"
Music: "My Body is a Cage" – Peter Gabriel (or the original by Arcade Fire)
---
Damien.
The name dripped from Kyrell's lips like venom, laced with something raw—fear, longing, guilt—Lucian couldn't tell which.
He stood unmoving at the edge of the bed, watching as Kyrell shifted beneath the blankets, lost in some nightmare that clung to his skin like frostbite. Moonlight slivered across the sheets, turning his sweat-slick brow into marble.
Lucian spoke quietly. "Is Damien the one who did this to you?"
Kyrell flinched. But he didn't wake.
Instead, a whisper rose from him again. "He told me I was losing myself. That you'd turned me."
Lucian's eyes narrowed. "Did I?"
Kyrell whimpered something unintelligible, curling further into himself like he could shrink away from memory. Lucian stared, hands clenched behind his back.
---
Two hours later.
Mara lingered at the door, face pale, breath shallow. "Lucian," she murmured, "You should sleep."
He didn't turn. "I'm not leaving him."
She hesitated, her hand on the carved doorframe. "Do you know who that is?"
Lucian finally looked at her.
"He's Kyrell."
Her voice trembled. "No. He's the hunter's son. Damien's chosen second. His bloodline is soaked in fang-dust and old pacts. Do you know how many of us his kind has butchered?"
Lucian's silence was its own answer.
"You don't care," she whispered.
"No," Lucian replied. "I don't."
"But the council will," Mara said. "They already think you're slipping. Obsessed. Weak."
A pause.
Then her voice hardened. "Maybe you are."
Lucian didn't blink. "Then let them try and rip this obsession from me. I'd like to see them try."
---
Far away.
In a ruined monastery half-swallowed by snow, a man stood beneath the bones of an old cathedral dome. Ravens screamed from broken rafters.
Damien.
His cloak flared as he turned, eyes burning like kindled coals.
"He's alive," he said aloud, though no one had spoken.
The vampire hunter behind him flinched. "Who, sir?"
Damien smiled, and it was a cruel, beautiful thing.
"The boy," he said, voice like a blade. "The boy Lucian took. The one who was supposed to burn."
He touched the black sigil on his glove—a mark of ancient huntsmen.
"Now he's not just alive," Damien murmured, looking toward the night.
"He's tainted."
Damien finally stood and walked away...
---
He stood at the edge of the woods, hidden by the scent of pine and rot, the moonlight limning his cheekbones in silver.
Damien's jaw tightened as his eyes followed the figures across the clearing—Lucian, with his unnatural stillness and black-ember gaze, and Kyrell, half-dressed in a daze that only lovers or prey wore.
He'd seen that look before.
On Kyrell's face once, long ago—when he was the one touching him. Not Lucian. Not some monster who had no place beneath Kyrell's hands.
Damien stepped back into the shadows, a branch cracking beneath his boot. The sound didn't carry far.
He was practiced. Watching. Waiting.
"You've fallen, haven't you?" The voice came from the dark. It belonged to Silas, older, cold-eyed, with scars beneath his collar and blood on his knuckles.
Damien didn't flinch. "I haven't fallen," he said flatly. "I've just seen what happens when hunters don't strike soon enough."
Silas raised a brow. "Then let's not wait any longer."
Damien's hand hovered near his belt, where a dagger pulsed with silver runes. But his eyes were still on Kyrell, who leaned too close to Lucian now. Too willing. Too far gone.
"Not yet," Damien said softly.
And then he disappeared into the trees.