Ch. 20

“Mortal”

I sense Halfy before he arrives, with Zanir following close behind. Their smells burn in my nostrils — earthy and minty. The beast still rages within me — I can hear him breathing, but the mental door holds him back, but it weakens with each creak of its hinges. Zanir’s gaze roams over me, from my dark hair clinging to my face to my blood-stained skin, and I notice an orange flame flicker through the cerulean depths of his eyes.

“What did…” I try to say between coughing fits and gasping breaths. “I say about looking at me without permission…”

A tangy taste of iron coats my teeth, and warmth trickles down the side of my neck. My knees finally buckle under the weight of my exhaustion. At that moment, it feels like the ground has turned to water beneath me.

Halfy’s massive white paws glisten in the increasing sunlight, but before I can comprehend the world around me, I feel arms encircle me. A slight chill follows as skin meets skin, but then a wave of heat radiates from where fingers graze my stomach, pricking at my cold skin. The contrast raises the hairs on the back of my neck, a strange and unsettling comfort amidst the chaos.

He gently turns me onto my back, a more graceful landing than I had anticipated. I can feel the beast inside, its claw brushing against the wood of my mental door, desperate to break free.

No. Please. I plead, my strength all but spent. My breaths come out in wheezes now, and a tenderness spreads across my neck and shoulders.

Blood is everywhere. I wheeze again, breathing becoming increasingly difficult. All the water is gone, replaced by heat — blood — and I feel colder than I have ever felt.

“Well, this isn’t quite the ‘keep you here forever’ scenario I had in mind. Can we skip the fainting part?” Zanir whispers, his word stirring something deep within me, something long buried underneath a fog that even I can’t clear.

His words drift through the air, barely louder than the breeze, as if they are suppose to be taken with it. But, they resonate with a weight I can’t place. Suddenly, I catch a whiff of the sea — salty and fresh, with distant laughter and sunlight. It draws me back, a fleeting echo of a port, and a smile like sunshine on my skin.

But that thought slips away as the warmth of Zanir envelops me. Something shift in him, too, as his fingers graze my ribs, igniting my senses. It feels like as if my heart quickens, racing against the tide of confusion and fatigue. I can almost sense whatever it is, the way his breath hitches, but it fades…

“No weapons, just you… and you’re hurt. So yeah, I would say my odds are looking pretty good,” he quips, but there is a softness in voice now, unspoken words hang in the air between us. The heat radiating from his touch spreads through me, making my skin feel alive, a fire I can’t comprehend against the coldness within me.

Zanir’s fingers linger against my skin, tracing the shape of my ribs, and I see something in his eyes — recognition, perhaps, or a ghost of a lost memory. But for me, it is just an unanswered question, one that dances on the periphery of my consciousness, tantalizingly close yet forever out of reach.

The sun reaches the tallest peaks of the Zis mountains. The sky changes to a bright blue, and sunlight spills over Zanir’s face above me, pulling every sharp edge out of the shadows.

My eyes flutter in the warming sunlight, and, as usual, my mind races. When was the last time Zanir saw a sunrise? Felt sunlight on his skin? Or noticed the warmth moving across the sky, lighting up an already darkened world? The tears that come to your eyes after staring at the white orb too long? Vampire can’t be in the sun, right? Isn’t that like their whole thing? My head swings as if it feels like it is in another realm entirely, which maybe it is.

A soft chuckle pulls me back to the present. My eyes move to Zanir, who’s watching me with an amused smirk, his eyes matching the heat of the sunlight on my drenched, sticky skin.

“You’d be surprised,” he says casually, though I hadn’t asked him anything aloud unless my face was saying more than my mouth. His cerulean flaming eyes move to the sky and rain clouds are visible before his eyes settle back on me, and I feel coldness battling the warmth of the sunlight, and where his skin still touches mine.

My heart skips a beat, and my mouth is dry, empty of any words. My thought spiral…What is he going on about?

“Sunlight,” Zanir whispers, lips curling slightly. “It is not always as it seems.”

