Chapter 2 — The Taste of Something Alive (2)

"I'm cooking." She announced. "You sit there. And stop looking at me like I'm a specimen."

"I can't help it." He said. "You're the first living person I've seen in two hundred years."

"You haven't left the house in two hundred years?"

"No need." He said. "There's nothing out there I want."

"Do you want anything now?"

He didn't answer. He just watched her rinse the rice, light the fire, boil that small bag into porridge — clumsy, but carrying a warmth of living that he'd long forgotten.

The porridge was ready. Lila ladled some into a bowl and pushed it to him: "Try it. It's ugly, but the soul's intact — hey, you used that line already, it's mine now."

Kael Ravencroft looked at the steaming bowl of plain white porridge.

Two thousand seven hundred years. He'd drunk blood, sipped ambrosia, tasted everything the world had to offer. But that unremarkable, slightly burnt bowl of hot porridge made his throat tighten.

He lifted the bowl. He took a sip.

Hot, starchy, the taste of things that living people ate — it burned all the way down, into a body that had been cold for a thousand years.

He set the bowl down. He didn't cry. But his hands were shaking.

"How is it?" Lila asked. "Better than that can from 1857?"

"…Terrible." He said. "The worst thing I've ever eaten. That's two, now."

"Then why did you take another sip?"

He didn't answer. He picked up the bowl and drank the rest.

That night, Lila couldn't sleep. Wrapped in the velvet blanket, she wandered the corridor and found Kael on the terrace, staring at the moon.

His back was to her, moonlight on the pale side of his face, like a perfect, shattered statue. He heard her footsteps and didn't turn.

"Insomnia?"

"Vampires don't need sleep." A pause. "I was… listening."

"To what?"

"Your heartbeat." He turned, and his gold eyes were bright in the dark. "It hasn't stopped since you entered this castle. Thump, thump, thump. Like fire. Like a drum. Like the night two thousand seven hundred years ago when I was still alive."

Lila's throat tightened: "…Why do you talk like that, it's terrifying."

"Because it's true." He walked toward her, step by step. "Do you know how long it's been since I heard a heartbeat? The ones close to me are afraid to get near. The ones who get near me die. I live in a world with no sound, no warmth, no taste — until you broke in."

"…What do you want." She stepped back until her spine met the stone railing.

"I don't know." His voice was hoarse. "I was going to kill you. I had my hand around your throat at the door — and then you opened your eyes and looked at me and said, 'You look more scared than I do.' You frightened me, Lila Moore."

His breath landed beside her ear. Cold. Burning. Contradictory to the point of sickness.

"I'm not afraid of anything." He said, low. "The only thing I've ever been afraid of is that moment — when I had my hand on your throat and realized I didn't want to let go."

"Then let go now." She said. "I haven't agreed to let you hold on."

Kael froze. And then, for the first time in a thousand years, he laughed — a small, broken thing, like a child learning to walk.

It was an ugly laugh. The kind that forgot how.

Lila looked at him and felt her chest ache. She reached out and pressed her fingertips to his chest — no heartbeat there. Only a dead, cold stillness.

"Where's your heartbeat?" she asked.

"It's been gone for a long time."

"Where did it go?"

"I lost it." He said. "Somewhere in a century I can't remember."

Lila pulled her hand back and sniffled: "Fine. You owe me a sandwich, I'll remember that. Go find your heartbeat, I'm going to sleep—"

She turned to leave. A hand caught her wrist. Cold, iron-hard.

She looked back. He was looking down, black hair falling, expression hidden.

"Don't go." He said. "I… I've forgotten how to be around living people. Stay with me a little longer. Just a little."

"…You're gripping my wrist and telling me not to go? That's not how you ask." Lila was torn between anger and laughter. "Let go."

He let go. Immediately. Like a child who'd been scolded.

Lila looked at this man — two thousand seven hundred years old, killer of countless, terror of the dark world — clumsy and ridiculous and pitifully lonely.

She sighed and sat down on the stone steps of the terrace: "Fine. I'll stay. But there's a condition — tell me what you are."

Kael sat down beside her. Moonlight on his pale face.

"I am Kael Ravencroft." He said. "A vampire who has lived two thousand seven hundred years. An immortal. The last of the First-Born line. I have endless time, endless power, the deepest fear of the entire dark world—"

"—and the emptiest house." Lila finished for him. "Done?"

He was silent a moment. Then, quietly, like surrendering: "…Done."

She laughed.