PROLOGUE
Farandwide,asfar as her eyes could reach, everything was red.
Red and mangled and dead.
Limbs protruding from torn bodies at wrong angles, swords still clutched in hands frozen by rigor mortis, charred corpses fuming in the chilly morning air.
And so much blood.
Not the kind she craved to feel gliding down her throat, sipped directly from the plump vein of an orgasmic human.
No.
This was a foul kind of blood.
Pungent and rotting.
The blood of the dead.
Death permeated all around her as Ereshkygall sank to her wobbly knees in the blood-soaked mud, clutching her lover’s near-lifeless fingers in her hand.
Alektriona gave a gurgled, wet cough, as crimson rivulets dribbled down her chin, pooling at the base of her once immaculate, alabaster neck. Her battered fingers twitched in a feeble attempt to squeeze Ereshkygall’s hand.
“Alek, love, no. Conserve your strength,” she said, although she knew bone-deep there was no such thing left in her lover’s body. Her skin had already taken on the sickly pallor of demise, and all they had left were mere moments of consciousness.
“Please, please, Alek, I urge you to reconsider. Let me turn you.”
Ereshkygall became frantic as more blood poured out of Alektriona’s mouth, soaking her torn leathers. If the darn female would only accept becoming a vampire, maybe she could steal her from death’s cold, unwavering embrace.
It was a futile attempt; she already knew it.
They had already seen the outcome of this battle.
They knew the cost.
The toll.
The sacrifices.
“It’ssss over…Eresh.” Alektriona’s once melodious voice was nothing but a broken whisper. “The prophecy…” More blood spilled down her chin with every strangled word, “…ensure it passes.”
There was still so much Ereshkygall wanted to say. So much love she wanted to profess to the heavens and the rapidly cooling body of her lover. So many promises of a happily ever after that would never transpire now. She choked on the almost-there taste of those ephemeral moments, on the intangible, heartbreakingly beautiful could-have-beens.
She closed her eyes in defeat and acceptance, trying to halt the imminent spill of bloody tears that threatened to blur her vision. As such, she missed the infinitesimal second when Alektriona’s once hauntingly azure eyes lost their last glimmer of light. All she heard was a feeble gasp and a faint whooshing sound that she would later tell herself was Alektriona’s pure soul taking flight.
Then nothing.
There was such a deafening silence in death. There was no peep to be heard on the battlefield, no intake of breath or rustle of war-torn leathers.
She was the last one standing.
When she finally opened her eyes, she was greeted by Alektriona’s pale, still form, a weak smile forever etched on her features.
“May we meet again in the afterlife, my love,” Ereshkygall whispered, and the breeze scattered her words, taking them to the heavens above where all her friends had departed to.
Akaori was gone.
Aeon too.