My eyes linger on him until something warm — different from the sunlight, different from Zanir — oozes around my neck.

Blood.

Blood drips from me, no, drains from me.

Too much blood.

Zanir’s cerulean fervent eyes are locked on me, brighter than I have ever seen them. No flickering of a flame, just white light. He looks me over, silently taking in my injuries. I am covered in blood — the Balaur’s blood, my blood — copper mixing with iron. The sharp, metallic taste filling the air. I wonder, if any of his vampire urges still linger, if the sight of this stirs something inside him.

Zanir’s gaze narrows suddenly, his expression changing. “You’re bleeding,” he mutters, more to himself than to me. Before I can react or say something along the lines, not the first or last time even, I am fine — Zanir adjusts his hold. My back pushes into the sand as his hands move to my neck. His hands are firm against my neck where blood flows freely. His palm feels warm compared to the increasing ice that starts moving through my veins.

I wince, and Zanir doesn’t flinch, even as blood coats his hands, dripping into the sand below us, but I can feel the tension in his grip, the way he avoids looking too long at the blood that soaks between his fingers. Maybe he is fighting something deeper — something old and dangerous, too, just beneath the surface.

Zanir’s control tightens just as the ice creeps from where his hands meet my skin, spreading through me like ice from the beast within. Zanir’s eyes jerk to my face, just for a moment, as if he feels it too. His jaw tenses, but his expression stays — controlled. Then a subtle glance down, like he is searching for something.

Oh, mortal vampire. I have many secrets, sadly even I don’t know all of them. My voice echoes in my head, as my skull pushes further into the sand.

Zanir tilts his head, his eyes narrowing, the briefest hint of curiosity flickering in them. For a moment, his lips part, but he says nothing.

I feel a few droplets, soft and chilled, splatter against my face. The rain has finally reached us, creeping in with its slow, inevitable fall. Each drop lands heavier than the last, cool against my ice-filled skin. It seeps through the grime and blood, tracing paths down my cheeks, mingling with the crimson. Soon, it will wash everything away — the horror, the gore, the blood, my beast. With every drop, I feel a small part of me dissolving, the rain soaking deeper, as if it could cleanse more than just the surface.

“Does this answer your question from earlier?” I wince as the ice spreads through my veins, moving from the wound on my neck down to my heart. I feel it glide, cold and deliberate, until it encases the wound, slowly erasing the damage that doesn’t belong. “Mortal, like you, but I haven’t found something that can kill me…let.”

My eyes twitch, and the sunlight is fading, replaced by an invading blackness. I can feel myself slipping, the edges of my vision blurring, a heaviness settling in my limbs. Just as I sense the void closing in, Zanir’s hands pull away from my neck, and I feel the coolness of the air rush in where his warmth had been. A fleeting glance reveals the wound healing, but I catch the sudden concern in his cerulean eyes.

Zanir raises an eyebrow, a smirk playing at the corners of his lips, as he is piecing together a puzzle about me that even I am struggling to finish. “You really need to stop passing out on me. It is becoming a rather troublesome habit.”

Halfy growls softly, his golden ginger eyes laced with anguish as he nudges me with his snout, and then huffs a heavy breath in Zanir’s direction.

Sorry Halfy. I say weakly through our bond, or at least I hope it is our bond, everything feels numb.

Zanir’s eyes move between Halfy and then me. “See, even your angry, furry guardian thinks you should stay awake.” His voice mixed with mock seriousness. “We can’t keep doing this. Focus, or I might just have to find a way to keep you awake myself.”

I feel ice surge through my senses at the sound of his annoying voice, but my body is so tired. The blackness takes over my vision, and everything begins to fall away. My mind is the last to fully let go, and I hear the wooden door of my thoughts swing open on its hinges.

We fight well together, Lady Mihaela. It is a shame you keep shutting me out … shutting yourself out. Kiza’s voice purrs in my mind.

The beast parallels as the door swings, but then softly closes with a click.

Sleep soundly, Lady Mihaela.