He looked at me in disbelief, as if I had proposed the dumbest idea to ever exist in the entire history of existence itself. Maybe it was.
“It will be okay.” I hoped.
The words clearly did not quell his doubts. “I’ll be right outside.” He was talking to both of us, but his eyes were heavily upon her.
The soft click of the door snapped the tension between us. She seemed to come back to the surface. I stepped forward slowly. She didn’t flinch, didn’t reel back.
“Did he ... did Sebastian—”
“He didn’t do this.” Though he had certainly done a lot, he did not do this.
I could have told her I was attacked by a vampire, and Sebastian saved me. But the wound on my neck was already healing, likely before her eyes. And to be bit was seen as a contamination. My life was already over in her eyes, so I told her everything. The weight that lifted off my body was enough to send uncontrollable sobs racking through me. She was crying too at the end of it. Her hands pressedtightly over her mouth as if she could hold it all in. I sat beside her on the bed now.
When we finally caught our breath, her voice was weak and raspy. “You’re a vampire?”
I nodded.
She looked me over, examining me. “But you don’t seem so different.”
“I don’t really feel all too different.”
“But newborns ... they’re feral. They’re dangerous.”
“Sebastian said how they’re raised can dictate their behavior.”
“And he ... turned ...”
I nodded.
“Because that other ...”
“Alaric.”
“He would have?”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re both bonded ...”
I nodded again as she grasped for all the pieces, desperately trying to put it all together.
“And the vampires, they’re not demons?” She asked the question I still fought with even after everything. Lifelong beliefs run deep, leaving echoes behind even after attempts to dig it all out.
“With how Alaric is and how he’s taught his newborns to behave, I can see how we had thought that. But no, they are just from another world, just like us. Though they are different, we appear different to them too.”
“And you’ve been to their world?”
I nodded.
“What was it like?”
“It’s beautiful.” I smiled. “Like a dreamland.”
She sat there for a long moment staring blankly at a spot on the wall, until she finally let out a long sigh. “Oh, Charlotte, what have we done?” she whispered.
And I knew what she was grappling with, the same thing that swept me under like a rogue wave. She saw the life in me. She saw the humanity in the demons, who we were taught to fear and execute. She saw herself in me. And once you saw it, you couldn’t look away.
“All of those newborns.” Her voice broke on a suppressed cry.
