"How long have you had these?" I ask.
"Since I was human." He turns to face me, and I see something in his expression I've never seen before. Vulnerability. Rawness. Like a wound that never quite healed. "Over six centuries now."
Six centuries. The number is almost impossible to comprehend.
"And they've survived all that time?"
"I buried them before my life changed. Hid them where no one would find them." Something dark passes across his face. "When I was finally able to go back for them, a very long time later, theywere damaged but intact. I had them properly preserved about a hundred years ago, when conservation techniques improved."
I move closer, drawn by curiosity. "Who were they from?"
For a long moment, I think he won't answer. Then he turns to a page near the front of the portfolio. Through the protective sleeve, I can see cramped handwriting on yellowed parchment.
"This one is from my mother. She wrote it the year before she died, before I was turned. Asking when I would come home. Whether I'd found a wife yet. Whether I was eating enough." A ghost of a smile crosses his face. "Mothers, apparently, are the same across centuries."
"What did you tell her?"
"That I would visit soon. That I was too busy for a wife. That I was eating plenty." He turns to another sleeve, not touching the document itself. "I never saw her again. I was turned three months later."
The grief in his voice is old but not gone. Buried, maybe, but still there underneath six centuries of control.
"I'm sorry," I say, because I don't know what else to say.
"It was a long time ago." He closes the portfolio gently and moves to the sidebar, pouring two glasses of whiskey. Offers one to me.
I take the glass, our fingers brushing briefly during the exchange. His skin is cool, smooth, and the contact sends a small shock through my system that I pretend not to notice.
"You're not what I expected," I say, taking a sip. The whiskey burns pleasantly, familiar despite my changed physiology. "When I first heard about you, the gatekeeper, the one who controls the blood supply, I imagined someone colder. More ruthless."
"I am cold. I am ruthless." He takes a drink from his own glass. "When necessary."
"But not always."
"No." His eyes meet mine, dark and unreadable in the firelight. "Not always."
I move to one of the leather chairs near the fire and sit, suddenly needing the distance. He remains standing, leaning against his desk, watching me with that intense focus that makes me feel like he's seeing more than I want to show.
"The letters," I say, gesturing toward the closed portfolio. "You said some were from men you served with. Your soldiers."
"Yes." He glances back at the leather case. "Fifty-three men under my command. We fought together for twelve years before Luciano took me."
"What were they like?"
The question seems to catch him off guard. He's quiet for a long moment, and I wonder if I've overstepped. But then he begins to speak, and his voice is different, softer, more distant, like he's reaching back through centuries to touch something long buried.
"They were young, mostly. Farmers' sons who'd never held a sword before I trained them. Merchants' sons looking for glory. A few younger sons of nobility with no inheritance, trying to make their own way." He takes another drink. "They were scared at first. Green. Didn't know how to hold a formation or read terrain or keep their heads when arrows started flying."
"But you taught them."
"I taught them. Drilled them until they could fight in their sleep. Learned their names, their families, their fears." His expression shifts, something painful flickering across it. "By the time we'd been together a few years, they weren't just soldiers. They were brothers. Family."
I think about my own found family, the fighters I trained with, the contacts I trusted, the world I built for myself in the underground circuit. All of it gone now. All of it unreachable.
"I understand that," I say quietly. "Finding family in unexpected places."
His eyes meet mine again, and something passes between us.
"You had that in the fighting world," he says. It's not a question.
