NEW ACCOUNT!! go to @bleedingpeta1s

Echo: Each word stolen from their lips to hers. Each love she felt mocked and ridiculed. She gave everything and watched it drown in front of her. No mercy or justice. Just the sound of selfishness. 

The world was ringing.

Not softly — not like the hum of wings or the lazy buzz of evening. This was a scream lodged behind her teeth, a bell that would not stop. Shelby found Scott where he always was: a shape huddled by fresh earth, hands dark with soil, the black roses like patient witnesses at his back.

She moved toward him and the sound that came out of her was not words at first. It was a sob — a raw, animal sound that tore out of her chest and surprised her with its force. It surprised him too; Scott’s head lifted, slow, and for the first beat their eyes met.

She had not meant to break. Not like this. She had rehearsed fury in the dark, had pictured faces, had counted the ways she would unmake the world for what they’d done. But grief came first, a simple, clean collapse she had not let herself have in years.

She had wanted a family. She had let herself believe, foolishly, that the coven could be that: warm rooms, shared blood, hands that would not let go. Her mother had left as if she were nothing; her father had gone missing in a winter of his own making, swallowed by woods and rumor. There were years she had learned to close her hands against wanting. Then Avid had come. Then Pyro had laughed in a way that made walls feel softer. Then the word family had stopped being an ache and started being a thing.

Now that trust was ash between her fingers.

Tears tracked hot lines down her face. She pressed both palms to the dirt as if she could anchor herself to something true, to something that would not move. The garden smelled like iron and old blooms and the faint sweetness of crushed petals. The scent made the sobbing worse. It made memory bright and cruel.

The bond did not let her look away. Through Avid’s eyes she had seen the torchlight catch on armored jaws, had seen Pyro’s shoulder fold with the weight of choice, the way Owen’s hands moved steady and unrepentant. She had watched the world compress into the sound of someone begging—his voice smaller than she remembered, frayed and pleading for mercy from faces that had been home.

“Please,” she heard again. It was not a memory now but a thing that lived in her bones.

Her breath came in ragged shards. She thought of a long ago child, a smaller version of herself pressing her ear to cold floors to hear the living go by, waiting for a mother to return and a father to come home. The ache was the same. The betrayal felt like the first time a parent left without looking back. It was not only theft of life; it was the undoing of every time she had allowed herself to hope.

“Please—”

Her hands were shaking. She didn’t even realize they were until blood welled under her nails. Too much pressure. Too much rage.

The bond had shown her more than memory. It had flung her into his last breaths as if she’d been standing where he lay, as if the world had tilted and given her his view. Through his eyes she’d seen the torchlight catch on Owen’s jaw, on Pyro’s shoulder. She’d seen the way the forest seemed to narrow into motion and noise and panic. She’d heard the scrape of boots—heard the closeness of betrayal like a hand across a throat.

“Please, please, Owen—”

It was his voice and not his voice; small, raw, falling through a world that refused to catch it. His hand, reaching; her name on his lips as if naming her might hold him. The way his eyes searched for sanctuary and found only two faces: Pyro, who had been family; Owen, who was a blunt instrument of their world.

The images burned: sable hair matted with sudden white, amethyst softened into panic; a mouth that tried to form a joke and made no sound. And Pyro—Pyro looking away first, the everything but shame flattening their features, Owen’s hands red and steady with the thing he’d done.

Breath hitched. She clutched at the air as if she could catch him, stop the fall. The bond’s view was a blade; it left no room for denial. She had not only heard him beg—she had watched from inside that pleading head, the trust in his look, the last flicker that said he expected them to keep him.

Her lungs seized around the memory. Breath came too fast, too shallow. The air felt thick, as if the garden conspired to keep it from her, to press the world tight and small.

She crouched; her knees hit dirt. The taste of iron rose in her mouth—not from the soil, but from the flash of blood in his last vision, from the last frantic grip of fingers that had once taken hers in laughter. Avid’s eyes had found her in that terrible second, and there had been something like trust in them—trust and confusion and a question she had no answer for.

She could not breathe.

The ringing rose, higher, a constant, a wind chime snapped. Her vision splintered at the edges; the world bowed to a point. She clawed at the ground, nails breaking bark and soil and the thin skin of old roots. The motion steadied nothing. Her heart beat like a trapped animal.

Scott reached out, tentative, a single hand on her shoulder. It was almost gentle. She flinched from it, not because she loved him less but because she needed the heat of the grief to be hers alone, unshared and undiluted. His touch threatened to turn the sob into something else—into the practiced sorrow he wore like armor—and she could not bear that.

“You buried him?” she managed, voice raw, each syllable an edge. The question was smaller than the sound that had come before, but it cut. It meant she was trying to translate pain into action.

He answered without looking up. “It was all there was left to do.”

Something in her broke open completely then. The sob this time was higher, keening, and it shook her whole body. She knelt until her knees were splattered with earth. The memory ripped wider: Avid’s hand reaching for Pyro as if the name would hold him; the momentary confusion in his crimson eyes when the world turned traitor; the way he had gasped when the stake was stabbed through his heart.

The bond’s clarity made it worse. She had not only heard him plead—she had seen, from within his last gaze, the trust he held for those two faces. He had expected shelter. He had expected brotherhood. He had found betrayal.

Panic narrowed her sight. The ringing climbed until it drowned the garden’s night-song. She dug her nails into the damp soil until they stung; the act, simple and brutal, tethered her to a present so that memory could not sweep her away entirely.

“He should have been safe,” she said, each word ground out and bright. “We told ourselves this was family. You told me that.” The accusation was not aimed only at Pyro or Owen. It folded back into all the places that had once promised hearth and kept none.

Her voice shook; the next sound was a laugh, breaking like glass. It carried no humor. It was the sound of someone stripped bare.

“I’m going to hurt them, Scott” The vow formed slow, each syllable a deliberate strike. “I’m going to make them beg for their lives.”

Scott’s single response, “Okay” fell between them like a wedge.

"Okay?"

“Okay.”

The word was small; it was surrender or permission, she could not tell which. It landed cold in her chest. For a breath, the ringing stopped. For one terrible, clean moment she saw his face as if through water—quiet, practiced, a grief worn neat as a coat—and the thing she loved about him twisted into accusation.

She rose then, unsteady but furious, soil flaking from her knees. Poppies brushed her calves like fingerprints of what had been. She did not watch him. She would not give him the purchase of a last look. Her vow burned in her like a brand, and each step away from the grave was a promise made aloud in the dark.

“Fine, then stay buried with him,” she said, brittle and final, and turned into the night that would have to answer for what Owen and Pyro had done.

Behind her, the black roses stirred as if to watch. She left Scott to his earth and took the hunger with her.

• • •

She moved like a woman who had forgotten how to be quiet.

The manor corridors swallowed her footsteps, but the rooms held sound: the hiss of settling wood, a distant clock trying to count hours that would not be counted again. Moonlight pooled in the corners and the house smelled of old smoke and linens and the kind of peace that belonged to times before everything broke. Shelby passed portraits with faces she had learned to nod to—ancestors who’d furnished the rooms with an expected steadiness—and felt only abrasion against those long lines: this used to mean something. It used to mean you were not alone.

She went straight to her room. She did not think about it; her hands steered her body as if someone else had left a map in her bones. The door stuck on its hinges like everything stuck tonight, like grief had spread its varnish everywhere. She pushed it open and the room welcomed her in a way that made her chest crack: small, private, full of things she’d never meant to leave behind.

The trinket was there on the dressing table, the thing she hadn’t been able to throw away even when she promised herself she would. A small silver charm on a frayed cord, dull now from skin and something else—laughter, maybe, or the press of another person’s shoulder in a crowded room. Avid had given it to her seven weeks before all this began, before the turning, before white hair and red eyes and the long, cavernous endings. He’d said it was to keep the dark away, a joke to her then, and she’d laughed and tied it around her throat and slept like someone who had a place to return to.

She lifted it. It was warmer than the night and smelled faintly of him—sable hair and smoke and a sweetness she could taste when she pressed it to her tongue. The charm quivered in her fingers like something alive. For a second she forgot her plan, forgot the vow singing through her ribs.

Then she remembered the way his voice had cracked.

“Please,” she heard, not as memory but as if someone had thrown his voice across the room. The bond had given her his last gaze already; it had shown her Pyro’s shoulder turning away, Owen’s hands already stained. Now the charm was a hook and she was being pulled through the skin of the moment back into the same terrible room, the same small, useless sounds.

Shelby dropped to her knees. She did not cry at first. She let the sob come out of her as a sound and it surprised her with the size of it—so much hurt had been folded under the lip of her sternum that it spilled like an animal from a trap. She had been the girl who learned to stay small, with a mother who left and a father swallowed by the woods; she wasn’t supposed to let anyone else be her anchor. Avid had been different. He had been soft in places she had not let anyone be soft. The loss of that softness felt like the first absence all over again.

When the sob calmed its edge, anger came in its wake, and the anger had teeth.

She stood because standing felt like a promise she could keep. She moved to the wardrobe and slid aside a false panel—something the house still remembered in its bones—and found the small armory there, the family’s lean cache: a hunting knife with a bone hilt, a weathered sword that had belonged to a distant relative and now belonged to dust, and a wrapped bundle she’d never touched because it smelled of religion and the things people used to hurt monsters.

The silver lay within that bundle, wrinkled in cloth like an insult. It was not ornate—a dagger with a narrow blade, frosted with the faint bloom of age, a cross-guard worn by hands not unlike hers. She knew the rules of silver; she’d heard Scott whisper about it. Silver burned. Silver bit. It was the only thing that cut through certain kinds of dark with a clarity that made you pay for it.

Her fingers hovered. And then she took it.

The metal was colder than the moon, and for an absurd second she expected nothing. The dull weight was immediate, then. But the moment her skin closed around the hilt, pain slammed along her veins, a white flare that licked at the edges of reason. It stung—not like a cut, not like heat—but as if the thing had its own small hunger and resented being touched by mere flesh. Her palm burned with a silver ache, a taste like pennies at the back of her throat. She did not let go.

“This is stupid,” she murmured to herself, more careful than necessary. “It hurts.” She laughed once, a dry sound that was somewhere between terror and glee. It hurt because it meant reality. Pain is honest. Pain confirms things other people can deny. If she could feel silver sing in her hand, then Avid’s death was not a rumor she could tuck away. It was a present wound, and she would make the guilty feel it.

She strapped the dagger to her thigh, the leather cold against her skin. The room seemed suddenly too small again; the charm on her cord thudded against her throat when she moved, an endless heartbeat. She walked to the window and pushed it open, climbing onto the sill because walking on two feet inside felt like an indulgence. The night slid into her—cold, patient, smelling of compost and river water and the way the world smells before storms. The manor’s silhouette spread around her like ribs.

For a moment she considered the stake.

She did not think of it as a conscious decision. The thought came like a bird—fleeting, light—and then she pressed it away because the stake had always been final, blunt, merciless. A stake kills. Stakes ended things in a single bright, horrifying moment. There was a small, unreasonable tenderness to that finality she could not afford to consider. She did not know if she could drive a stake through Pyro’s heart and make it matter the way she wanted it to. She did not know if, in the last sliver of the moment, she could look at him and not see the warm hands that had taught her to stand.

Instead she gripped the silver dagger and felt it bite every time she shifted her hold, a reminder that she had chosen to hurt herself to arm herself. It was penitential, almost; she welcomed the sting because it kept her from domesticating the fury into an easy story. This was not theatrical. This was not revenge in a ballad. This was work, and it would bruise her.

On the sill she breathed in the manor—memory and dust and the faint scent of the poppies that had been tucked into Jimmy’s grave—and the city beyond lay dark and slow. Her jaw clenched. The trinket warmed at her throat. The dagger bit.

She whispered Avid’s name like a prayer and then like a promise.

Then she climbed down and walked into the hall, boots making careful, soundless marks on the flagstones. The house watched, full of its own old loyalties. The silver at her side sang in a way that made the hair along her neck stand up; it hurt in that particular, righteous way she recognized now as a confirmation of intent.

She was not certain what would happen when she found Pyro—whether her hands would be steady, whether rage would be hunger or a fog. She did not know if she would be able to finish what she planned. There was a corner of her that wanted to keep Pyro alive just to watch him suffer under the weight of what he’d done. There was another part that wanted the finality of steel between ribs. Both were ugly, both were real, both lived beneath her sternum like twin coals.

She left her room without a sound, the dagger snug at her thigh, the silver making her wince with every step. The charm bumped against her collarbone and then settled like a small, fierce heart.

Outside, the night had teeth. She felt ready enough to bite back.

• • •

The woods held their breath.

Branches stitched the sky into black lace. Moonlight poured through like a patient virus, silvering leaves and the wet patch of earth where she’d chosen to stop. Every sound was a betrayal: the whisper of a fox far off, the small drip of water from a leaf, the dry rustle of some animal marking its territory. Those were ordinary noises; her mind had none of them.

Her head rang with one sound only, a thin, persistent hammer that matched the beat at her throat.

The knife was a hot weight in her hand. Silver bit into her palm until the skin went numb and then flared white-hot until she welcomed the pain because it was honest. Pain told the story no one could argue with. Pain made the memory real. Pain meant she had not dreamt the thing the bond had shown her.

He was there where the trees thinned—just past the ruined stone wall, where moss collected like old scabs. Pyro stood with his back almost to the trunks, a silhouette that had once been shelter. The moon painted him in that merciless white light that made everything too clear: the slope of his shoulders, the way his jaw worked like a muscle unused to choking down something bitter. The sight of him matched the scene the bond had given her and did not match it at all: he looked at the world and saw only necessary acts; she saw him and remembered the way Avid had looked up at him when he died.

He glanced up and the motion was slow, as if the night itself had told him to wait. “Shelby.” His voice came out quieter than she expected. “You shouldn’t—”

Her laughter snapped off like twigs. It was not a sound she recognized. “Neither should you,” she said. Her words left her like sparks.

He took one step toward her and stopped. When he looked close he saw the dried tracks on her cheeks, the soil caked under her nails. His mouth softened for a heartbeat — not apology, not mercy, just something like recognition. “You’ve been crying,” he said, the way someone notices a bruise without touching it.

She wanted to tear the world open. The trinket at her throat dug into her skin: a small brass bird, Avid’s laugh still caught on its surface, warm in memory. She pressed her fingers to it as if the metal could anchor him back into the room. Her breath came ragged; the night tasted of cold and iron and the faint sweet of crushed petals left on the grass.

“You killed him,” she said. The words were small but they broke like axes.

Pyro’s face didn’t change the way she wanted it to. It shifted instead into the patient line of someone explaining weather. “He was a liability,” he said. The phrase was calm, clinical. “He would have died either way—best it be by our hand then the humans.”

That was the same voice he’d used before the killing—polite, reasoned, as if monsters could be legislated away. It was worse than cruelty. It was a calculus.

She saw Avid then, not as memory but as live film layered over the present: the torchlight catching his hair, the thin wet sound of someone making a last offer, the way his lips shaped names like anchors. Please—please, Pyro— The sound hit her bones. She could feel the echo of it in the hollows behind her eyes; it had been handed to her by the bond like a blade.

