I stare down at my love, running my finger softly down the side of her cold face. Why is she already cold?
How could she have done this for me?
“You knew the risks,” Solon says angrily to Lenore, and out of the corner of my eye I see him haul her to her feet. “You knew it might not work and you did it anyway.”
“I just wanted to help. She wanted me to. We both thought it was worth the risk. I’m sorry.”
“And you fed from her.”
“She asked me to!”
“You should have told me.”
“You would have stopped me.”
“Damn right I would have!” Solon yells. “Look at what you’ve done.”
Even I have to look up at that. Lenore looks like she’s been slapped.
“What I’ve done? I’m the only one here who cared enough about her to actually help her. You went back to throwing parties,” she sneers at Solon. Then she fixes her eyes on me and I know I’m about to get the brunt of it. “And you’re a piece of shit who decided to break her heart because you were too much of a coward to love her the way she deserved.”
I have nothing to say to that, nothing to add.
Everything she said is true.
I am a piece of shit. Most definitely a coward. I left things too late. I should have been at Amethyst’s side the moment she moved out, begging her back into my life. I should have given her the ultimate grovel, begged for her forgiveness. And I didn’t do that because I was too fucking afraid. Yeah, I also wanted to give her space, but mainly it was because I was scared.
And yet all that fear, it meant nothing.
This, this here? This is the real fear.
This is real terror.
This is the fear that sits deep within your bones, reminding you every day for the rest of your life that the person you thought you’d get to love, is gone. What I felt before was just ego-serving bullshit, a trivial way to protect the heart, as if it was a force field that could keep love out.
It didn’t work. There is no force field to keep love out.
When it wants in, it gets in.
And when it’s gone, it’s gone.
And everything I was so afraid of just came to get me ten-fold.
The before times, I remember Amethyst crying on me. Why can’t we go back to the before times?
I just want to go back to the before times, to an hour ago, when I still had the chance to make everything right. You don’t realize that life is a bastard and there are no guarantees. Somewhere in the back of my head, I thought I wouldn’t lose Amethyst so soon because I just suffered a huge loss. That wouldn’t be fair.
But life isn’t fair. And no one is above the cards it deals.
I run my finger over Amethyst’s lips, unable to come to grips with what’s happening.
I’m losing someone I love again.
I’m losing her.
The one I love the most.
Suddenly Lenore is by my side, on her knees, her fingers curling over my wrist.
“Please?” she asks in a trembling voice. “Let me try one more time.”
She moves my hands away from Amethyst’s mouth, then she takes her wrist up to her mouth and tears her teeth into it. Blood splatters, flecks of crimson raining on Amethyst’s still face, and Lenore lowers her wrist over her mouth.
I glance up at Solon. He’s watching Lenore carefully, a resigned look on his face, like he doesn’t believe it will work.
“Come on, come on,” Lenore says to Amethyst’s lifeless body. She pries open her mouth with her other hand to get the blood in there easier, but it just starts to spill outside the corners of Amethyst’s mouth. Even for a vampire, the sight is both eerie and gruesome.
This can’t be fucking happening.
This can’t be how she dies.
“Is that what you did to me?” Solon asks, stepping closer. “Just like that?”
Lenore shakes her head and she’s crying again, tears spilling on Amethyst’s face and mixing with the blood. “No, it wouldn’t take with you.”
“Then how did you do it?”
She pauses, her wrist still pressed against Amethyst’s mouth, and looks at him over her shoulder. “Your heart. You were stabbed in the heart. I put the blood on the wound, on your heart.”
Solon raises his brows. “Perhaps you’ve taken the wrong approach.”
My eyes go wide. “What are you saying? You want to tear her fucking heart out?”
“She’s already dead, Wolf,” Solon says, and it’s like he plunged a sword in my chest, the finality of his words making me gasp. “It won’t hurt her. It’s worth a shot.”
“I didn’t actually remove your heart!” Lenore protests. She leans back and stares at Amethyst’s chest, at the pale smooth space just above her breasts. “I’m not doing it. I’ve done enough.”