I grabbed the handle of the cast iron pan barehanded and hissed when it burned me.
Her grin widened. She handed me an oven mitt shaped like a cat. “That’s a yes.”
“I merely wish to honor the intimacy we shared by delivering her sustenance,” I said stiffly.
“Uh-huh. That’s what love is, big guy.”
I said nothing, but the wordlovelingered. It felt heavy in my chest. But I could not speak it.
The battle continued. I emerged from the kitchen with charred toast, eggs of questionable integrity, half a banana sliced with the precision of a surgeon, and coffee that tasted like the inside of a volcano.
Still, I arranged everything on a tray with a flourish. Presentation, at least, I could control.
When I entered her room, she was sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing my shirt, glasses sliding down her nose, laptop open. She looked up, startled, and blinked at the tray.
“Did… you make me breakfast?”
“I have suffered many things,” I said gravely, “but none like the trials of this morning.”
Her laugh was bright and immediate. “This toast looks like it’s seen things.”
“It has.”
She pulled the tray onto her lap and resumed typing. I sat beside her, curious despite myself. “What are you doing?”
“Budgeting,” she said. “Paying bills.”
I frowned. “And what, pray tell, is a bill? Is it something you owe the kingdom?”
She snorted. “Kind of. It’s what you pay to have electricity, water, internet… life.”
“And these debts,” I asked slowly, “they never end?”
“Not unless you die. Or become a billionaire.”
I stared at her screen, the rows of numbers, the columns markeddue soon.It was all so orderly, yet relentless.
She lived in a world that demanded constant payment. And still she laughed. Still she gave. A knot formed in my chest. I thought of all I took from her—her food, her home, her patience—and how little I gave in return.
“I have a great deal of gold,” I said quietly. “Hidden away. I must find my brother to reclaim it.”
She looked up. “What for?”
“So I may cease draining your resources. I’d like to take care of you for once. And perhaps…” I hesitated. “Perhaps he knows a way to undo what binds us, as I promised you.”
Her face fell, the light in her eyes dimming just slightly. “If that’s what you want.”
It wasn’t.
But I said nothing, because the truth was too much for me to face out loud. And because she deserved so much more in life than to be bound to a vampire against her will.
She leaned her head against my arm. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. Her warmth seeped through the linen and straight into the places I’d sworn were dead.
The scent of burnt toast hung in the air between us.
After a long silence, I murmured, “I shall conquer the toast.”
She laughed softly against my shoulder. “I believe in you.”