Her hand moved before thought could gather. The silver flashed. The strike was not neat. It was an animal response—raw, aching, precise by instinct rather than plan. The blade scored Pyro’s forearm, thin and bright. He hissed, more surprise than anger, the sound sharp as a struck chord. The smell was immediate—hot metal on skin, the small iron tang that floods the mouth when blood meets air.

“Shelby—” he started, and there was something in his voice now that did not fit his earlier coolness. Fear, perhaps. Or pity. Or the faint memory of the hands that had once steadied her.

She drove the knife again, because motion steadied her and motion kept the ringing from widening into blackness. Each stroke was a punctuation in the story she wanted to write across his skin. Silver smoked where it met him; the metal’s bite made a small, unnatural steam curl up and vanish under the moon. He staggered, hand clamped to the wound, and for a flicker in the dark she saw… something—regret, maybe, or at least concern.

“I tried to protect you,” he said, rawer now than before. “We—” His voice fractured. “We were standing on a ledge, Shelby. He would’ve pushed us off it.”

She tasted bile. “He trusted you,” she rasped. “He looked to you.” Her throat closed. The old child in her—a small thing with empty bed and hollowed-out faith—pressed forward and begged: don’t be true to your reasons; be true to what we were.

Pyro took another step, slower this time, and reached for her wrist in a motion she couldn’t read. “Please,” he said soft and low. “Shelby, please…”

The word landed like a stone. It was the wrong sound from the wrong mouth. It forced the memory—Avid on knees, voice flayed open—into her throat again. Please. The syllables were a hook in the soft part of her skull. The ringing pulsed louder. Her hands trembled until the knife felt like a live thing.

“Oh, don’t beg,” she said. Her smile was a blade. “You’ll sound just like Avid.”

The moon caught her teeth, bright and cruel. The smile that followed came from a place so cold she barely recognized it as her own: a thing honed to cut. For a second the world froze on that line: Pyro’s outstretched palm, Shelby’s wet cheeks, the knife poised between them like a question.

Then Pyro moved. Not to beg again, but to disarm. He stepped into the space and grabbed the wrist that held the blade. His fingers wrapped around her forearm with the iron steadiness of a mentor. The contact jarred; heat leapt up his arm where the silver nicked him. He didn’t yank the weapon away so much as corral it, trying to take control of a story he had set in motion.

She reacted like a struck animal. Her body became all jagged motion—pulling, twisting, the knife slicing again as skin tore. He cursed; the sound was short and ugly and made her flinch inward. For a moment they were a tangle of limbs, moonlight, and the wet, bright smell of blood. The forest closed around them like an audience holding its breath.

He countered with the only thing he had left: force. Pyro turned the grip, shifted his weight, and pushed. The knife wrenched; the friction made her palm flare. For a breath she tasted burning metal and the dark, rotten sweetness of fear. He fought back—not like a man punishing a child, but like someone defending the necessity he’d lain out in cold terms. He hit at her shoulder with an open hand, a shove meant to unbalance. She staggered; the world snarled in her ears.

“Stop,” he hissed through teeth. “Shelby, stop this.”

She laughed then, a raw, tearing note, and drove the blade home. This time the strike met ribs—silver slipping past fabric, singing through muscle. Pyro’s breath left him in a wild, wet sound. He went to one knee, blood painting the mossed ground, a spreading, dark bloom under his palms.

For a wild second she believed she’d killed him. The idea lodged like ice in her lungs—a cold so absolute it made the world strange. She pictured the way the forest would remember, the stillness that would fold over him like paper. She’d done what had to be done. The feeling, quick and white, was almost relief.

Then his chest rose. Once. Twice. His breaths came uneven and shallow but they came. He looked up at her with eyes rimmed red by the moon and something else: an animal cunning she’d once admired when they’d sparred in the yard, when his lessons were hands that steadied her and laughter that filled empty rooms. Now that cunning peered out around fear and pain.

“You won’t finish it,” he said, and the words were small, almost a prophecy. “You never finish.”

Something hollowed in her. The knife wavered in her grip. The world folded inward and the ringing slammed louder. Images overlapped: Avid’s face upturned in torchlight, his voice breaking—Please. Please, Pyro——and Pyro’s own voice now, rough and human, saying her name low and urgent. The memory and the present braided into one hot, violent seam.

She stabbed again. The silver shuddered. Pyro’s mouth opened in a sound that was half pain and half the strangulation of some truth he had not wanted to name aloud. He pushed at her hand weakly, fingers slick with his blood, and for a second his grip on her arm was an invocation of the old days: teacher, sire, someone who had once guided her through the dark.

“Shelby—” he breathed. The word was less a plea than a fracture.

The knife slipped. She heard the small, mortifying metallic clatter as it fell from her fingers and hit the leaf-litter. The noise was unbearably tiny. It sounded like the end of something.

Pyro sagged, chest heaving. He coughed, a wet sound, then laughed once—a tiny, brittle laugh that might have been a sob. Blood trickled over his palm and dripped to the ground, steaming in the chill air. He pushed himself up on one elbow and stared at her with that same tired, jagged expression: part guilt, part calculation, part something that could have been pity.

“You don’t get to die,” she said, the words barely above a whisper. They were not triumph or mercy; they were a sentence carved from a thing that tasted like ash. “Not yet.”

He blinked. The forest seemed to crease around the sound. His lips moved, forming the name she’d hated and loved in the same breath. “Shelby—”

She turned away though she could have watched the life leave him like a play, fair tide. The charm had slipped from her palm when the knife clattered; it lay on the moss, brass dull in the moon. She felt strangely empty where the weight of it had been: a hollow the size of a missing person.

The night swallowed her retreat. Her boots left mounded prints in the soft soil; each step felt like a small, impossible thing to order. Behind her, Pyro breathed and counted time in the only way he could—one ragged inhale, one wet exhale. He would live. Maybe he would stagger off into the trees, seeking a place to stitch his wounds. Maybe he would go to Owen. Maybe he would tell some version of the night that made him a hero. Maybe he would never be sorry in the way she wanted.

She realized—slow and sick—what she’d failed to do. The stake had not been taken. She had not brought finality. In the frenzy, it had been motion she trusted, not preparation. The thought landed in her like a stone to the gut.

She did not sob now. The sobbing had been at the grave; that had been clean, animal, appropriate. Now she felt hollow and raw and unused, like a piece carved away and left in the dark. Her hand shook where the silver had burned it; the bruise blossomed along her palm, bright and honest. The trinket lay in the moss behind her, forgotten and useless.

She kept walking until the trees closed again and the sky narrowed to a slit and the moon was only the memory of light. The ringing dulled to something bearable, like a far-off bell. Her feet moved like a promise she had no intention of keeping—an oath that the night would not go unanswered.

Behind her, under the thin canopy of the wood, Pyro coughed and tasted his own blood. He rolled to his side and pushed himself up on shaking hands. For a beat he looked at the line Shelby had made in him, the bright silver seared into flesh, and then away—the kind of look someone gives a bruise they mean to explain later. He did not call after her. He let the forest have the sound of her departing.

Shelby did not look back. The image of Avid—pale, pleading, small—would not leave her. She had struck and failed and in the space of that failure something had changed irretrievably. The woods closed; the moon slid behind a breath of cloud. She wrapped her palms around the small, hot ache left by the silver and kept moving until movement itself was the only proof she still existed.

The woods were too quiet.

No birds. No wind. No witnesses but the silver bleeding dull against her hand. Shelby knelt in the dirt, the dagger half-buried beside her, her palm blistered and red where it had kissed her skin too long. The air smelled like iron and rot and something sharp—ozone, maybe, or grief turned chemical. Her breath came in thin, high keens that weren’t words anymore. They scraped her throat on their way out.

Pyro wasn’t moving. Not far from her, the leaves had drunk his blood until the ground looked like rusted velvet. The moonlight washed everything flat, silvery—his skin, her tears, the world itself bleached of warmth.

She tried to look away and couldn’t. Her whole body shook. The ringing that had followed her since Avid’s death had reached a pitch she couldn’t separate from the sound of her own pulse. The forest felt like it was vibrating with it. Her vision kept flashing—Avid’s face, Pyro’s face, then both superimposed, pleading, asking her to stop, to understand.

Her stomach heaved. She folded over, retching into the dirt. Nothing but bile came up, sharp and acid. Her shoulders spasmed with the effort; tears mixed with the spit and dirt until everything was a blur of salt and mud.

“Please,” she heard again. It wasn’t real, but her mind didn’t know the difference. Avid’s voice, and then Pyro’s, tangled until she couldn’t tell who was begging anymore. Her breath broke on a sob that turned into a scream halfway through, raw and jagged, the kind that tears the voice apart as it leaves. It sounded animal. It sounded honest.

The dagger gleamed beside her, slick with both their blood. She reached for it, then stopped halfway—her fingers trembling inches from the hilt. The silver still stung from where it had bitten her earlier, the memory of its burn pulsing like a heartbeat. She wanted to grab it, to end it properly, to carve the ache out before it swallowed her whole. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even touch it again.

Her chest hitched once, twice, and then she broke completely.

The sobs came fast and ugly, the kind that made her choke on air. Her nails tore up clumps of dirt; she dragged them through the leaves until her fingertips split. The forest around her swayed like a lung—breathing with her, through her, against her—and still she couldn’t stop. She cried until her throat was raw and her breath whistled through the gaps between gasps.

In the corner of her vision, the trinket glimmered against her chest. It had survived the struggle—still tied there, still warm. She clutched it hard enough to bruise, pressing it against her heart like it could keep her anchored to something human. It only burned.

The night pressed closer. The ringing faded into a high, steady hiss—like blood rushing through her ears, like static, like the world had flattened itself into noise. She tasted copper and salt. Her body was shaking too hard to stand. She fell forward onto her hands, then onto her side, curling around herself the way animals do when they’re dying.

The woods didn’t move.

She could still see Pyro’s eyes when she closed hers. Could still hear the small, surprised sound he’d made when the blade bit flesh. It hadn’t been a scream—more of a breath, caught halfway between a word and regret. A sound that was going to live in her forever.

Shelby sobbed again—hoarse, broken, smaller than before. The ground under her smelled like blood and winter and endings. Her body hurt. Her heart hurt worse.

By the time the moon slipped behind the trees, she was still there—shaking, breath hitching in uneven gasps, a hand pressed to the trinket at her throat like she was trying to remember which side of love she’d been on.

The garden was cold.

Scott couldn’t feel cold, not anymore, but in the moonlight of a listless night it crept around him—a serpent coiling slow around its prey. He shivered under his cloak, drawing breath out of habit more than need.

It was beautiful, too.

Spires of poison flowers mixed with hollow vines, wrapped around the wrought iron arches like worship. The stone path had been turned to cobble and pebbles years ago, now covered in moss and weeds. The scent was thick—earth, iron, something faintly sweet beneath it all. If he closed his eyes, he could almost mistake it for blood. He laughed softly. The garden was a reflection of him: something once alive, now surviving on memory alone.

In its center stood the sundial. Midnight carved eternal. He reached for it anyway, brushing the stone, as if touching time could bring the world back to life.

He used to come here when it meant something.

Back when the flowers were tended, the arches polished, the world still remembered how to breathe. Now, everything was left to rot—just like the promise he’d buried beneath the crimson poppies.

The blooms, untended for half a millennium, had grown wild. They spilled over the paths, flooding every crevice: pansies, hellebore, scabiosa, and more—each one painted in the same dulled palette of mourning hues.

He stepped past the sundial, careful where the stone split beneath his boots. The flowers bowed under the wind, whispering against his cloak as though they recognized him. Perhaps they did. Every bloom here bore a name he could not say aloud, not without tasting ash.

Avid would join them soon.

He hadn’t known what flower to choose. Red for love, white for forgiveness, black for everything in between. He had thought himself out of tears centuries ago, but the ache remained—a steady pulse, quiet and faithful.

He knelt, the earth crumbling beneath his touch. Beneath the moss, the soil was still rich. Still waiting.

“You’d have hated this place,” he murmured. “Too still. Too silent.”

He sat back and watched the wind move through the garden—through the tulips, the bloodroots, the creeping camellias. The moon caught on the iron arches, pale and sharp. For the first time in centuries, something in the air felt alive again.

Maybe, he thought, this was how love survived him: by blooming in the ruins.

He stood, slowly walking past the sundial, letting the moon guide him along the cobbled path. The air smelled of damp earth and iron, and for a moment, he thought he could hear a faint laugh threading through the wind. It carried on the edges of memory, sharp and brittle, and his chest ached in response, as though he had inhaled too much of the past at once.

The first grave came into view, half-hidden beneath a tangle of ghost orchids. Their pale, translucent petals trembled like breath caught in the night, brushing softly against the stones.

Lau–en.

The name was etched deep but worn, the letters softened by time, by rain, by the passage of centuries. Moss curled across the edges, and the soil had begun to creep over the base, swallowing it a little at a time.

He knelt, brushing the moss from the edges, careful not to tear the fragile orchids leaning over the stone.

Her laughter came next. A sharp, brittle sound, full of disbelief and joy, a sound that could fracture stone and leave the shadows trembling behind it. He felt it coil in his chest, a ribbon of warmth and guilt, pulling tight until it burned.

Every fragment of her—her humor, her boldness, her uncanny ability to make the world feel lighter—seemed woven into the garden now, in the trembling orchids, the cold stones, the sharp tang of earth and iron.

Sunlight splintered through the trees, dust motes dancing in the still air. She was trembling in his arms, bleeding, the warmth of her blood soaking through his hands and staining his cloak.

Her pulse ran slow, slipping, and he could feel it fluttering beneath his fingers, so small, so fragile. “Did I… do good?” she whispered, voice breaking, each word a tremor against the quiet. “Did I make you proud?” Her lips parted, a faint, fleeting smile that might have been mistaken for a breath of wind, blood dribbling out the corner of her mouth.

He held her closer, pressing his face to her shoulder, tasting the iron and sweetness of life slipping away. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “You’re… you’re enough. You’re everything.” Her fingers twitched once, once like a small, desperate signal, and then stilled entirely.

The warmth drained from her body, leaving only memory, only the faint perfume of crushed flowers and the fading echo of her breath. He felt her leave him slowly, inch by inch, like the tide retreating, while the sun caught her hair and made it look as though it glowed with fire.

The orchids swayed, brushing against his knuckles, whispering across the stone. He could feel the petals like fingertips against his skin, almost soft enough to forget they were reminders of absence. He remembered other fragments too: the tilt of her head when she scolded him for something foolish, the glimmer in her eyes when she had discovered some small victory, the reckless way she had charged at danger without fear.

Every piece of her that had existed in the world seemed woven into the garden now, in the trembling orchids, the cold stones, the sharp tang of earth and iron.

He let his hand rest on the stone a moment longer, feeling the cold, the rough edges, the centuries of weather. He wanted to speak, to bridge the distance between memory and present, to tell her all the things he had never said in time, but no words came. Only the quiet, only the orchids, and the weight of a grief that refused to leave him.

