The creature's blood still stained the forest floor, but dawn came soft and golden, as though it meant to wash away what the night had birthed. I followed Dorian back through the woods, too shaken to speak, too spellbound to turn away. His pace was swift but unhurried, his shoulders tense, his head bowed in thought—as though he regretted saving me.
When at last he stopped, it was before the ruins at the edge of the valley. I had passed them a thousand times in daylight: a crumbling keep of stone, broken arches clawing at the sky, ivy climbing the bones of forgotten walls. No villager dared go near, not even children chasing dares. They said the place was cursed.
Now, I understood why.
"This is where you live?" I asked softly.
Dorian did not turn. "Where I hide."
He pushed open the door of a tower half-sunk in ruin. Inside, shadows clung like cobwebs, and the air was cool with the smell of damp stone. A single candelabrum burned on the far table, its wax long dripped and hardened, light trembling against shelves of books older than the town itself.
It was not a home. It was a tomb dressed in memory.
I stood in silence, but he felt my gaze. His voice broke it first. "You should not be here. Every moment you remain, I endanger you further."
"You saved me."
"And what will you tell your people? That a stranger tore the beast apart with his bare hands? That you saw me… drink?"
I shivered at the word. Drink. I had tried not to look too closely at the crimson smeared across his lips, but the image lingered sharp as glass.
"Why did you?" I asked finally. "Why save me at all?"
He turned then, and I thought the candlelight had softened him—but no, it was sorrow that softened his face. A sorrow so old it made my chest ache.
"Because you remind me," he whispered.
"Of what?"
He looked away. "Of who I was, before the hunger claimed me."
His words fell heavy between us. I wanted to ask more, but fear held my tongue. Still, my eyes traced him, the perfect stillness of his frame, the way even in regret he seemed more alive than any man I had ever known.
He moved toward the shelves and drew out a book, its leather binding cracked, its pages stained with time. He handed it to me without a word.
Inside were portraits—faces rendered in charcoal and ink, some barely more than outlines. Men, women, children. At the last page, I stopped.
A woman stared back at me, her hair dark like mine, her eyes wide with innocence. Her likeness to me was undeniable.
My breath caught. "Who is she?"
His silence was answer enough.
"You loved her," I said, voice breaking softer than I meant.
His jaw tightened. "She was my ruin. The last breath of humanity I clung to. And I killed her, as I kill all I touch."
I should have recoiled. I should have felt horror. Instead, my chest burned with a strange, aching tenderness. He confessed his sins not to warn me but to protect me. And yet…
"You are not only hunger," I said, defiant. "You saved me."
He stepped closer, close enough that the chill of his body reached mine. His hand hovered near my face, trembling as if some invisible leash restrained him.
"You do not understand," he whispered, eyes dark fire. "Every moment I resist, I am burning. Every heartbeat of yours calls to me louder than the last."
For a breath, I thought he would close the space between us, press his mouth to mine, surrender to the very ruin he feared. My lips parted. My body leaned.
But then he vanished, stepping back, a shadow tearing itself from flame.
"Go," he said harshly. "Before I make you regret every word you've spoken."
And though my heart screamed to stay, I obeyed.
Yet as I stepped into the dawn, I knew this: whatever secrets lay buried in his shadow, they were already mine to uncover.