Chapter 2 — The Taste of Something Alive (3)

And that was when he lost control.

Before Lila could register it, her back hit the stone pillar of the terrace. He was on her, pressing her against the column, cold fingers under her chin forcing her face up. His eyes burned in the night, gold like a melting abyss. There was no rage in them. That was the worst part. What was in them was hunger — ancient, patient, and completely unafraid of itself.

"Why are you laughing." His voice was rough. "Do you know — when you laugh, your heartbeat speeds up. And when your heartbeat speeds up—I can't control myself."

"…You—you can't control what?"

He lowered his head until his nose almost touched her throat. Cold breath swept her skin, and every hair on her body stood up — but not from fear. It was something more dangerous. A tingling, drowning shiver that had no business being enjoyable.

He breathed her in. His throat moved. His fangs extended, pressing against her thin skin — not breaking it, just resting there, a threat and a question at once.

"I forgot the taste of living things." He said, almost a whisper. "For two hundred years, the first warmth I've tasted. I'm hungry — not for blood. For your heartbeat. Your voice. That cheap shampoo you use. Lila Moore, you broke into my castle, looked at me, drew me, fed me a sandwich—"

"—and now you're going to eat me?" Her voice shook, but she held firm. "Kael Ravencroft, you're two thousand seven hundred years old. Bullying a twenty-two-year-old human girl. Do you have no shame?"

He froze.

The fingers under her chin went still. The fangs retreated a fraction. And for one strange, suspended moment, the most powerful being she'd ever met looked like a man who'd been caught doing something embarrassing.

She kept going, voice shaking but not backing down: "Are you letting go or not? If not, I'll scream. I have a big voice. I can wake up the entire Hudson Valley."

"…No one will come to save you." He said. "This is dead land."

"Then you still have to let go." She looked straight into his eyes. "Because you don't want to hurt me. If you wanted to, you'd have done it already. You just want—"

She stopped. Because she saw it in his eyes. Fear. Like a trapped beast in the dark, guarding the only flame it had — afraid the fire would go out, afraid it would lunge forward and burn it out.

"I want what?" he asked.

"…You just want someone to stand here and listen to you." Her voice softened. "You just want a living person who isn't afraid of you."

A long silence. Moonlight fell. Wind moved through the castle like a soft sigh.

Kael Ravencroft let her go. He stepped back, then again, then leaned against the railing, eyes closed. His chest heaved — but it wasn't a heartbeat. It was something deeper, older, tearing.

"You're right." He said. "I'm afraid of you. I'm afraid of you alive, because I don't know how to keep you. I'm afraid of you dead, because I finally—finally—"

He opened his eyes. And for the first time, something desperate and burning rose in those gold depths.

"I have forgotten how to burn—until you."

He said it in English. Ancient, heavily accented English. Lila didn't catch every word, but she caught the tone — like a man cutting open a heart frozen for a thousand years to show her.

The words settled into her chest and sat there, warm and heavy. She had no idea what they meant. She knew, with total certainty, that they were the truest thing anyone had ever said to her, and they weren't even meant for her. They were a confession made to the night, to the moon, to a world that had stopped listening to him centuries ago. She just happened to be standing in the path of it.

She opened her mouth to speak, and found she couldn't.

Then she watched him clutch his chest. Gold lines rose under his skin like cracks spreading across porcelain. He grunted, dropped to one knee, and a thread of dark blood spilled from his lips.

"Hey!" She lunged toward him. "What's wrong—"

"Don't come near me." He rasped. "I—I can't control it. Stay away—as far as you can—"

"You're bleeding out and telling me to leave?! You absolute fossil, have you no sense—"

She ran to him and grabbed him. Kael Ravencroft — the two-thousand-seven-hundred-year-old First-Born immortal — gave way the moment her fingers touched him. He collapsed, forehead against her shoulder — cold, burning, like a trapped beast finally finding its den.

"…Don't leave." He rasped, so quiet it was almost inaudible. "Please."

"I won't." Lila knelt on the terrace, holding this ice-cold man, voice muffled. "I'm not going anywhere. Finish bleeding first, then we'll negotiate."

He didn't answer. He'd passed out.

But his last words before losing consciousness burned into her ears like a brand:

"…You can't leave now. You're already inside my fate."

— End of Chapter 2 —