“I’m sorry..” she had choked, eyes wide.

He closed his eyes for a long moment, inhaling the damp night air, imagining the light again, imagining her face turning to him, trusting, fierce, alive. He could see the sun gleaming off her hair, the shadows of her eyelashes, the way her lips had quivered as she struggled to speak, even as life fled from her. He could feel the warmth of her arms once more, holding him too, even though he had been powerless to hold her.

He drew a slow breath. The air was thick with the scent of moss and crushed petals, and he let it fill his lungs, holding onto the moment just a little longer.

“I’m sorry..”

The garden seemed to lean closer around him, every wind-touched branch a sigh, every orchid a pulse of remembrance. He imagined her laughing again, softer this time, hesitant, testing if he could still catch it, still remember it.

The memory ached, pressing into him, burning through centuries like acid.

Finally, he rose. Her grave lingered at the corner of his vision, pale and ghostlike, a shimmer of light among shadows. He did not turn away. He did not close his eyes. He walked forward, past her, letting the memory trail behind him like smoke curling in the moonlight, reluctant, beautiful, inevitable.

He walked slowly, letting the wind stir the weeds underfoot. Each step seemed heavier than the last, carrying the echo of Lauren’s laugh with him. The stones uneven beneath his boots, the wind stirring the overgrowth like soft murmurs. It wasn’t long till he came across the next grave, the orchids of Lauren’s grave had faded behind him, pale ghosts against the dark. Ahead, the earth turned darker, richer, almost black where the black anemone grew—petals the color of ink, absorbing the moonlight.

Milo.

Scott knelt beside the grave, careful not to crush the curling leaves, the single bloom standing defiant amid the moss. The nameplate was nearly unreadable, letters worn down, but enough remained to anchor him in the moment. His fingers hovered above the stone, hesitating, as though touching it might pull him back into the centuries.

Memory unfurled. Muddied green eyes, bright against the shadowed corners of a room, a small grin tugging at the edges of his face even when the world was heavy. He could still hear the laugh that had accompanied that grin, easy and reckless, light enough to cut through the darkness of Scott’s own heart.

And then—the night of his request.

“Do it,” Milo had whispered, breath rattling in his chest, blood staining the floor beneath them. “I can’t… I can’t go on like this. Please.”

Scott had hesitated, hands trembling.

The stake was heavy in his hand, full of little splinters and broken promises. It was sharpened cleanly, as if Milo had been planning. Scott didn’t look when he swung.

The warmth of his pulse was gone, and yet, he could feel every heartbeat as if it were his own. He had bent, and with hands that shook like leaves in a storm, he had given Milo the release he begged for. Eyes closed, he had watched life leave, a spark extinguished, and for a moment, the world had seemed unbearably vast and silent. Milo’s last expression—half a smile, half a question—had burned itself into Scott’s memory. And he had carried it ever since, a weight heavier than centuries.

The black anemone seemed to absorb the gravity of that memory, petals dark and slick with dewdropped tears, reaching toward him as though asking him to bear witness. He brushed a hand over the stone, lingering on the roughness, the jagged edges worn by centuries of rain.

He let his eyes drift over the grave again. Milo had trusted him with everything, even the end. And he had honored that trust, but at the cost of a part of himself, one he would never reclaim.

The wind whispered through the black petals, and he let it brush against his cheeks, carrying a grief that had settled in his bones long ago. He stayed kneeling a moment longer, letting the weight of centuries press down, letting Milo’s grin linger in the silence.

The wind shifted, carrying whispers through the garden, rattling the branches and the heavy leaves, like a chorus of shadows murmuring their recognition. Scott could almost see Milo there: the tilt of his head, the small curl of his lips, the gleam in his green eyes, laughing at some private joke the world would never know. And then gone again, leaving only the black anemone, dark and steadfast, as if it had always been planted to bear witness to his absence.

He pressed his palm lightly to the bloom, willing it to hold his sorrow, willing it to hold his guilt, wishing somehow that it could keep Milo alive in a way he could no longer.

After a long moment, he rose. The moon caught the edges of the petals, revealing a shimmer almost like tears, and he walked forward, leaving Milo behind in the dark soil, carrying the memory with him as he moved toward the heart of the garden.

The path narrowed as he moved forward, pressed in by vines that clawed at the walls and petals that had spilled over the stone for centuries. The moonlight struck the poppies ahead, crimson and vibrant even after decades of neglect, and Scott slowed, drawn forward by the familiarity of color, of life.

J—my.

The name echoed in his chest before he even reached the grave. Here, unlike the others, the flowers seemed alive, not in memory but in insistence. They swayed as though nudging him closer, urging him to remember, to feel, to bear witness.

The plaque at the head of the small mound was cracked, moss creeping over the letters, but he knew the name well.

The memory came sharp, cruel, and immediate.

He had been wandering the halls of his manor, the air heavy with the scent of poppies he had tended himself, and then the stillness had broken him.

Jimmy was there, lying among the flowers he loved. Blonde hair splayed over the soil, eyes half-closed, brown eyes dull against the candlelight, pale and fragile. He was human, and he should have been safe, but the townsfolk had come, drawn by fear and misunderstanding.

Scott had reached for him, shaking, whispering his name. For a moment, it had seemed possible he could hold him, could bring him back from the edge. But the warmth was gone.

He had clutched him to his chest, heart hammering, and whispered through tears: “You’re safe. You’re safe. I’m here. You’re not alone.”

But the world had not listened.

The innocence, the trust, the light that Jimmy carried into every room—all stolen, ripped away by ignorance and cruelty.

Scott had stayed, long after life left him, long after the town had taken what they thought was justice, cradling him until there was nothing but silence. Long after the blood had soaked through his shirt, stuck to the skin above his heart. Long after the crimson had run cold and his laughter and screams alike echoed.

Until the flowers pressed against his hands like ghosts.

The poppies here now were wild, but they carried the memory of that night. Their petals bruised and trembling, crimson deepened by centuries of mourning. Scott ran a hand through them, brushing the soft, velvety edges, and felt every moment of that night all over again.

He knelt, letting the poppies press softly against his palms. The scent was sharp and bitter, and he breathed it in, letting the memory settle around him like a cloak.

The warmth that had once been there, the brown eyes that had trusted him completely, loved him unconditionally, the laughter that had filled the manor with light—all gone. Leaving only silence, the hum of memory, and the ache that had never left.

He remembered the small things too. The way Jimmy had cared for the garden, coaxed color from the earth even when everything else was gray. The way he laughed, soft and steady, like a candle in the wind. The way he had called Scott “petal” once, grinning, though he had always known how fragile Scott was.

Scott’s hands shook as he pressed against the earth, feeling the poppies shiver beneath his fingers.

“You were supposed to live. You were supposed to see it all. You were supposed to bloom.”

The words came out a whisper, ragged and broken. The garden seemed to lean closer, the poppies curling in toward him, pressing memory into him like a chorus of lost voices.

He lowered himself beside the grave, resting his cheek against the cool soil, letting the red of the poppies stain the edges of his vision. He could almost hear Jimmy’s voice, gentle and certain: “It’s alright, petal. It’s okay.”

But he knew it wasn’t.

He had thought himself immune to grief, centuries spent burying those who were lost to the world. But Jimmy was different. Human. Innocent. Bright and alive in a way that no vampire could ever be. And now gone.

The weight of that knowledge pressed him down until the world tilted, the moonlight slicing across the garden like a blade.

He pressed his hand to the plaque, tracing the letters he had memorized long ago. J—my.

The poppies shivered beneath his fingers, brushing against his arms. He let himself lean into them, let the grief wash over him, let himself remember the warmth, the laughter, the care, the life he had held and lost.

Long after the wind had shifted and the shadows stretched across the cobbled path, Scott stayed there, kneeling in the poppies, cradling the memory, letting it burn through him until there was nothing left but silence, and the flowers, and the faint, impossible hope that in some way, he could still honor what had been stolen.

The hollow waited.

The soil was dark, dense, and damp, holding the memory of centuries. Moss clung stubbornly to stones cracked and split with age. The air was thick with the scent of earth, of rot, of blooms that had long ceased to live but lingered in ghostly perfume. Scott knelt, black rose pressed against his palm, fingers trembling. He pressed it into the earth, and it resisted, cold, insistent, alive in its own way. The petals shivered at the touch of his blood, the soil drinking deep as though it understood the offering, the grief, the love that poured from him unchecked.

And then… Avid.

Not Jimmy. Not the warmth he had lost centuries ago. This was different.

Purple eyes, now gone, flickered in memory. The weight of the locket in his palm. The press of lips he had frozen from, the warmth he hadn’t allowed himself to acknowledge. He’s here.

No.

Not like this. Not gone. Not yet.

The wind stirred, brushing the petals against his hands, against his cloak. They were delicate, trembling in the moonlight, shadows curling across their black edges like fingers. Scott pressed the rose deeper, muttering words he could not believe, words he wished would hold reality at bay.

You’re still with me.

The wind stirred, brushing the petals against his hands, against his cloak. They were delicate, trembling in the moonlight, shadows curling across their black edges like fingers. He pressed the rose deeper, muttering words he could not believe, words he wished would hold reality at bay. You’re with me.

But the memory came anyway, unbidden, sharp as broken glass.

Ivory hair, falling in soft waves over his forehead. Eyes like twilight, carmine and endless, bright against the light of the morning. Warmth in Scott’s chest, in his arms. A laugh threading through the silence. And that kiss.

That kiss.

A trembling press of lips, daring, fragile. And Scott froze. He froze. He had not known, had not understood what it meant, had not allowed himself to feel what he should have felt in that moment.

Owen and Pyro.

Two faces he had trusted. Pyro. Pyro, whose hands had brushed his own, whose smile had teased him with familiarity, with possibility. And they had taken him.

Taken him.

The locket. Cold metal pressed into his palm, stinging slightly, heavy against the weight in his chest. Avid had worn it always, a small, unassuming piece of heart and history, pressed close to his body. Now Scott slowly rested it atop the soil beside the rose, a bridge between memory and absence, between confession and loss. 

It was a pretty thing. Silver framed by years of oxidization, now bruised with mossy hues. The engraving seemed rushed almost, but human, as if it were homemade. Each petal of the embroidered wildflowers were uneven, some to deep other shallow. It was oddly beautiful. Like Avid.

He pressed both hands into the earth, letting the soil sift through his fingers, letting the rose drink in blood and grief. The petals quivered. The wind whispered through the arches, carrying faint echoes of laughter, of life that had been and could never be again.

You’re here.

No.

Not like this.

The memory pressed harder.

Sable hair. Purple eyes. Life pressed to his chest. That morning. And then. White hair. Red eyes. Cold, distant, stolen.

He pressed into denial. He would not say it aloud. He would not accept it.

Not gone.

The black petals trembled against his palm. He pressed them further into the soil. Let them drink. Let them hold him. Let them remember.

Tears slid down his face, hot, unrelenting, burning paths through centuries of restraint. He pressed his face into the rose, inhaled the scent of earth, of grief, of Avid. Smell of blood, of loss. Smell of everything he had failed to protect.

I did not know.

He whispered it. He shouted it. He pressed palms into soil, petals, roots. Into memory.

The kiss returned, vivid and cruel. Trembling. Daring. Vulnerable. Scott had frozen. And now.

I froze.

Owen and Pyro.

Pyro, whose hands had brushed his own, whose eyes had held something he had never named. Pyro, whose betrayal cut deeper than the world had any right to allow. He had loved him in some way, in that foolish, messy, human way he never fully admitted, and Pyro had been part of this. Part of the taking, part of the loss, part of the hollow pressing against his chest like a vice.

The rose drank in his grief, black petals glinting silver in the moonlight, holding the memory, the blood, the love.

You’re here.

Not gone.

Scott pressed the soil over the roots, over the locket, over the blood and grief and guilt. He pressed it like a vow, like a prayer, like a confession too late. He pressed it like he could will Avid back into the world, make the loss a lie, make the absence untrue.

The garden exhaled. The wind lifted the petals. Moss clung to stone. Vines brushed against his cloak. The moon hung pale and sharp in the sky, light touching the black rose, silvering the edges.

Alive.

The word tasted wrong. He would not say it aloud. He would not accept it. Not yet. Not ever.

He lingered in the hollow, letting the garden bear him, the black rose, the locket, the grief. Hours passed. Minutes? Centuries? The air shifted, carrying the weight of memory through the arches, through the flowers, through the ground itself.

I did not love you enough.

I froze.

Tears burned, salty and sharp, sliding into the soil, into the roots, into the black petals trembling beneath his fingers. The locket glinted faintly, small and steadfast. A tether. A bridge. A fragment of Avid pressed close to his chest, now resting in earth.

The wind whispered again. The orchids, the anemones, the poppies—they bent slightly toward the rose, recognizing the weight of what had been lost. Recognizing grief. Recognizing love.

Scott rose slowly. Step by careful step, leaving the hollow, leaving the soil, leaving the black rose trembling in the moonlight, alive with blood and sorrow and the memory of a love he had only realized too late. Ignoring the tears that streamed down his face. Ignoring the feeling that curled up between his lungs. Ignoring everything.

I will not bury you.

And yet, he had.

The hollow waited.

The garden held everything else.

And in the pale light, the black rose stood alone, fragile and unyielding, a monument to grief, love, betrayal, and denial, feeding on centuries of sorrow and one night of loss that would never end.

Persephone: The goddess stolen from the overworld, her lips stained with pomegranate and promise. They say she planted mint where she wept, so her sorrow would bloom eternal — sweet on the tongue, bitter in the roots.

The storm raged on from outside.

The tinted glass sparkling every time lightning struck, turning into a maze of colored hallucinations against the cobbled walls. Spirals of stains of kaleidoscope shapes trailing across the barren gray.

Pyro had always enjoyed the rain. The thunder cracking outside of their childhood window, lighting up the sky in bright, vivid flashes. The sound of the raindrops hitting the metal of the roof in metronomic beats, repetitive in a strange, comforting, way.

Somewhere beneath the manor, the crypt doors groaned — Shelby would be awake still, candlelight spilling across her notes, trying to write through the storm. Apo, tossing and turning, as if tears weren’t dropping. Owen, probably half-asleep by the fire again, pretending not to mind the thunder.

It was strange how different each of them were. How they reacted to the gift.

Pyro sat wide eyed in the main hall, red eyes darting around the strangely quiet room.

They didn’t sleep much anymore. The idea of closing his eyes still made their skin crawl — every time he tried, he could feel their heartbeat that wasn’t there. The breath that he had relied on, taken with just one bite.

They rose, pushing away from the window. The floor was cold under his bare feet. The wind rattled the doorframe as they slipped into the hall, pale light from the storm flickering along the walls.

The manor was too big. Too quiet. Its corridors seemed to twist when no one was looking, the paintings watching from behind their lacquered eyes. A blonde, smiling, with the canvas that once held their eyes, torn away from time and violence. A woman, hair streaked with brilliant purples, face slashed.

