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“Do you have a mom?” I asked suddenly.
The question slipped out before I could stop it. The silence between us stretched longer than I expected. When my gaze finally found hers again, her eyes looked distant—glistening with something that might have been tears.
“Are you okay?” I asked quietly.
Valentina cleared her throat before answering. She turned her head away so I couldn’t see her expression. “We all have mothers, Alexander. What a silly question.” Her voice cracked slightly halfway through the sentence, but she caught herself, shaking her head as if trying to laugh it off.
“You’re right,” I said quickly.
The lighter energy between us shifted, replaced by something heavier. Sadder. I hadn’t meant to upset her. I didn’t even know how I had. “I was only asking because you clearly got your looks from someone,” I added, trying to soften the moment. “She must be a sight.”
“She was,” Valentina said softly, finally looking back at me. “She really was.”
My chest tightened at how vulnerable she suddenly looked. Just as I started to reach toward her, Valentina set her empty blood bag aside and stretched out on her makeshift pallet on the floor. “We should get some sleep. We have a long day ahead tomorrow.”
That single word—was—was all I needed to understand.
I nodded, feeling strangely raw from the shift in her emotions. It wasn’t something I expected from her, and it left my mind more alert than I wanted to admit. There was clearly pain behind her voice, and she had avoided speaking about her mother to keep from reopening that wound.
With Valentina drifting off to sleep, I was left alone in the living room, stretched across the rug in front of the fire.
Sleep fought me for a while.
Eventually, it won.
It came in fragments.
And then, without warning, the warmth of the fire vanished. The side of my face pressed into snow. My eyes fluttered open, bitterly cold. The protection of the dome that once made me feel safe was gone. And the breeze that had followed our steps earlier… had returned.
It whipped across my face, slicing through the silence, tossing my curls into the air like they were dancing to a rhythm I couldn’t hear. When my vision adjusted, I saw a dark sky above me. Two powder-white moons hung low over the forest, streaks of orange and violet stretched across the atmosphere.
It was otherworldly.
Beautiful.
I pushed myself upright slowly, dazed and chilled, scanning the trees around me. My pulse thudded in my ears.
Then I saw her.
A familiar face.
Watching me.
Relief. Confusion.
I blinked through the moonlight. “Why did you bring me out here?” I asked.
TAINTED| CHAPTER 8
The Beast That Knows Me
Frigid winds threaded through the roots of my hair, tossing each curl in every direction. The thick wool covering my back did little to protect me from the brutal winter. Just like when I first arrived, I felt raw to the elements as my mind struggled to piece together how I’d ended up here.
One moment I had been drifting off to sleep, dreaming of dreaded calculus, then suddenly my face was buried in snow.
My eyes focused on the dark figure standing before me, slowly piecing together her features in the night. Even though I barely knew her, those finely carved cheekbones and that femininely sharp jaw were unmistakable, even in the sea of darkness. The stars framed her long silhouette in bright, buttery bursts of light as her deep obsidian eyes peered down at me.
Arianna didn’t approach at first.
