"For what it's worth, I don't think you meant to harm her," he continues after a moment. "A young elf I met once said that everyone deserves a chance at redemption. That no one is beyond saving if they truly want to change. I told her she was naive. That some people are just born bad, born to destroy. No amount of wanting could change that."
I close my eyes. The young elf is wise. That sounds like something Rhianelle would say.
But Hrolf doesn't know what I am. A killer.
That's what I was made to be. Patchworked together from monsters, each piece chosen for its capacity to destroy.
"I deserve this." The words come out flat, emotionless. "I deserve to die a slow, torturous death for what I did to her."
"Self-pity doesn't suit you."
I close my eyes but that only makes the memories clearer and sharper. Rhianelle's limp body on the battlefield among the demon corpses. The blood pooling beneath her, soaking into the ash.
Hrolf strains against the bars again, reaching for the sword lodged through my chest.
"Come on, shift," he grunts. "You're bleeding."
Good.
The pain anchors me. It feels deserved.
But it isn't enough. Nothing will be enough if she dies. No amount of wound or suffering will balance that scale.
"Your wife saw something in you worth saving," Hrolf says after a moment. "Perhaps trust her judgment over your guilt."
He pushes himself upright and retreats to his own cell without another word. The scrape of stone and iron marks the distance between us.
Time passes and the pain in my chest becomes almost familiar. I tilt my head and listen, straining past the drip of water and the guard's footsteps resuming his rounds upstairs.
Trying to find Rhianelle's heartbeat.
I close my eyes and press my head back against the cold stone wall. The chill seeps through my clothes, into my bones. I welcome it.
Rhianelle is fighting for her life.
All I can do is sit here in the dark and wait to find out if I've killed her.
25
Chapter 24 Svenn
Dawn arrives painting the cell walls in shades of gold. Aelfric's sword is still lodged in my sternum. The blood has long since dried, creating rust-colored waterfalls down the stone and my chest.
The pain should be unbearable. Instead, I hang here in silence.
"You still with us, vampire?" Hrolf's voice drifts from the neighboring cell.
I ignore him. What is there to say? That I'm counting down to the end of everything that matters?
Maybe she will pull through.A small voice whispers.
Rhianelle is a fighter. She survived the forbidden forest for nine hundred years. A child alone in a forest of horrors, abandoned by everyone who should have protected her. I remember her telling me about it. How she'd hidden in hollow trees during the darkest hours, befriended creatures with too many teeth and eyes that glowed in the shadows.
Now she's dying because of me.
I have destroyed everything I have ever touched. I don't know why I thought she would be any different.
"Stop that."