They all stared at him.

He didn’t have a destination at first — just the restless pull that always came with nights like this. But when he passed the iron stairwell and smelled rain and earth, he knew where he was going.

The atrium.

It had been beautiful once, he thought — all white stone and glass arches, a place for sun and flowers. Now, ivy strangled the pillars. Vines trailed over the walls like veins. Every petal that bloomed did so in muted colors: whites, greys, deep, bleeding reds.

The air was thick with damp soil and memory.

Lightning flared again, and in the flash, he saw Scott.

He was standing near the far wall, half in shadow, half in moonlight filtered through rain-streaked glass. His back was turned, his hands buried in the soil. A small cluster of flowers grasped gently between his fingers.

Poppies. Red as wounds.

Pyro had never seen him like this. Soft, gentle. It was strange to see their sire cut off all his sharp edges, soothed by the glowing light of the storm.

Scott didn’t turn when he heard Pyro enter. Only said, quietly, “Couldn’t sleep?”

The question landed softly, without accusation.

Pyro leaned against one of the columns, crossing his arms.

“Didn’t think I needed to anymore.”

Scott’s mouth twitched — not quite a smile. “You don’t. But it helps, sometimes.”

Lightning flashed again, painting the atrium in silver. Pyro could see him clearly now — dirt on his sleeves, his hair damp from the leaks in the roof, his face lined with something too old to be sadness.

He was beautiful. The long waves of his hair, ivory in color, painted a beautiful mix of pure snow and sugary blood. The upper half was tied into a crown braid, done by Shelby, while she rambled on about their little stories and theories. It had some getting used to the stark white compared to the pretty cerulean that shone like the stars.

Pyro thought he was pretty either way.

“What are you doing?” Pyro asked finally.

Scott glanced down at the soil. “Trying to keep them alive.”

“The flowers?”

Scott nodded. “They were beautiful once.” He brushed mud from his fingers. “I can’t seem to make them bloom right anymore.”

The petals were duller than they should’ve been — color fading as if the ground itself was tired.

Pyro crouched beside him, not touching, just watching. The earth smelled like metal.

“You called this place a garden,” he said. “It looks more like a graveyard.”

Scott let out a quiet laugh, one that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Maybe there’s not much difference.”

The shorter one turned towards Pyro, teeth, sharp and biting, sparkling in the lighting.

A memory flash behind his eyes.

Pain flooding his neck, harsh and cold. A sensation against his wrist, slow and unnerving. He remembered the tears that fell, like dewdrops of rain. They remembered the way that their lips had trembled as the feeling of their limbs faded…

The echo eased to rain, steady and whispering against the glass. For a moment, it was easy to imagine they were somewhere else — somewhere alive.

Pyro reached out, brushing his fingers across one of the wilted petals.

“They’re not dead yet.”

Scott looked at him, really looked at him.

“No,” he murmured. “And neither are you.”

That made Pyro flinch, but he didn’t pull away. He kept his gaze on the flower, tracing the edges of its bruised red. It was soft under their callous fingerprint. Pyro pulled back gently, he didn’t want to hurt anything beautiful, again.

Scott leaned back on his heels, wiping dirt from his palms. “You should be resting.”

“Can’t.”

“Then stay,” Scott said softly. “If you want.”

And Pyro did — though they didn’t say it. He sat beside Scott instead, the soil cool under his palms, the air heavy with the scent of rain and old roots.

They didn’t talk after that. The flowers were enough. The thunder faded to a low hum, and Pyro found himself watching Scott’s hands move through the earth — careful, reverent, almost afraid to hurt what was left.

He wondered if Scott touched him the same way, that night he turned him.

He didn’t ask.

But when Scott brushed his sleeve against their shoulder, barely there, Pyro didn’t move away.

Eventually sleep pulled the fledgling under, their breath, more of habit than necessity, lulling in the silence.

Outside, the storm rolled toward the horizon. The manor groaned.

Inside, beneath the broken glass and dying flowers, two immortals sat together in the soft light — not quite forgiving, not quite lost, but alive.

“Sleep well, dahlia…”

•     •     •

The library was dim, lit only by candlelight and the fractured light of storm clouds drifting past the tall, arched windows. Rain tapped a steady rhythm against the glass, mingling with the faint whistle of wind through the cracks in the old stone. Shelves stretched to the ceiling, heavy with leather-bound tomes that smelled of dust, ink, and centuries of secrets.

Pyro sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at a thick volume sprawled open before them. Their fingers traced the faded illustrations of plants that hadn’t grown in the manor for decades. He could feel the pulse of the house around them, the quiet hum of its undead inhabitants moving elsewhere — Scott tending the atrium, Owen muttering to himself while writing a letter that would never be sent, the faint candlelight spilling from Shelby’s own nook. Apo, begrudgingly, going along with the chaos.

“Are you seriously going to just sit there all night staring at dead flowers?” Shelby’s voice cut through the quiet, gentle but teasing. They appeared beside Pyro, balancing a flickering candle in one hand, the other tucking a loose strand of hair, a pale spider web white streaked with burgundy, behind her ear. “Because, honestly, that’s kind of… sad.”

Pyro blinked, caught off guard. “They’re not dead.”

Shelby raised an eyebrow, a small smirk tugging at their lips. “Not dead? Look at them. They’re… well, I don’t even know what they are.” They crouched down beside Pyro, nudging the book closer. “You could at least pretend to be excited about something living.”

“I am,” Pyro said, voice low. “I just… like knowing they existed.”

Shelby leaned closer, shoulders brushing Pyro’s. “You mean you like knowing someone else existed,” she said softly, eyes scanning the illustrations with a practiced curiosity. “Not you. Not Scott. Not me. Just the damn plants. You don’t even like horticulture! It’s all sociology and sewage pipes,”

Pyro’s lips twitched, but they didn’t argue. The truth sat heavy and quiet, and they let it.

Shelby grinned, as if taking his silence as a resignation, their gaze flicking toward the window as lightning briefly illuminated the tall stacks. “Well, I guess someone has to care about them. Might as well be you. Though, seriously, you could help me pick out some flowers that actually bloom. Something a little less… morbid?”

Pyro laughed quietly, the sound strange in the cavernous room. “You think I’d know how to make them bloom?”

“We’re fledglings,” Shelby said with mock severity. “Our entire existence is supposed to be dramatic and tragic. You’d better make them bloom beautifully.”

Pyro’s fingers brushed against the spines of the books, tracing their grooves absently. “I don’t know if I can,” they admitted. “Not like Scott does.”

Shelby’s expression softened. “No one can, at first. You’re—we’re—new at this… all of it.” Their voice grew quiet, almost conspiratorial. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. And besides,” they added with a wink, “I’ll help you.”

Pyro’s chest tightened slightly. They had expected teasing, maybe judgment. Not… this. Not quiet support, threaded with humor and warmth. Their fingers hovered over a page, unsure whether to touch it or just absorb the moment.

The candle flames flickered again, illuminating the library in warmth. Pyro looked up at Shelby, noticing for the first time the way their hair caught the faint light, the subtle angles of their face, the careful way they held themselves in the shadow of the tall shelves.

“You’re weird,” Pyro said finally, voice quieter than they intended.

Shelby laughed, low and warm. “Takes one to know one,” they said, nudging Pyro gently with her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s see if we can find something that actually blooms. Something that reminds us we’re alive… even if the rest of the manor acts like ghosts.”

Pyro hesitated, then closed the book with a soft thud. Together, they rose, moving toward a smaller, neglected shelf at the corner of the library. Dust rose in the candlelight, motes dancing like tiny fireflies. Shelby handed Pyro a small pot, and their fingers brushed as they adjusted it together.

For a while, they worked in silence, hands moving over soil and seeds, careful not to disturb the fragile balance. Every so often, Shelby would whisper a joke, or Pyro would mutter a half-serious comment about the “tragic life of flowers.” And every time, a small laugh would ripple through the otherwise quiet room.

Hours passed like this, unnoticed. The storm outside softened, rain dripping slowly from the stone eaves. Pyro felt something unfamiliar — a fragile comfort, a fleeting sense that they belonged somewhere, that someone truly understood the strange, heavy weight of being alive as a vampire.

Finally, Shelby leaned back, surveying their small progress. “Not bad, fledgling. Not bad at all.”

Pyro smirked, brushing their hands off on their knees. “Don’t expect me to say that tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to,” Shelby said softly. “Just… stay curious. Keep trying. That’s enough for now.”

Pyro nodded, heart strangely light, a rare smile tugging at their lips. For the first time in weeks, they felt a quiet ease in the company of someone else — someone who didn’t demand anything of them except a little attention, a little trust.

And that, for now, was enough.

•     •     •

The rain had softened to a whisper, leaving the manor slick and gleaming. Mist curled lazily through the broken arches, wrapping around the atrium like a silken shroud. From the upper corridors, Pyro’s gaze fell on the garden below, overgrown and damp, the petals of black dahlias drooping beneath droplets of water.

Scott knelt among the flowers, hands brushing gently over the soil, coaxing the fragile blooms toward life. His hair caught the pale light of dawn, ivory waves cascading over his shoulders, the crown braid undone at the ends. Every movement was deliberate, reverent, as if the world outside — the rain, the manor, the centuries — had ceased to exist.

Pyro’s heart, or the echo of it, thumped in their chest. They didn’t move, didn’t breathe too loudly. They had no right to intrude, yet they couldn’t look away. Scott’s red eyes, even half-hidden in shadow, caught the faint glow of the morning. The blush on his pale cheeks made him look impossibly human, softening the sharp elegance of his fangs and bone.

He used to have cyan hair, Pyro remembered — a color out of place in their time, vibrant against pale skin and stormy eyes. But now… now he was monochrome, a ghost in ivory and red, luminous and terrible all at once.

Pyro felt a pull in their chest — part awe, part fear, part something unnamed. They could see the way Scott’s fingers lingered over the flowers, how he breathed carefully, even though he didn’t need to. He moved like a cathedral, sacred and untouchable, and Pyro… Pyro wanted to touch, to break the distance, to feel the warmth of those hands they had once shivered under.

The corridor behind them shifted, the faint scrape of leather on stone. Pyro froze. A voice, low and smooth, cut through the fog of their fascination:

“Some flowers only bloom to die in the same hands that plant them.”

Pyro jolted, spinning to see Owen leaning against the railing, white hair plastered from the lingering rain, eyes shadowed and unreadable. He smirked faintly, the kind of smile that promised secrets he would never share.

“…What?” Pyro breathed, unsure if they meant the flowers or something else entirely.

Owen’s gaze followed Pyro’s to Scott below. “You watch him like he’s a painting you’re not allowed to touch,” he said softly. “Or maybe a wound you’re too afraid to bleed into.”

Pyro blinked, heart clenching. “…I — it’s just… he’s… there.”

Owen’s eyes glimmered with something darker, memories Pyro couldn’t touch. “…He’s terrifying,” Pyro admitted finally, voice low, almost swallowed by the mist. “I mean… I don’t know. Everything about him is terrifying.”

Owen’s laugh was quiet, dry, carrying the echo of centuries. “And yet,” he said, leaning closer, shadowed by the corridor, “you can’t look away.”

Pyro’s lips twitched. “…He’s beautiful too,” they whispered, though the words felt dangerous even to themselves. “Terrifying and… beautiful.”

Owen’s smile softened, but his eyes didn’t lose the edge. “Beauty and doom often sit side by side. Some of us learn too late that they cannot be separated.”

Pyro’s fingers curled against the cold stone of the railing. “…I don’t understand.”

“You will,” Owen said, straightening, the sound of rain dripping from the eaves punctuating each word. “Some love,” he continued cryptically, “…is always meant to break you, even if it saves you at the same time.”

Pyro’s head spun, a strange mix of dread and awe wrapping around their chest. He glanced back toward Scott, who was now rising, holding a small cluster of hellebore in both hands, light glinting off his wet hair. He didn’t know Pyro watched, didn’t need to, and yet the pull in Pyro’s chest only tightened.

“Why do you always have to talk like riddles?” Pyro muttered under their breath, more to themselves than Owen.

Owen only laughed, a soft, ephemeral sound, like wind over dry leaves. “…Because the truth,” he said, voice low and knowing, “…is never as gentle as lies.”

Pyro didn’t answer. They didn’t need to. Their eyes stayed on Scott — the way he tilted his head, brushing a petal gently, the subtle curve of his neck under the ivory waves of hair, the delicate blush on his cheeks that made him look almost mortal, almost fragile.

And yet… Pyro knew he wasn’t.

Owen’s shadow fell closer, silent but heavy. “…Careful,” he murmured, voice barely a breeze. “Some blooms… draw blood not always from the soil.”

Pyro shivered, not from cold. Their gaze didn’t waver. “I don’t care,” they whispered, voice firm, though their heart — if it still existed — thudded with a dangerous excitement. “…I want to watch him anyway.”

Owen studied them for a long moment, head tilting slightly. Then, without another word, he melted back into the corridor shadows, leaving Pyro alone with their fascination, awe, and fear.

The mist curling around the atrium seemed to pulse with quiet anticipation, droplets sliding from leaves to stone, the flowers swaying as if aware of the silent witness above. Pyro pressed closer to the glass, breath fogging the surface, hands flattening against it.

Scott knelt again, cradling the flowers, eyes downcast, lips brushing a petal. Pale fingers curled around the delicate stems like a vow unspoken.

Pyro’s chest tightened. “…I’d die for him,” they whispered, though the words were a secret even to themselves.

The manor around them sighed. The rain had stopped entirely, leaving a cold, silver stillness. Mist drifted like spirits among the ruined arches, the scent of earth and old wood hanging thick in the air.

And Pyro watched, heart pounding, as Scott moved with quiet devotion, unaware — or perhaps entirely aware — that he was being stared at, admired, and feared all at once.

Somewhere behind them, Owen’s laughter lingered, a shadowed reminder that beauty and doom often walked hand in hand.

•     •     •

The rain hammered the roof, a violent rhythm that drummed against Pyro’s temples, shaking loose the fragile threads of sleep. They were drowning before they even opened their eyes.

Water pooled beneath them, cold and sticky, clinging to their skin, soaking the brown shirt he had worn, heavy with the scent of iron and earth. Every breath was sharp, burning, like inhaling the storm itself.

A shadow moved over the water, impossibly long, waves of bright blue hair trailing in liquid motion. Scott. His eyes — piercing sapphire, unnervingly vivid — cut through the chaos of the dream, drawing Pyro toward him even as every instinct screamed to flee.

“Pyro…” The voice, soft, silk laced with command, slipped into their chest and made the heartbeat they no longer had skip. “…You can’t run.”

Panic clawed up their spine. He turned, lungs aching, teeth chattering, the floor tilting beneath their soaked feet. Water rose around their ankles, then knees, rising with the tide of fear. A scream caught in their throat — it became a gasp, a moan, the sound swallowed by the storm.

Scott was there in an instant, impossibly fast, taller and impossibly closer than memory allowed. Hands — warm and cold all at once — wrapped around their shoulders. Fingers dug into wet silk, holding them still.

