"Because she'll know." I stare into the fire, avoiding his eyes. "She'll hear something different in me, and she'll push, and I'll either have to lie or tell her that her sister is dead. That the person she's talking to is something else now."
"You're not something else. You're still you."
"Am I?" The question comes out sharper than I intended. "I drink blood to survive. I sleep through daylight. I can hear heartbeats from across a room and sometimes…" I stop, shaking my head.
"Sometimes what?"
"Sometimes they sound like food." The admission costs me something. "I hear humans talking, laughing, living their lives, and part of me is cataloging them. Which ones are healthy. Which ones smell clean. Which ones would be easy to take." I finally look at him. "That's not who I was. That's something else."
"That's the predator," Maximus says quietly. "It's part of you now, yes. But it doesn't have to define you. The fact that you're troubled by those thoughts means you're still Celeste. A true monster wouldn't question it."
"How do you know? Maybe I'm just a monster who hasn't accepted it yet."
"Because I've met true monsters." His voice is dark, heavy with memory. "Luciano was a true monster. He didn't question his nature; he reveled in it. Made art of cruelty. Enjoyed breaking people the way a child enjoys breaking toys." He leans forward slightly. "You are nothing like him."
The intensity in his voice makes me look away. It's too much, the firelight, the intimacy, the way he's looking at me like I matter.
"Luciano," I say, redirecting. "You said he turned you. But there's more, isn't there? The way you talk about him..."
He's quiet for a long moment. "He enslaved me for one hundred and fifty years."
The number hits me like a physical blow. "One hundred and fifty…"
"Years." He finishes his whiskey and sets the glass aside. "He turned me against my will and kept me as his... possession. Plaything. Weapon. Whatever he needed at any given moment."
I can't imagine it. Eight months of being a vampire alone has been hard enough. One hundred and fifty years of being controlled by someone who saw you as property...
"How did you survive that?"
"I buried the part of me that cared about survival. The part that hoped, that planned, that wanted things." His voice is matter-of-fact, like he's describing someone else. "I became exactly what he wanted me to be, until I wasn't anymore. Until I found a chance to escape and took it."
"And then what?"
"And then I spent a very long time being... not good." He stands, moving to the fire, his back to me. "I did things I'm not proud of. Became something I'm not proud of. It took centuries to build myself into someone I could tolerate being."
I watch the firelight play across his shoulders, the tension in his spine. The words come slowly, carefully, like they cost him something.
"The blood network," I say. "That's part of rebuilding yourself."
"Part of it." Something flickers across his face, there and gone. "Giving vampires access to clean blood, reducing the need for random attacks on humans, it's not absolution, but it's something. A way to create order instead of chaos." He turns to face me. "A way to protect people instead of destroying them."
"Like you wanted to protect your soldiers."
Something flickers across his face, surprise, maybe, at being understood. "Yes. Like that."
I stand without making a conscious decision to, drawn toward him like gravity. We're only a few feet apart now, close enough that I can see the reflection of the flames in his eyes.
"I don't know what I want to build," I admit. "I'm still just trying to survive. To figure out what I am, what I'm becoming. But I understand wanting to create something meaningful. To be more than just a predator."
"You already are more than that." His voice is lower now, rougher. "You've been a vampire for eight months, and you're fighting to hold onto your humanity. That's rare. Valuable."
"Or stupid."
"Perhaps both." He almost smiles. "They're not mutually exclusive."
We stand there in the firelight, not speaking. The silence is different now, charged, heavy with something I can't name. I'm aware of every inch of space between us. Aware of his stillness, his attention, the way his eyes haven't left my face.
"Why did you meet me at the gate?" I ask. "You didn't have to."
