oriana and bringing the sharp edge of the tool down upon Oriana’s head and neck repeatedly. Oriana had sat motionless, letting her, welcoming it. How she had wished the little girl could have her revenge, could actually kill her and avenge not only her family, but all the others who had fallen victim to her bloodlust.
It had been many swings later when the young Haldis grew too tired. Adrenaline wearing off, she had dropped the shovel and stared at Oriana in confusion. “I’m sorry,” Oriana had said, looking into Haldis’ eyes, her own glistening with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry.”
Haldis had stared at Oriana for a long time before hesitantly reaching a small, trembling hand out toward her. Oriana had looked up into her crestfallen face and downcast eyes, a look she knew mirrored her own, and took it.
The young Haldis had led her into this very home, and from that day forward, they had been inseparable, helping one another survive and form a new life together in Sardorf.
It never got easier the battle between her love for these people and the joy her dark self gained from ripping them apart.
Her only reprieve was that the two halves of herself had continued to stay wholly separate from one another all these years. In between turnings, she felt no darkness inside. Her desire to inflict pain, her thirst for blood, and her need for carnage no longer plagued her.
She had lived her entire life before the curse fighting off dark, menacing thoughts of death and destruction, thoughts that always crept to the surface, begging her to act upon them. But once tasted, a lust for blood cannot be quenched.
She would never go so far as to call the lack of those dark thoughts a blessing, for it was the same once the monster was set free. She no longer felt any goodness, no thoughts of love and peace, only bloodlust. It consumed her like a wave of malevolence that wished to tear through everything in its path. No matter which form she was in, she remembered everything from both consciousnesses, which meant she was still both, even if she couldn’t feel the other side within her as she had always used to. It was confusing and disheartening because even though she couldn’t feel the darkness, she knew the bloodlust was always lurking, watching her life with great interest.
The tenth blood moon loomed ever closer, and once it finally arrived and she became the bloodlust for the rest of eternity, she knew it would go for the people she cared for most. It would take its time savoring those kills, enjoying every moment. And in the end, it would destroy her home, Sardorf, and then, inevitably, all of Svakland until the continent was nothing but a blood-soaked world of death.
The wood in the hearth crackled and popped, sending sparks flying. Oriana blinked, returning to the present fireside moment with Haldis, leaving those intrusive, dark thoughts to simmer in the far corners of her mind. Soon, she would need to find a way to lock herself away, a way to keep the monster contained for eternity. Very soon.
Oriana coaxed the embers with a fresh log before tossing it upon the fire.
“How did Garren feel about the kiss?” Haldis asked as Oriana settled herself on the chair across from Haldis, on the other side of the hearth.
“He pulled away,” she said softly. “He seemed almost agitated, and then insisted we come back here.”
“Maybe he felt he was taking advantage of you?” Haldis reasoned.
“No. He looked at me like he had seen a ghost. Possibly the memory of someone else–a past lover, maybe–caused him to pull away.” She remembered it well; he had pulled back so abruptly, startled, and his eyes had glimmered with confusion, as if he thought her to be someone else in that moment.
“It could be,” Haldis agreed.
“Now that I think about it.” Oriana pulled her legs up onto the chair she was now rocking in, hugging her knees to her chest. “He gave me a similar look yesterday morning just before I invited him to the market with me.”
“Might you remind him of someone?” Haldis sipped on a cup of tea sitting beside her chair, on a small oval stool.
Oriana thought back again to when Garren had stumbled through the forest toward her old cottage. She had been in her natural state, no glamour masking her features.