Another shadow, smaller, darker at the edges, appeared at their wrist. Owen. His gaze, sharp and distant, flickered like lightning. A warning, almost a ghost, a hand brushing their veins — the bite that didn’t leave a mark but burned in the marrow.

Two points of pain, two points of fear. Pyro’s chest heaved, mouth dry, limbs trembling as the world wobbled between reality and dream. Every inch of skin burned, every pulse that wasn’t there sang through their head.

The manor itself had changed. Walls stretched and melted into rain-soaked corridors, floors tilting into rivers of black water, glass shattering into tiny shards that floated like petals across the storm-lit room. Ivy writhed along the walls, fingers of green curling to scratch at skin, pull at hair. Every flower wilted under their gaze, petals sticking to the blood-mixed water, black and bruised.

Scott’s lips pressed to their neck. Cold, impossibly precise, searing. Pyro’s arms flailed, trying to push away, but the water held them, and the dream held them. The bite was sharp, intimate, and somehow unbearable. The fangs sank, pulling more than blood — pulling fear, confusion, something that felt like the last piece of childhood away.

Owen’s teeth grazed the other wrist, a whisper of pain that screamed louder than the storm. Pyro’s head spun, the taste of iron thick on their tongue, mixing with the rain that poured into the cavern of their mouth. They tried to breathe, tried to scream, but the storm had consumed their voice.

And yet… there was something else. Something terrible and strange. The brush of Scott’s hands across their back, the way Owen’s fingers lingered, even in warning — it was intimate. It was possession. It was terrifyingly, achingly beautiful.

Lightning split the sky, illuminating Scott’s blue hair like spilled ice, highlighting the faint blush that stained his cheeks. He looked… alive, too alive, paler than the clouds above, beautiful in a way that made Pyro’s stomach knot. Every line of him was precise, terrifying, perfect.

Pyro tried to flee again, slipping in the puddle, hands scraping against the slick stone, water rising higher, swallowing them up. The echoes of screams — their own, someone else’s — folded into the storm. Their chest ached, throat raw, every part of them trembling.

And then, quiet. Only the sound of rain dripping, distant, gentle, almost sweet. Scott’s face hovered close, soft now, brush of fingers along wet hair, guiding them to the cold stone floor. Owen lingered at the edge, silent, warning eyes never leaving.

Pyro curled into themselves, shivering, exhausted, alive but changed. Heart nonexistent but pounding in memory, trembling in the marrow. They gasped, swallowed, clung to the sensation of being held, being seen, being claimed.

“You’re here,” Scott whispered, voice low, velvety, brushing across their ear. “You survived.”

Pyro’s lips parted. Couldn’t answer. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t unsee the storm, the water, the fangs, the fear, the terrible intimacy.

Outside, the wind rattled the windows, rain pattering like slow applause. The manor creaked, groaned. Water dripped from high arches into pools on the floor. Somewhere beneath them, Owen leaned against a wall, silent but unforgotten, a ghost of warning and memory.

Pyro closed their eyes — or thought they did — letting the dark swallow them, letting Scott’s ghost hand anchor them. The nightmare lingered on the edges of their mind, a storm within a storm, a memory that refused to fade.

And in the quiet, wet aftermath of fear and transformation, one thought cut through the horror:

They were his now. And maybe, somehow… they didn’t hate it.

The world came back in pieces.

First, the ceiling — dark wood fractured by moonlight. Then the cold air against their skin, the faint creak of the manor settling into silence. Pyro’s chest felt tight, his throat raw. The storm still echoed in their ears.

He lay there for a while, unsure if he was awake. The sound of dripping water continued — not rain now, but something smaller. The leak from the cracked window.

And then — a sound. Footsteps. Bare, soft, deliberate.

“Pyro?”

Scott’s voice. Quiet, almost fragile. Like he didn’t want to wake anyone else.

Pyro blinked, turning towards the noise. Their eyes slowly adjusting to the surrounding darkness.

Scott stood there, half-shadowed, wearing nothing but a linen shirt that fell loose across his frame, one pale shoulder slipping out. His hair — usually immaculate, a waterfall of white — hung mussed, damp at the ends. The faint blush at his cheeks was unearthly in the moonlight, as if he carried his own reflection wherever he went.

“You were…” Scott’s voice trailed, eyes darting across the sheets, the damp pillow, the shaking in Pyro’s hands. “You were calling my name.”

Pyro sat up too fast. The room tilted, the remnants of the dream still crawling down his spine. “Wasn’t. I—”

Scott didn’t argue. He stepped forward, the hem of his shirt brushing his fingers, bare feet silent against the stone. He looked human in that moment, almost painfully so — like the ghost of who he had been before the fangs, before the centuries.

“Bad dreams,” Scott murmured. “They don’t stop after the first hundred years, I’m afraid.”

He crouched beside the bed, close enough that Pyro could smell the faint metallic sweetness on his breath. The scent made something in his chest twist — not fear exactly, not hunger either, something else.

“It was just the rain,” they mumbled, face turning away from their sire.

Scott smiled, just a little. The expression softened his features, turned his eyes from red to rose. “The rain doesn’t make you tremble like that.”

He reached out, hesitated, then brushed his fingers over Pyro’s wrist. It was meant to be grounding — a simple touch — but it burned, not from heat but from recognition. The same hand that had once held him down as the storm swallowed his life.

Pyro flinched. Scott froze.

“Sorry,” Scott whispered. He drew his hand back, looking — for the first time Pyro could remember — uncertain.

The silence stretched. Somewhere below, the manor groaned. Wind whispered through the crack in the window. The moonlight turned Scott’s skin almost silver.

“You’re shaking,” Scott said softly.

“I’m fine,” Pyro lied. His voice cracked anyway.

Scott looked at him for a long time — that gaze that felt like it could unravel thoughts if he lingered too long. Then, carefully, he reached for the blanket crumpled at the edge of the bed and pulled it up over Pyro’s shoulders.

“There,” he said, voice a whisper again. “It’s strange, isn’t it? How something so dead can still feel cold.”

Pyro stared at him, throat dry. Scott’s hand lingered a moment longer on the edge of the blanket, his fingers brushing Pyro’s again before retreating. The contact was brief, almost reverent.

He looked exhausted — eyes dull at the edges, a crease at the corner of his mouth, hair sticking to his forehead. But even like this — especially like this — he was beautiful. The kind of beauty that felt unfair. Dangerous.

They were staring, they knew that, but he couldn't stop. Their sire was truly… beautiful.

Scott only tilted his head, studying him like a painting that wouldn’t sit still. “Try to sleep,” he said, standing slowly. “I’ll stay until the morning, if you want.”

And there it was — soft, simple, ruinous.

Pyro didn’t answer, but Scott didn’t need him to. He sat by the window instead, where the cracked glass glowed faint blue, the world outside still dripping from rain.

For a while, neither of them spoke. The silence between them was thick and strange, too full for words but too fragile for anything else.

When Pyro’s eyes finally fluttered closed again, the storm was still there — quieter now, but still alive, somewhere between his ribs.

And beneath it all, one thought lingered: He didn’t know which scared him more — the dream of Scott’s fangs, or the comfort of Scott’s voice.

•     •     •

The rain had softened to a whisper by the time Pyro returned to the atrium. The glass roof was veiled in silver, moonlight slipping through the storm clouds, scattering pale reflections across the floor. The air was thick — sweet with rot, iron, and the faint perfume of flowers that refused to die.

He stepped between the stone planters, past vines that clawed at the walls, until he reached the heart of the garden. Poppies grew there, tangled and heavy, their petals bruised by years of neglect. A single plaque jutted from the soil, name half-erased: J—my.

The letters were soft under his thumb, almost gone, like a memory said too often. There were other plaques, half-buried beneath moss — names swallowed by roots, petals blooming above them like gravestones. The garden wasn’t a garden at all. It was a graveyard dressed in color. They wondered, for a moment, who they had buried here — and whether the garden remembered them, the way he still remembered the sea, the smell of salt and smoke and freedom before his veins had been rewritten.

The thought made him ache. The ache made him want. Want to feed the blooms. Feed them their blood, thick and warm.

They pressed a claw into his palm, slow, deliberate. The skin parted easily. The pain was distant, familiar. A habit — old, quiet, ritualistic. Blood welled and fell, red against the black earth.

The garden stirred.

Poppies shifted as though breathing. Roots coiled. The air thickened until it trembled in his lungs. The scent of iron grew sharp, dizzying, too alive.

“Pyro.”

The voice came from the doorway — quiet, velvet-edged, unmistakable.

Scott stood there barefoot, his white hair damp from rain, clinging to his temples in loose waves. A linen shirt hung open at the collar, revealing a sliver of pale throat marked faintly by pink. His eyes, red in the half-light, burned like embers banked under ash.

He looked half-dreamed, beautiful in a way that demanded distance.

Pyro froze. The blood dripped faster from his hand. “I didn’t think you’d wake.”

Scott’s mouth curved, too soft to be a smile.

“I don’t sleep when the garden doesn’t.”

He came closer. The sound of his steps was swallowed by the soil. When he reached Pyro, his gaze fell to the wound, and his expression shifted — something between fear and hunger.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he said. “It remembers you too easily.”

Pyro’s laugh was small, sharp. “It’s only blood.”

Scott tilted his head. His voice gentled.

“It’s mine, Pyro. You’re mine. That’s what you forget.”

"It's only blood," Pyro echoed again.

“Nothing in this place is only anything.”

Pyro hesitated. “Then tell me,” he said. “What’s mine? What flower will grow for me?”

Scott’s eyes softened, but he didn’t look away. “Dahlias,” he said, voice low, almost reverent. “Strong, beautiful, patient. They’ll grow for you… if you let them.”

Pyro frowned, tracing the air above the dark soil. “Dahlias…?”

“Yes,” Scott murmured, stepping closer. “You’ll see. One day, the soil will know your name, and the flowers will bloom just for you.”

The words should have sounded cruel. They didn’t. They landed like confession.

A scripture flooded to Pyro's mind from their time at the library with Shelby. It was from an old book, the pages yellowed and torn, it smelt of decay and dead perfumes. The violet spine reading "Floriography" as they dusted off the leather. They had read it front to back, enamored by the words. 

Dahlias: Associated with many meanings through the petals color. White dahlias symbolize purity and innocence, a foil to the black blooms the flower blossoms. Black dahlias mean betrayal and hurt, commonly linked to murder and violence. Truly the opposite of the the other colorful shades. 

Scott knelt in front of him, reaching for his hand. His fingers were cold at first, then warm — so unbearably human. He turned Pyro’s palm upward, studying the cut as though reading it. The rain’s reflection painted the blood gold, red, white.

“You always bleed like it’s a prayer,” Scott murmured. “And you never ask what it’s for.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” Pyro said. But his voice broke on the last word.

Scott’s eyes lifted — steady, unflinching.

“You did,” he said softly. “You always do.”

He bent his head and kissed the wound.

It wasn’t a bite — not yet. Just a touch. A vow. His lips ghosted across the skin, tasting iron, rain, the faint sweetness beneath. The garden bloomed around them in a single breath — red flaring through the petals, vines trembling as if remembering the sun.

Pyro shuddered. The sight of him — pale, perfect, streaked in moonlight — made something inside Pyro ache and splinter.

“You’re…” Pyro began, but couldn’t finish.

Scott glanced up.

“Say it.”

Pyro swallowed. “You’re beautiful.”

The words landed like blood on snow — bright, shocking, irreversible.

Scott’s smile was small, broken, devastating.

“No,” he whispered. “You are. You always were.”

He sank his fangs in then — careful, reverent, like sealing a promise. The pain was soft this time, almost tender. Pyro gasped, fingers curling into Scott’s hair. The world narrowed to that single point — blood, breath, and the impossible nearness of him.

When Scott drew back, his mouth glistened red, his breath shallow. For a heartbeat neither moved. Then Pyro reached for him — desperate, dizzy, pulling him closer by the collar.

Their mouths met — uneven, trembling, tasting of rain and salt and the ghost of blood. Pyro’s lips were chapped, rough against Scott’s impossibly soft ones; the contrast made him shiver. Scott exhaled into him, a sound almost like prayer, and kissed back — slower, deeper, a kind of surrender neither had ever learned to make.

The garden trembled with them. Poppies unfurled, roots pressed against glass. The air tasted metallic and alive.

When Scott pulled back, his mouth was stained crimson. He looked wrecked by beauty, trembling from restraint.

“They were dying,” Pyro said faintly.

Scott’s gaze flicked to the garden — blooming, alive, trembling under the stormlight.

“No,” he said, smiling with reverence. “They were waiting.”

His hand rose, brushing a streak of blood from Pyro’s throat.

“Now,” he murmured, “they remember what they were made for.”

The storm broke open above them. Rain struck the glass, and for a moment, the garden glowed — all scarlet and silver and ruin.

Scott stood, stepping back into the light. His shirt clung translucent to his skin, his hair a halo of white flame.

“Sleep, dahlia,” he said. “The garden will keep you.”

Pyro stayed kneeling long after he left. Blood stained his wrist, his heart steady in its absence. The flowers pulsed faintly red, whispering in a language older than either of them.

He watched the glow fade, then touched his neck where Scott’s mouth had been.

The mark was already gone.

But beneath his skin, the garden bloomed.

Xenia; noun—they say every stranger is a god in disguise. You open your door, offer them warmth, and the walls remember your courage — or your fear. To turn them away is to invite the wrath of invisible eyes. Hospitality becomes a prayer, a ritual, a test of what survives when the world watches in silence.

Night fell softly in Oakhurst, the way a hymn faded when no one remembered the words.

The candle flickered against the pale walls of Abolish’s small room, throwing dancing shadows across the furniture, the edge of the bed, the wooden floor worn smooth from years of use. He knelt there, at the very edge, legs tucked neatly beneath him, back straight, palms pressed to his knees. The rosary slid silently between his fingers, each bead traced with care, the silver cross catching the dim light every few moments as he murmured the familiar lines.

“Forgive me, Father… for my sins… for my weakness… for my desires…”

He always started the same way. Kneeling at the edge of the bed, because the foot of the mattress was his altar, his small sanctuary in the room that belonged entirely to him. The cross earrings he wore brushed lightly against his jaw every time he bowed his head. The candle’s flame danced as if it were listening, trembling in the quiet room, and Abolish closed his eyes against the intrusion of thought, against the pull of the world outside.

His prayers were methodical, a ritual repeated with care, not because he believed in a watching God anymore, He had left Abolish a while ago, but because it anchored him to the person he thought he had to be—the pure, obedient child who had survived too many rules, too many accusations of being “marked.”

The rosary wound around his hand like something living, each bead catching the low lamplight. He always prayed at this hour, between the turning of the clock and the shivering of the streetlamps outside. He told himself it was habit. In truth, it was fear—fear that if he stopped, someone might notice.

The words came easily, even when they didn’t feel real. Deliver us from evil. He knew them by muscle memory, the way a wound remembers how to ache.

