Chapter 2 — The Taste of Something Alive (1)

Lila woke up because someone was looking at her.

Not the cold. Not hunger. Someone was looking at the back of her head, and her skin knew it before her brain did. She opened her eyes and found herself in a strange bedroom: silk sheets, velvet drapes, a fire crackling in the hearth. And Kael Ravencroft, sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, watching her.

No telling how long he'd been there.

"…Creep." She pulled the blanket to her chin, voice gravelly. "Watching people sleep. Don't you have your own bed?"

"It's my bed."

"Then why am I in it?"

"I carried you up." He said it flatly. "You passed out. Low blood sugar, plus the rain. I was going to leave you to die at the door — but your sandwich is in my stomach. So I owe you a life."

Lila processed this for three full seconds, then seized on the important part: "You ate my sandwich?"

"Yes. It was terrible." He paused. "The worst thing I've eaten in two thousand seven hundred years."

"…Then why are your eyes red."

"I wasn't crying."

"They ARE red."

"That's the curse backlash." Another pause. "Not crying."

For the next three hours, Lila ran a complete diagnostic on this thousand-year-old monster using the full power of human common sense:

She pointed at the wall clock: "Your clocks are all stopped. Do you live in a morgue for time?"

"Time means nothing to me."

She dug out her phone (still one percent): "Do you have Wi-Fi? I need to send a distress text."

"What's that."

"…You don't know what Wi-Fi is? Then how do you talk to people?"

He raised a hand toward the window, where a raven sat watching them: "I send him."

"Does he fly faster than I text?"

"He doesn't get tired." He said. "He's been delivering my mail for two hundred years."

Lila looked at him like she was looking at a dinosaur that was still alive: "Fine. What do you normally eat?"

"I don't eat. I drink."

"Drink what?"

"Red wine. And don't ask the second question."

"You two are almost five thousand years old combined and you're still shy?" Lila rolled her eyes.

He didn't answer. He just watched her roll her eyes — intently, like he was observing an extinct species.

Then he showed her the room.

Third floor, end of the hall, a door that was never locked. Before he opened it, Lila expected treasure — a vault, masterpieces, the symbols of power. When he opened it, she found a memorial.

Portraits on every wall. Hundreds of them, dense and endless, from golden-haired girls to white-haired old men. Everyone in them was smiling. The light through the stained glass fell across those smiles, making them tender and eerie at once. There were soldiers in old uniforms, women in Victorian gowns, children who had never grown up, and every single one of them looked like they'd loved him.

"Who are they?" she asked.

"Family." He said. "They're dead."

"…How long have you lived?"

"Long enough." His voice was soft, like he was talking to himself. "Long enough that I've forgotten every single one of their voices."

Lila stood there and realized this castle full of treasures was terribly cold. She was standing in a museum of grief, curated by a man who couldn't feel grief anymore. Every portrait was a memory he'd stopped being able to access. She wondered what that was like — to be surrounded by the people you loved and know you'd lost the ability to remember how they sounded. She thought about her own mother's laugh, how she could still hear it on demand, and felt a sudden, fierce protectiveness toward this stranger that made no sense at all.

She spotted a painting in the corner, covered by a white cloth. She reached for it — her fingers had just touched the cloth when his hand closed around her wrist.

"Not that one. Don't look."

"Why?"

"Because I still remember her voice."

Her hand froze mid-air. She looked at his eyes — those gold, empty, abyss-filled eyes — and saw, for the first time, something light and faint rise in them. Like mist.

"…You remember her voice?" she said softly. "Out of all of them?"

"Yes."

"Why her?"

He didn't answer. His hand was still around her wrist, and she noticed, in a distant way, that his grip wasn't hurting her at all. It was careful. Like he was holding something breakable.

"Because she was the last one," he said finally, "who made me want to stay alive."

Lila didn't ask again. She just covered the painting back up and said:

"…Fine. Then let's go eat. I'll cook."

"I don't need food."

"You don't. I do." She said. "And what good is it to you if I starve? You'd lose the only person who talks to you."

The castle kitchen was the size of a chapel. Lila dug through the dusty cabinets and found enough ingredients to open a medieval restaurant — shriveled truffles, moldy saffron, a bottle of wine dated a hundred years ago. In the end the only things still alive were a bag of rice and a can stamped 1857.