There would only be a few more nights until Hallows Eve.
Though, this year, perhaps for the first time, melancholy settled in his heart rather than excitement.
The months he spent watching Penelope, resting on her roof while the sound of sorrow escaped her window. And in listening to her melodies, something in him began to shift. He was different than what he was. Though, he could not say how he differed. Only that at some point he noticed how alone he was.
And even more, he no longer knew whether he watched her out of curiosity… or yearning.
A yearning for what, though?
Elias pushed the question out of his mind as he opened the door to his cottage—his home. It had been many years since Osiris had helped him build it. Since he was accepted into the enclave. And yet, what relationships did he have, save for the Horseman who bore the same weight of eternity.
Though, it was in all truth better this way.
There were only so many funerals he could attend. Only so many ways he could learn to say goodbye before he perfected the elegy.
The inside of his cottage was lined with dark, almost red, wooden floorboards. The black walls surrounded the many paintings and books, broken up only by the arching windows.
Almost as comfortable as a coffin.
Elias rolled his shoulders, falling into his reading chair and throwing Eleanor’s letters onto the round table at his side, the parchment fanning across the dark wood.
He tipped his head back against the chair, eyes closing as the fire in the hearth breathed its orange light across the walls.
“Yearning,” Elias whispered again to the empty room, as though testing the weight of the word upon his tongue. It lingered there, sour and lasting.
“I do not yearn for things,” Elias exhaled, dragging his hands down his face as though he could rub the tension from his very skin. His voice was a low rasp. “A vampire that yearns? For a mortal?”
The thought itself was obscenity. Osiris falling for a mortal—that he could understand. But Elias? To crave not merely her blood, but her sorrow, her presence, her gaze?
No—whatever haunted him, it was not yearning. He would not call it that. He told himself it was nothing more than hunger, the oldest law of his kind. A wish to taste what had been denied him too long. He would drink. He would use her. And when his thirst was sated, he would leave her cold and empty in his wake. Just as her family had always done to beings.
Yes. That was all.
And yet, if in doing this, his indulgence should scandalize that self-righteous Mayor—should burn another scar of shame into that loathsome family—then all the sweeter the feast.
A low knock at the door snapped him from his reverie. Three raps, deliberate.
Elias of course knew who it was before he lifted himself from his chair and opened the door. The smell of burning was ever present no matter where his visitor went. Strong enough that it had masked a humans scent for weeks.
The door opened to reveal the Horseman. His lights were low, calm, and did not flicker about as they once would.
“It’s late,” Elias said, leaning in the doorway.
“It is.” Osiris gestured past him. “Which makes me wonder why you’re only just returning. My shadows sensed you leaving hours ago.”
“Am I meant to report to your wife now? Or do you just enjoy playing sentinel of our little enclave?”
Osiris exhaled—patient, weary. He stepped inside without asking, shadows trailing behind him. “You know she worries for you—”
“She worries for Penelope,” Elias cut in, shutting the door.
The Horseman leaned against the chair, meeting Elias’s gaze before nodding once. “For both of you. With Penelope’s father leading the crusade against us, her worry grows. She has yet to receive a letter back. And I fear it is still too dangerous for her to go to Autumntun herself.”
“Well, father dearest does—like many men in that town—keep Penelope under a strong lock. I couldn’t visit her until he left for a town meeting.”
“A town meeting?”
“Yes. There have been more of late.”