He still crossed himself before sleep. He still kissed the crucifix that hung from his nightstand, chipped and dulled where his thumb rubbed the silver away. He still whispered the names of saints who had never once looked his way.

And though the candle beside him trembled in its glass, he did not. He’d grown used to the trembling of things around him—the town, the air, his faith.

There were beauty marks scattered across his skin, moles and freckles, the kind that once made the children at the orphanage whisper that the devil had touched him too many times. Sister Maeve used to scold them for it, but she never denied it, either. God leaves his chosen untouched, she’d said once, not looking at him when she did.

He had learned to pray harder after that.

The small window above his bed looked out over the main street—empty now, except for the faint mist curling low around the lampposts. Sometimes, he thought he saw figures moving in it, shapes too tall or too still. He told himself not to look twice.

He breathed. Counted the beats between each word. In. Hail Mary. Out. Full of grace.

The beads clicked against each other like tiny teeth.

A soft sound interrupted him—not loud, but strange in its place. A knock.

It wasn’t a neighborly knock. Three slow taps, spaced apart. As if whoever stood outside already knew the door would open.

Abolish froze, his hand tightening around the rosary until the cross dug into his palm. No one visited him this late. No one from town, at least.

The candle flickered, guttered.

Another knock.

This time, the sound seemed to breathe through the wood.

The third knock never came.

Only the hush after—thick and humming, like the air before a storm. Abolish stood, breath caught in his chest, the room bending under the weight of its own silence. When he crossed to the door, the wood groaned, and his shadow tilted along the wall like something trying to flee before him.

The handle was cold. Not winter-cold. Tomb-cold.

He opened the door.

Pyro stood there, framed in the fog.

He looked like they’d stepped out of one of the church paintings—the kind with saints carved too pretty for what they’d suffered. His hair was ivory, damp from the rain, strands sticking to their forehead; a few curls caught the light and gleamed like burnished wire. His skin was pale but not lifeless, a kind of moonlit pallor that made every vein, every shadow under his eyes, something deliberate. His mouth was the only warm thing about him—soft, parted, the color of bruised fruit.

He wore black, always black, but it wasn’t the polished black of mourning clothes. This was road-dust black, threadbare at the seams, the collar loosened like he’d been running from something. A golden clasp caught the light at his throat—simple, tarnished, shaped like a flame. The coat hung off his shoulders like it wasn’t quite his, and still he made it look regal.

Abolish didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until his chest hurt.

“Hey,” Pyro said quietly. His voice wasn’t smooth—it dragged, rough with smoke and late hours.

The sound of him did something awful and familiar to Abolish. Like being a child again, sitting in pews too tight around the ribs, hearing hymns that promised love but warned what it cost.

He couldn’t look at him for long. When he did, all the edges in the room blurred.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, the words brittle. “If they see—”

“They won’t,” Pyro cut in, simple, certain. He stepped forward, and the air moved—not heat, but something pretending to be it. A soft pulse that brushed Abolish’s skin as he passed. The scent that followed was strange: iron, rain, and a sweetness that didn’t belong to the living.

“Your candle’s almost out,” Pyro said. He nodded toward the desk. “You’ll go blind sittin’ in the dark like that.”

Abolish’s fingers tightened around the rosary. “Maybe that’s better,” he said.

Pyro’s smile was small. “You never did like seeing me.”

He said it lightly, but it hit like confession.

The lamplight trembled, threw gold across his cheekbones, caught the edge of his lashes—unfair, the way light seemed to worship him. His eyes weren’t red, not really; more a deep rusted brown that sometimes caught the light wrong and turned the color of a wound. When he blinked, Abolish thought he saw a glint, a flicker of something hungry.

“Don’t,” Abolish murmured, stepping back.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make it sound like it’s nothing.”

Pyro tilted his head, and for a moment his expression softened—something kind, almost human. “I never said it was nothing.”

The words sank slow into him.

He wanted to tell him to go, to shut the door and pray until his knees bled, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. The silence stretched between them, warm and dangerous, full of things neither had language for.

The candle finally guttered out. Smoke curled through the room like a sigh.

In the dim light, Pyro’s face looked almost unreal—the sharp line of his jaw, the faint mark at his throat that could’ve been a scar or a vein. He was beautiful in that cruel way things were when they weren’t meant to last: a statue that would crumble if touched, a star that burned too fast.

Abolish thought of every sermon that said beauty was a test, temptation dressed as grace. Then why does it feel like mercy?

Pyro moved closer. Close enough that Abolish could feel the ghost of breath that wasn’t there. His hand came up, fingers cold, brushing a strand of hair away from Abolish’s face.

“Still praying?” he asked softly.

Abolish’s voice caught. “Trying to.”

Pyro’s mouth tilted, not quite a smile. “Then pray for me too.”

The rosary slipped from his hand. Beads scattered, sharp against the floorboards, echoing in the silence that followed.

Abolish didn’t move for a long moment after the beads fell. The quiet felt thick enough to drown in. Pyro had stepped back, but not far—just enough that the air between them stayed alive, trembling with the heat of something that shouldn’t exist between the living and the dead.

Then Pyro’s voice, lower this time: “Can I come in?”

It wasn’t a question so much as a confession, or maybe a curse he’d said too many times before. Abolish looked up, pulse stuttering. There, in the doorway, the threshold seemed to glow faintly with something ancient, something that waited for permission.

Abolish didn’t answer right away. He only nodded, once—small, deliberate.

Pyro stepped forward. The air shifted. Something unseen, heavy and cold, uncoiled from the doorway as if the house itself exhaled.

Then, as if to fill the silence with anything else, Abolish cleared his throat. “Tea?”

The word sounded strange, too fragile to hold all the things behind it. It wasn’t really a question. It was habit, reflex—a reach towards something safe, something human.

Pyro’s mouth twitched, and for an instant, Abolish thought he might laugh. But he didn’t. He only nodded once, slow. “Yeah. Tea’d be good.”

They both knew it was a lie.

Abolish turned away, grateful for the excuse to move. The floorboards creaked under his feet; the lamp hissed faintly as he passed. The small kettle on the stove was already half-filled from earlier—he’d meant to make tea after prayer, when the world felt too quiet. He poured the water, his hands trembling just enough to make it spill over the rim.

Behind him, Pyro didn’t speak. The sound of them was in the space—the faint rustle of his coat, the way the room seemed smaller around them.

“You know,” Abolish said, keeping his eyes on the kettle, “most people knock during the day.”

“Day’s not really my thing,” Pyro said. His tone was easy, but the corners of it frayed. “Thought you’d know that by now.”

Steam began to rise, a thin curl that fogged the window. The glass shuddered faintly from the wind outside.

“I shouldn’t have opened the door.”

“No you shouldn't' have.”

“Then why’d you come?”

A pause. “Didn’t feel like being alone.”

The kettle whined softly, and Abolish turned it down before it screamed. He reached for the chipped cups stacked by the sink, hands working automatically—muscle memory from years of making things for people who didn’t stay. When he turned back, Pyro had drifted nearer, the faintest distance closing without sound.

Under the yellow light, he looked almost warm. Almost. His eyes caught the glow, bright red now, rimmed in that impossible black. They should’ve been frightening. They weren’t. They looked tired.

Abolish set the cups down on the table. “Sugar?”

Pyro shook his head. “Doesn’t make a difference.”

He poured anyway. The tea was weak, the color of old brass. He set one cup in front of Pyro, who watched the steam rise with a strange, almost reverent focus—as if he missed the way warmth felt when it came from within.

Abolish sat opposite him. The table between them was narrow, scarred from years of use. The air smelled of wet earth and cheap leaves steeped too long.

“You ever miss it?” Abolish asked suddenly.

Pyro looked up. “What?”

“Warmth.”

The question hung there, heavy as incense.

For a second, Pyro didn’t answer. Then his mouth softened, not into a smile, but something quieter. “Sometimes. But it’s easier not to think about it.”

Abolish nodded, though he didn’t know why. He watched the tea tremble in his own hands, the ripple of his pulse in the liquid. He wished, absurdly, that Pyro would drink it. Just to see if something human might flicker back into him.

Slowly he tilted his head, in remorse and prayer. The words found his lips without thought—a rhythm older than him, worn soft by repetition. Bless us, O Lord, and forgive what we take without worth. For what we receive, and for what we ruin, have mercy.

He didn’t know if he was blessing the tea, or himself, or the strange company he kept.

Pyro didn’t bend their head. He just wrapped his hands around the cup—pretending, maybe—and said, “You still pray before every meal?”

Abolish hesitated. “Only when I think they’re watching.”

Pyro’s eyes flicked up, and for the first time that night, they smiled. Not mockery, not pity—something small, understanding, almost fond.

Outside, the rain started again, gentle against the window.

The tea steamed between them. Neither drank.

The rain had softened into mist by the time their tea went cold. The window glass fogged with their breath, though only one of them breathed at all. The candle had burned low enough that the wick hissed and curled into itself, throwing faint halos of smoke that lingered above the table.

Neither spoke. The kind of silence they sat in wasn’t heavy—it was delicate, balanced. A stillness that asked not to be broken.

Abolish traced the rim of his cup, feeling the faint tremor in his hand. Pyro’s eyes followed the motion, unblinking. Every so often, the light caught in them, the brown and rust bleeding into gold. They looked almost human like that.

Forgive me, Father, for I have wants.

“You should... go,” Abolish said finally, though it came out soft, like a hope instead of a warning.

Pyro’s lips curved faintly. “You always say that.”

“And you never listen.”

“No.” A pause. “Guess I don’t.”

The air between them shifted—quiet, trembling, something almost alive. Abolish didn’t look away this time. He let himself see Pyro fully: the faint damp in his hair, the collar of their coat turned inward where the thread was unraveling, the shape of their mouth—too kind for something damned.

He told himself that beauty was temptation, that the devil wore faces like this to test the faithful. But in that dim, flickering light, it didn’t feel like sin. It felt like grace. Misunderstood and reverent. Like kneeling before a relic no one else worshipped.

Pyro reached out, slow enough that Abolish could have moved away. He didn’t.

The cold of their fingers brushed over Abolish’s wrist, then rested there—not gripping, just holding. As if he needed to confirm that warmth was real, that there was still blood moving underneath the skin. Abolish turned his hand over so their palms met, skin against skin, a small, impossible exchange of heat.

Deliver me from this want.

The tea on the table went still.

“You shouldn’t touch me,” Abolish said. It wasn’t a reprimand. It was almost a plea.

“I know.”

“I’m unholy.”

“So am I.”

He could have pulled away. He didn’t.

The candle guttered again, flame bowing in the draft that slipped through the window frame. The shadows bent closer around them, the room shrinking down to the two of them and the faint sound of rain against glass.

When Pyro finally moved, it wasn’t sudden. His hand slipped upward, tracing the line of Abolish’s sleeve, then the edge of his jaw. The touch was light enough that it might not have been real.

Abolish’s breath caught—not from fear, but the strange recognition of being seen. The kind that pressed into him until he felt transparent.

“Why do you keep coming here?” he whispered.

Pyro’s thumb brushed the corner of his mouth, a ghost of a smile tugging there. “Because you still open the door.”

Abolish almost laughed. It came out quieter than that—more of an exhale, heavy with everything he couldn’t name.

Lead us not into temptation. His lips parted all the same.

He didn’t notice when Pyro leaned in, only that suddenly there was less distance between them. That he could smell the way their hair smelled faintly of smoke and rain.

Abolish’s hands trembled slightly as he brushed a stray curl from Pyro’s forehead. The contact was electric and quiet all at once—the sort of spark that didn’t shout, but sang in his veins.

Pyro’s gaze dropped to Abolish’s lips, slow and deliberate. “You shouldn’t,” he murmured, voice low and even, almost teasing, almost a warning.

“I know,” Abolish whispered back, words barely there. But I can’t move.

For a heartbeat, Pyro’s hand rested lightly on Abolish’s jaw, cool and impossibly soft. Then he tilted his head, just enough for the smallest brush of lips, a question and a confession in one. Abolish’s breath hitched.

“Pyro—” he began, but the word dissolved into nothing when Pyro leaned in fully, closing the gap with deliberate patience. The kiss was soft at first, tentative, almost a whisper of contact, a slow test of closeness.

Abolish felt the contrast instantly: Pyro’s lips cold, his skin pale, and yet somehow warm in the weight of intention. Every second stretched; the room shrank until it was only them, only this moment, the scent of rain and iron and something unplaceable clinging to Pyro like a halo of danger.

He tried to pull back—a reflex, a whisper of fear—but Pyro’s hand followed, brushing down the side of his face, anchoring him. “Don’t,” Pyro murmured, not harshly, just a soft plea, the tiniest edge of insistence. “Please..”

Abolish stayed.

The kiss deepened slowly, deliberately, neither hurried nor desperate. Pyro pressed a careful, almost reverent trail along his lips, brushing against the corners, the crease of his mouth. A faint sting bloomed where Pyro’s teeth had grazed him—a small nick on his lower lip, accidental maybe. He tasted faint iron, and his chest tightened in the most complicated way, guilt and longing knotted together.

Forgive me, Father, for this desire…

But the prayer felt absurd here, swallowed up in the warmth and cold of Pyro’s presence.

Pyro pulled back just enough to let their foreheads rest together, the faintest pressure, just enough for warmth to bloom where their skin met, breaths mingling, the smallest shiver of shared heartbeat between them. “Are you all right?” Pyro asked softly, the red of his eyes flickering like embers in the dim light.

“I… I think so,” Abolish said, voice raw, almost reverent. His hands found Pyro’s shoulders, lingering, memorizing the shape, the warmth that shouldn’t exist in someone who was not meant to be warm.

Pyro’s lips brushed his again, just a light press this time, slow, insistently tender. “I could stay like this,” they whispered. “If you want me to.”

Abolish closed his eyes, letting the guilt, the longing, the beauty of the moment wash over him. He didn’t know if it was mercy or sin anymore. He only knew that he wanted it, and that Pyro was still there, still holding him, still himself.

And that was enough.

For one wild, aching second, Abolish thought: If this is sin, then let me burn quietly.

When they broke apart, they stayed close. Abolish’s hand rested against the collar of Pyro’s coat, fingers curled around the worn fabric. Pyro’s forehead leaned against his temple, unmoving. The sound of their breathing—one steady, one nonexistent—filled the space like a hymn half-remembered.

“Don’t pray for me,” Pyro murmured.

“I already did.”

A small smile ghosted across Pyro’s mouth. “Then don't pray for yourself.”

The words struck somewhere deep. Abolish wanted to say that he already had—that he’d prayed himself hollow, that every whispered Our Father felt more like an apology for wanting to be loved by anyone at all.

But he didn’t speak.

The rain picked up again, steady and soft.

They didn’t move after that. The candle burned itself out, leaving only the faint glow from the streetlamps seeping through the fogged glass. Pyro’s hand stayed over Abolish’s, cold and still, until dawn began to silver the edges of the curtains.

Cassandra: The prophet who saw everything, yet changed nothing. She spoke in flames and ruin, her words dismissed until the world proved her right.

Oakhurst was a strange town.

It was suffocating, the air too thin, too claustrophobic. Trees rose like bones, ribs of the ever breathing forest. The ground seemed to break every time someone stepped on it a little too hard. Plants spidered from the rotten soil, bright blooms of poppies and alliums dotting the monochrome floor.

Avid sometimes could hear voices echoing from the woods, be it screams or secrets he couldn’t tell. Sometimes he swore they called his name. Sometimes he swore he knew the voice. The sounds never scared him anymore—it was background noise, like the chime of a clock you couldn’t escape. He had learned not to listen too closely. Those who did never came back right.

He didn’t need to know. Because he could see one secret that was in front of him.

Scott.

Scott and his impossibly cyan locks of hair, the way it caught the dying light like fractured jewels. The way his eyes shined like the stars. The way he talked, smooth like silk. Scott didn’t just stand out in Oakhurst—he didn’t belong to it at all. Looking at him was like staring at sunlight through broken glass: brilliant, cutting, impossible to ignore.

Avid hated him.

Hated the way people bent toward Scott like flowers to the sun. Hated the ease, the charisma, the infuriating smile that seemed to plague his lips, concealing something that Avid couldn't pin down. Hatred was an easier route than admitting Scott unsettled him.

His own sable hair fell into his violet eyes, dark and “brooding”, shadows clinging to him like a second skin. He was prepared—he always was—but Scott… Scott was chaos incarnate in silk and shadow.

The aforementioned stood a couple strides away from the brunette, smiling with… Shelby.

Instantly Avid snapped out of whatever trance he was previously in, storming up to the pair.

Shelby noticed him instantly, honey eyes widening. “Avid!” She shot him an almost pleading look. She hated when he and Scott fought but Avid had to protect her.

His glare didn’t soften.

Avid’s steps were sharp against the brittle of the ground, each one punctuating the fury buzzing through his veins. Scott’s back was to him—cyan hair folded neatly into a braid, shoulders straight and all proper, as though nothing the cursed town could touch him. Even the infuriated Avid.

He wanted to rip that smugness off his face.

“Scott.” His voice was low, almost a growl.

The man turned.

And Avid froze.

Instead of the bright, beautiful, face that he despised was a stark white mask, carved from bone, empty sockets gaping where eyes should've been. A grinning skull staring back at him.

For a moment, the whispers stopped. The forest stilled. Even Shelby’s breath hitched beside him.

Avid blinked hard, waiting for the trick to break—for the mask to slip, for Scott’s amused laughter to fill the still air. But the skeleton grin held. Silent. Unshaken. His chest twisted, something colder than anger digging under his lungs.

Shelby’s voice broke the quiet, “Avid?”

Nothing had changed—Scott was still standing there, still smiling, only now his upper lips were replaced with teeth.

Avid curled his fingers, “Take that off,”

Scott tilted his head, the mask catching the dying light. As if amused. As if daring the vampire hunter. “Now why would I do that?”

His eyes, though hidden by shadows, twinkled with mischief. His perfectly blushing lips turned into a smile, cold and conceiting. Avid hated it. Hated him.

Avid’s blood boiled.

“Y-you think this is a game?”

“Absolutely,” Another perfect smile.

Scott leaned forward, pointer finger tracing his jaw before stopping under his chin. Then the man forced Avid’s chin up, making him look straight into the voids of the black sockets. Another shiver ran through the brunette.

“Take it off,” Avid said, punctuating each word.

“What if I don't?” His face leaned closer, causing a flush to cover the shorter’s face. Just the cold.

“Because if you don’t, I’ll rip it off myself.”

Another smirk.

“Oh-kay you two, let’s calm down.” Shelby interjected, her face scrunching into a smile. Her voice was high and bright, attempting lightness, but it trembled at the edges. She stepped forward, planting herself between them with a practiced ease, her notebook clutched like a talisman.

The brunette glared at Scott once again. Scott, as almost feeling Avid's glare, cocked his head towards him, a smiled painted onto his red lips. Avid tore his gaze away, barely able to breathe. His skin still buzzed where Scott had touched him.

Shelby frowned. “Seriously, what is with you two lately?” Her lips turned into a pout, she didn’t like it when they fought.

Scott turned, mask still grinning, voice laced with silk and blood. “Just a little… tension in the air.”

Shelby narrowed her eyes. “Tension that ends with someone dead?”

Avid’s lips parted, a retort on his tongue—but Scott got there first.

“I’m not that cruel,” he said smoothly, glancing at Avid. “Not unless I’m invited to be.”

Avid stiffened, his fist clenching at the attention. His cheeks flushed once more, turning a bright bloody red. “You’re not funny.”

“No,” Scott mused. “But I’m pretty.” As if to emphasize his point, his fingers splayed beneath his chin like the petals of a dark bloom — a gesture too graceful to be anything but intentional.

Shelby groaned. “Ugh. I hate this town.” Then she turned on her Mary Jane heels. “Just… try not to kill each other? Please? The last thing we need is a murder.” The redhead had barely rounded the corner before Avid spun around, jabbing a finger into Scott’s chest.

“You think this is funny?” Avid hissed, voice low and sharp.

Scott blinked slowly. The bone-white mask tilted just so, catching the moonlight in a way that made Avid’s stomach twist.

“I think you’re funny,” Scott said softly, almost fond. “Always so angry. So ready to burn.”

Avid’s hand trembled. He hated how close Scott stood—close enough to feel his breath, close enough that his presence wrapped around him like fog.

“Take it off.”

“Or what?”

“I swear, Scott—”

“Swear what?” Scott’s voice was a silk-wrapped knife. “That you’ll stake me? Right here? In front of your little friend? In front of the whole cursed town?”

Avid faltered.

Scott leaned closer, breath brushing his ear. “You won’t.”

The silence between them crackled, thick and charged. The mask grinned. Avid’s fingers twitched.

“I will.” His voice broke on the last word. “I’ll—”

Scott’s hand caught his wrist. Gently. Almost lovingly. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m not.”

“You always tremble before you fall.”

Avid shoved him back—but Scott didn’t move. Not really. Not like someone with weight should.

“You’re not normal,” Avid whispered, voice ragged. “You’re not human.”

Scott smiled. “Maybe…” he trailed off, hand caressing Avid’s face, making the brunette flinch. “Good luck proving it, allium.”

And with that he left, fading into the ink of the night. Leaving a blushing man with too many questions and too little questions.

•     •     •

The door slammed with the rage of a man scorned by something ancient and irritatingly attractive.

Avid all but flung his cloak across the banister, muttering curses in a dozen dead languages. His boots were soaked from the marsh path, tracking muddy water across the stone floor as he stormed into the parlor.

By the fire sat Drift, her legs tucked beneath her, coat draped neatly over the chair. She was reviewing hand-scrawled notes beneath candlelight, monocle somehow not falling off, eyes sharp.

Without looking up, she said, “You're late. Was there a corpse, or just your pride again?”

Avid threw himself dramatically onto the worn velvet settee. “He called me allium.”

Drift blinked. “...The genus of garlic?”

“Yes!” Avid shouted, sitting upright. “He looked me in the eye—with that mask, I mean, not really—and said it like it was a compliment! As if I’m a bouquet in a funeral! A garlic flower! A joke!”

Drift tilted her head. “You are kind of a bouquet of threats and seasonal depression.”

Avid groaned, flopping backward. “Why is he like this? Why does he have to speak in riddles and metaphors and... and caress my face like some tragic poem?”

“Did you stab him?”

“I—no! He was—Drift!” Avid stuttered, unsure of how to reply. He had wanted to stab him, to see the blood bloom on the silky fabric. Had, past tense, he noticed numbly

“Should’ve stabbed him.”

“I wanted to! But then he touched me and the world went all—weird, and I was warm and cold at the same time, and now I think I’m having a breakdown.”

Drift finally looked up, one brow arched. “So, a normal Thursday.”

Avid sat up, scowling. “He moved like he wasn’t even real. Like air pretending to be a person. And that mask—I don’t think it was painted. I think it was actual bone.”

Drift nodded slowly. “Fascinating. And you’re sure you weren’t just… seduced?”

Avid blinked. “By death?!”

“Wouldn’t be the first time. You have a type.”

“I don’t have a—” He stopped. Glared. “Don’t say it.”

Drift leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand. “A pale, mysterious, probably cursed type who calls you by plant names and invades your personal space while whispering sweet existential threats?”

Avid shoved a pillow over his face. “I’m going to throw myself into the forest.”

“I’ll pack your garlic.”

“Drift.”

She chuckled and leaned back, eyes narrowing just slightly—thoughtful. “He’s testing you.”

Avid lowered the pillow. “What?”

“Scott,” she said simply. “He’s drawing lines. Seeing which ones you’ll cross. Flirting, yes. But also... measuring.”

Avid’s jaw tensed. “Measuring what?”

Drift looked into the fire, voice soft. “How human you are. How far you'll go. How much of yourself you're willing to lose to chase him.”

A long silence.

“…He still called me a garlic flower.”

Drift smiled faintly. “Could be worse. Could’ve called you thyme.”

“I hate you.”

“You don’t. You just hate being seen.”

Avid pulled the pillow back over his face with a grumble. “I hate poets.”

He closed his eyes, pressing a hand to his temple. He’d been trying to convince himself that Scott was just a problem to be solved—a puzzle, a threat, a game. But the truth was slipping through his defenses, a quiet whisper in the dark. He was turning, slowly and painfully, into an obsession he couldn’t shake. And that scared him more than any vampire ever could.

•     •     •

Eventually he decided to go to bed. The night had stretched far too long before he had complained to Drift into the early morning, and now all he wanted to do was collapse and fall into oblivion.

But, of course, nothing could ever be so simple.

The first thing he noticed was the draft tumbling through the room, causing a shiver up his spine. The breeze came from the slightly opened window Drift must have propped open during the day and forgot about, too enthralled by her work.

A soft smile on his lips, he walked over to close the pane, when something shiny caught his eye. Hidden among the layer of salt he had sprinkled, was a shine of silver.

Examining it closer, it was his.

The chain that he always wore after the incident. The charm was a locket, made of iron—for faeires—and inside was a dyed spider lily petal.

Avid stared at the locket, unmoving.

It shouldn’t have been off his neck. He never took it off. Not since—

He thumbed the latch open. It clicked softly, a sound like a whisper from a coffin.

Inside, the petal was still there, pressed and dry as ever. But folded behind it—delicate, hidden like it had always been there—was a slip of parchment.

Avid's breath caught. He hadn't put that there.

With trembling fingers, he unfolded it. The paper crackled like old skin. The ink was brown—not quite black, faded by time and perhaps something older—and the writing curled with impossible grace, slanted and flowing like water.

It was handwriting. Not modern. Not even close.

It looked like it had been written when gods still walked in daylight and people still whispered about monsters instead of posting warnings on fences.

He squinted at the strange, looped letters—

And felt the blood drain from his face.

You dropped this, Allium.

His eyes, a muted violet, widened, rereading the line over and over. Allium. Allium

His face blushed, the nickname oddly sweet. If only it wasn't from him...

The brunette sat lightly on his mattress, the bed squeaking under the added weight. His fingers brushed against the dried cursive that seemed to belong to centuries ago. It did, he reminded himself.

And yet, the words felt like a trap disguised in silk and flirts.

He had to be careful, Avid decided. Had to watch the vampire, carefully. Watch for some sort of slip up that Avid could use to prove, to everyone, that the man was a vampire.

Because no matter how much Scott’s smile beckoned, no matter how dangerously close he pressed, Avid knew that beneath that charming mask lay something far darker than the myths whispered in Oakhurst.

And he wouldn’t be the one to fall into that darkness without a fight.

He slipped the necklace over his head, the metal burning cold against his warm neck. The hung heavy, a comforting weight that he hadn't realized had left him. Blowing on the half melted candle on his night stand, he fell into a light sleep. One full of nothing but silence.

And if his hand snaked to his locket, with a smile brushing his lips. Well that was between him and the spirits.

•     •     •

Avid had attempted everything to get the vampire to accidentally out himself.

Lured him out into the sunlight (which he did with no hesitation) to tried to expose him to holy water (that wasn't actually that holy, he later learned), he had tried them all over the last couple of weeks.

He had one last idea.

Avid’s boots crunched against the brittle ground, each step deliberate, carrying the weight of months of silent plotting. In his hands, a bouquet of alliums—blooms of garlic and wildflowers, sharp and fragrant, a quiet warning wrapped in petals.

Scott stood at the edge of town, mask gleaming in the fading light, arms crossed like he was waiting for a joke. Or a challenge.

Avid stepped forward, holding the bouquet out like an offering—and a gauntlet.

“I picked these for you,” he said, voice low, steady, but with a hard edge beneath it. “Allium. Thought you might appreciate the irony.”

Scott’s eyes, shadowed beneath the bone mask, flickered with something unreadable—amusement? Approval? The smile beneath the skull widened.

“Well, aren’t you clever,” Scott said, reaching out to take the flowers. His fingers brushed against Avid’s, and a sudden heat bloomed up the shorter’s arm, sharp and unexpected.

Cleo, watching from her garden, which was filled with thriving plants, rolled their eyes, whispering, “Finally. About time you two stopped pretending and just flirted.”

Avid’s jaw clenched, but Scott only laughed—a smooth, chilling sound that danced between mockery and something dangerously close to affection.

“You think these flowers will make me show my true self?” Scott’s voice lowered, threateningly. “Or is this just another one of your little games?”

“Maybe both,” Avid said, stepping closer, feeling more confident than usual, the scent of garlic thick in the air between them. “Maybe I’m daring you to drop the act.”

Scott leaned in, the mask almost touching Avid’s face. “Or maybe I’m daring you to look closer.”

The tension crackled like the forest around them, a spark ready to ignite.

Pearl’s voice, who was sitting on her porch--petting the air?--cut through the silence again, light and teasing. “You two are hopeless. But at least it’s entertaining.”

The bouquet hung between them—a symbol of challenge, threat, and something dangerously close to something neither wanted to admit.

He hated Scott. Or at least that’s what he told himself. But lately, the edge of his mind was caught, tangled, twisted around the vampire in ways he didn’t want to admit. It wasn’t just suspicion anymore—it was something else. Something dangerously close to obsession.

And in that moment, no one saw what was really happening.

Except Avid.

•     •     •

Avid had enough.

He was going to reveal Scott one way or another.

He just needed to corner him. Threaten him by holding a stake to his heart. Make him confess.

Avid’s breath hitched as he rounded the side of the house. Moonlight spilled over the cracked wooden siding, casting long shadows that tangled with the dark underbrush.

He spotted Scott’s silhouette near the garbage bins, hands casually tucked into his pockets, leaning against the peeling paint like he owned the place.

“Scott,” Avid called out, trying to keep his voice steady but knowing it sounded like a challenge.

Scott’s head tilted, and that lazy smile curved his lips. “Looking for me, darling?”

Avid’s pulse sped. This was it.

He moved closer, narrowing the distance between them — but Scott slid away, smooth as smoke, a glint of amusement in his shadowed eyes.

“Not so fast,” Scott teased, stepping aside. “We could talk all night.”

Avid clenched his fists. “No more games.”

The vampire’s smile deepened, but then, in a flicker, he stepped backward—right into the corner of the porch where the house jutted out.

Avid lunged, trapping Scott between him and the wall.

Scott’s smile faltered for just a second before he leaned forward, voice low and teasing, “So bold, allium. Careful, you might get burned.”

But Avid didn’t hesitate.

Avid’s hands trembled as he gripped the stake tighter, the cool wood pressing against his palm. His eyes never left Scott’s skeletal mask — that cruel, mocking facade that hid too many secrets.

“I’m done pretending,” Avid said, voice low and fierce. “You can’t hide anymore.”

Scott’s smile was a sharp slash beneath the bones. “Is that so?”

Before Avid could react, Scott moved — slow, deliberate — until he was mere inches away. The warmth from his body pushed against Avid’s like a challenge.

With a surge of reckless courage, Avid’s fingers found the edges of the mask. He yanked it free in one swift motion.

Beneath the cracked bone and shadows, Scott’s real face shone — beautiful, impossible.

“Red…” Avid trailed off staring into the depths of the others eyes.

“Hm?” Scott mused, raising a perfect brow.

“Y-your eyes… You're a vampire!!” Scott’s eyes widened before being replaced with a glare. “You’re a vam—”

He was cut off by Scott spinning him, around against the wood of the house behind him. Avid squeezed his eyes shut, praying to the spirits that it wouldn’t hurt. And that he was sorry.

But the sharp pain of death never came, instead replaced by the soft warmth of lips against his.

He opened his eyes to see Scott, eyes shut, way too close to him.

Avid, only then, dumbly realized what was happening.

Warmth flooded through his already flushed face, feeling the silky softness of lips brush against his own chapped and bitten raw ones. Scott’s hands trailed their way to one on his cheek, the other on the nape of his neck.

Shivers flooded his body at the caress, how sweet it was. How gentle it was.

Avid, against his better judgement, pushed into the kiss, deepening it. His hands didn’t move, they stayed trembling by his side. The vampire—Avid reminded himself—pushed back, the brunette’s head hitting the rotted wood, tilted upwards.

The vampire's hand snaked down to his jaw, pulling him farther up. Avid, in a clearer mindset, might have complained about the pull in his neck, but now, his brain was too dizzy to think straight.

Instead his hands finally moved, carding his fingers the silk of Scott’s hair, messing up the perfectness that he always had. His fingers tangled in the thick strands of Scott’s hair, pulling gently as if grounding himself in the moment — despite everything screaming that this was madness.

Scott’s teeth worried over his bottom lip before biting down.

Avid felt it before he registered it—sharp and sudden, a sting that burned across his mouth. The bite was sharp, a sudden sting that burned across his lip — but beneath the pain bloomed a strange heat, spreading outwards, intoxicating and overwhelming.

He jerked back, hand flying to his lips. A taste hit his tongue, a sweet but bitter linger, iron heavy on his tongue. Warmth slicked his palm. A drop trailed down, slow, deliberate. Blood. Crimson like… like Scott’s eyes.

His gaze snapped up. Scott’s hair was mussed, his clothes creased, his smile just a little too wide. That look in his eyes—wild, hungry, beautiful. Avid’s cheeks betrayed him, flushing warm.

“Y-you…”

His gaze lowered, back to the ground. Darting anywhere else—cracks in the cobble, the dying grass—anywhere but those eyes.

“Me?” Scott purred, coy and pretty. His fingers cupped Avid’s jaw again, tilting his face back up, forcing him to meet those red, red eyes.

Avid’s words stuck. His violet eyes—wide, trembling—locked on Scott’s. It was dizzying, to look in his eyes. The dark vermillion pulling him in like a siren's song. They looked wrong, if Avid was being honest. He had grown used to the pretty blue they were before, the one that looked like stars.

“I-i..”

“Come on, darling..” his voice was like silk, too soft and smooth to be genuine. His thumb brushed against Avid’s lips, before bringing it to his mouth, tongue darting out.

Avid’s chest tightened. His gaze flicked to Scott’s lips—vibrant, red, almost soft. Too soft for someone who had just bitten him. They curved into a smile, gentle and cruel all at once, as though Scott knew exactly how flustered he was.

“Mm,” Scott hummed low in his throat. “You taste divine.”

Avid should’ve run, should’ve screamed. He should’ve grabbed the stake strapped to his belt and drove it straight through the vampire’s heart.

Instead, he stepped forward, arms circling Scott’s neck, dragging him down into another kiss.

Scott didn’t hesitate. His mouth caught Avid’s with practiced ease, lips pressing too deep, too hungry, like he’d been waiting for this. Avid gasped, and Scott took it as an invitation, tongue slipping past, tasting, claiming.

The taste of blood lingered between them, copper-sweet, intoxicating. Avid tried not to shiver, tried not to think about how his knees nearly buckled. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t.

Scott’s hands slid down his sides, steadying him, pulling him closer until their bodies pressed flush. Avid’s fingers curled against his shirt, clinging without meaning to. His thoughts were a mess—drawn between fear and, horrifically, want.

Scott smiled against his mouth, feeling the hesitation, the betrayal of Avid’s trembling. “That’s it,” he murmured between kisses, breath warm, velvet. “Don’t fight it, darling.”

Avid wanted to shove him away, stake him, scream at him—anything but this.

But his hands fisted in Scott’s shirt anyway, yanking him closer, kissing him back like he’d drown if he stopped. His breaths came short and desperate, every brush of Scott’s mouth sparking heat through him.

Scott, by contrast, was maddeningly slow. His lips curved in a smile against Avid’s, teasing, deliberate. One hand at the small of his back kept him steady, the other cupping his jaw, guiding him as though Avid were something fragile. When Avid pressed harder, Scott eased away just enough to make him chase.

“Careful,” Scott murmured, voice brushing warm against his mouth. “You’re acting like you actually want this.”

Avid growled low in his throat, too breathless for words, and kissed him harder—messy, furious, desperate. Scott only laughed softly, kissing back with that same agonizing patience, like he had all the time in the world.

Another sharp nip at his lip—Scott’s teeth dragging slow, purposeful—made Avid shudder. He hated how it pulled a sound out of him, hated even more how Scott’s smile widened at the noise.

“Mm,” Scott whispered, almost tender, though his eyes glinted red. “You taste better when you give in.”

Avid wanted to argue. Wanted yell and scream. But his cheeks burnt red, and he pushed forward once more. Into oblivion. Into death. Into surrender.

Scott’s thumb lingered at the corner of Avid’s mouth, smearing the faint trace of blood before dragging down to his chin. His touch was light, maddening. “There you go,” he breathed, lips brushing the words against Avid’s swollen mouth. “So much prettier when you stop pretending.”

Avid’s chest heaved. He should’ve shoved him back. He didn’t. His grip only tightened, nails catching on fabric as if he could anchor himself in the very thing undoing him.

Scott tilted his head, nosing along Avid’s cheek, down to the hinge of his jaw. His breath was hot, his voice softer, lower. “You’re trembling.”

“I—I’m not—” The denial caught in his throat when sharp teeth grazed his skin, a warning, a promise. Avid’s knees nearly gave.

Scott laughed, low and wicked, and kissed him again, stealing the sound from his mouth. This kiss was different—slower, deeper, a languid claiming. It made Avid’s pulse roar in his ears, dizzy with want and dread all tangled.

And still, when Scott finally drew back, lips glistening, Avid leaned forward like a fool chasing the ruin of him.

“Ah,” Scott leant backwards. “Be patient, allium.”

Allium. The flower of garlic. Unity, patience, mockery.

Avid, ashamedly, whined. The sound slipped out before he could bite it back, high and desperate, and his face burned hot.

Scott’s grin widened, sharp and devastating. “Oh, don’t pout, darling. It doesn’t suit you.” His hand slid up Avid’s chest, slow and deliberate, pressing flat over his racing heart. “Besides… you smell far too sweet to keep me away.”

Avid’s throat bobbed. He should’ve shoved him off, said something sharp, anything. Instead, he stood frozen under Scott’s touch, trembling, breath ragged.

Scott leaned in again, close enough that his lips brushed the shell of Avid’s ear when he whispered, “Beg, and maybe I’ll give you what you want.”

The words sent a shiver down Avid’s spine. He hated it. He hated him.

And yet—his hands stayed locked in Scott’s shirt, clinging like it was the only thing keeping him upright.

When he didn’t answer, Scott hummed, soft and taunting. His teeth scraped the curve of Avid’s neck, not quite breaking skin, not yet. “Patience, allium,” he murmured again, savoring the way Avid’s breath hitched at the threat. “I promise it won’t hurt.”

“W-wha–”

Scott didn’t let him finish. His mouth opened against Avid’s throat, fangs sinking in clean and sharp.

Avid gasped, a choked sound that tumbled into a ragged gasp, body arching forward as pain flared bright—followed by something hotter, heavier, that dragged his breath short. His fingers tangled in Scott’s shirt, pulling instead of pushing. The vampire’s hum vibrated against his skin, low and satisfied, as he drank in slow, deliberate pulls.

Every heartbeat felt stolen, his pulse thrumming out of control. Avid’s chest heaved, heat spreading dizzy and sweet, wrong and intoxicating. His lips parted on a sound he couldn’t swallow.

Scott’s hands were steady—one firm at his back, the other cupping his jaw, tilting his throat just so. He licked between pulls, savoring the blood, eyes glinting red with teasing hunger.

“St—” Avid’s voice broke, desperate, trembling. “Scott, no. Stop, please—”

Instantly, Scott froze, fangs slipping free. The bite ended, leaving a shallow, pulsing mark. His lips glistened red, but the predatory gleam in his eyes softened.

For a moment, there was only Avid’s ragged breathing, his trembling fingers brushing at the wound, knees nearly giving out. Scott leaned back slightly, slow, deliberate, but there was gentleness now in his movements.

“Are you alright?” he murmured, voice still low and silky, but softened, almost intimate. He brushed a thumb over the trace of blood at the corner of Avid’s mouth, smoothing it away.

Avid’s chest heaved, heart racing. He expected mockery, hunger, another bite. Instead he got Scott’s gaze holding steady on him, patient and watchful.

“You’re—” Avid swallowed hard. “You’re a monster.”

Scott’s lips quirked faintly. “Mm. Maybe. But not with you. Not tonight.”

He leaned closer, thumb lingering at the corner of Avid’s lips, eyes teasing but gentle. “And yet…” His grin returned, softer, warmer, just enough to make Avid’s chest twist. “…you still want me, don’t you?”

Avid could only blink, trapped between exasperation, embarrassment, and something else, something wild and irresistible.

“I wouldn’t say want…” He turned away from the now gentle stare of the vampire, praying to the spirits that the moonlight covered up his flushed face.

A laugh echoed through the silence, soft like a windchime. Pretty, warm, and it made Avid’s cheeks burn all over again.

He spared a glance at Scott and froze. That grin—playful, teasing, but somehow gentle—held him in place, making his chest flutter.

“You really are something, allium,” Scott murmured, tilting his head just so. “So frazzled, so stubborn… yet somehow, utterly captivating.”

Avid’s hands hovered awkwardly over Scott’s chest, unsure whether to push away or lean closer. He tried to speak, tried to insist he wasn’t… affected. But the words felt small, pointless against the pull of Scott’s red-tinged eyes and soft smile.

Scott leaned in, close enough that his warm breath brushed Avid’s ear. “You don’t have to fight it,” he whispered, gentle now, but playful still. “I like it when you blush.”

Avid’s heart thudded in his chest, loud and impossible to ignore. His fingers twitched, longing to reach out, and yet he stayed still, caught between embarrassment and the weird, dizzying comfort of Scott’s closeness.

Scott chuckled, quiet and affectionate, resting a hand lightly over Avid’s. “See? Nothing to worry about,” he said softly, thumb brushing over the back of Avid’s hand. “You’re safe with me… at least for tonight.”

Avid blinked, the warmth pooling in his chest spreading to his stomach, to his fingertips. He wanted to argue, to protest, but instead he just let a small smile slip, flustered and helpless.

Scott’s grin softened, lips just a fraction curved, eyes twinkling. “There it is,” he murmured, voice low and teasing. “The real you… beautiful, stubborn, and entirely mine.”

Avid’s knees threatened to give way, and he caught himself against Scott, letting the moment wash over him—soft, silly, intimate, and entirely, deliciously theirs.

“There you two are!!” yelled a voice in the distance.

Avid instantly pushed Scott away, spinning around to see a familiar redhead running.

Shelby came barreling toward them, notebook clutched like a shield, cheeks pink from running. “I thought you were dead!” She exclaimed, adjusting her glasses. Then her amber eyes widened, with something akin to worry. “You two were fighting again weren’t you?”

Her lips formed a pout as she glanced between them as her brow cinched together. “Why can’t you two get along?”

Avid was about to say something, to reassure her, but Scott beat him to it, “Don’t worry Shells. Avid and I… have come to an agreement..”

Avid froze, cheeks burning hotter than the sun. “W-we have?” he stammered, eyes darting between Scott and Shelby.

Scott gave him a slow, teasing smile, thumbs brushing over Avid’s shoulders. “We… worked things out,” he said, voice deceptively soft, eyes glinting with mischief.

Shelby blinked, clearly unconvinced, but her brow furrowed as she studied them. “Uh-huh. You definitely were fighting. You can’t lie to me, Scott.” she said, tapping her notebook as if that proved it. “I mean, I was so worried. One of you could’ve been dea—gone. And look at you two—” Her gaze flicked between their flushed faces, lingering on Avid’s trembling hands and Scott’s too-perfect smirk. “This doesn’t look like an argument to me…”

Avid groaned internally, wishing the ground would swallow him whole. Scott, on the other hand, leaned closer, resting his hand on Avid’s shoulder, voice playful but soft. “See? Nothing to worry about, Shelbs. All is well. We’re… cooperating.”

Shelby blinked, unconvinced but relieved, hands tightening around her notebook. “Cooperating? Hmph. You two are impossible. Just don’t kill each other”

Avid shot Scott a glare, half embarrassed, half exasperated. Scott only chuckled, brushing a strand of hair from Avid’s forehead, eyes sparkling. “We’ll try.”

Shelby groaned, dropping into a dramatic flop against the nearest house. “I give up. You two are hopeless,” she muttered, shaking her head. “But don’t make me worry again. Seriously.”

Avid’s cheeks flamed hotter than ever, and he wished the earth would swallow him whole as Shelby’s sharp eyes flicked between him and Scott, clearly reading more between the lines than she let on.

Avid’s heart was still racing, and Scott’s soft laugh vibrated against his ear. He wanted to protest, wanted to claim that nothing had happened—but somehow, the warmth pooling in his chest, the teasing smile of the vampire, and the way Scott’s hand lingered over his, made all words impossible.

Scott whispered, just for him, “See? Even Shelby can’t ruin this moment.”