Kieran was quiet for a long moment, his eyes distant with memory. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer than Adrian had ever heard it.
"We met when we were children. You were eight, I was ten. Your family had just moved to our village after your parents died—you came to live with your uncle, the blacksmith."
Adrian listened, transfixed, as Kieran painted a picture of a life he should have no memory of, but somehow felt familiar anyway.
"I was the lord's son, which meant I wasn't supposed to play with the other children. Too beneath me, my father said. But you didn't care about any of that. You saw me sitting alone watching the other kids play, and you marched right up and asked if I knew how to climb trees."
Despite everything, Adrian smiled. "Did you?"
"No," Kieran laughed, and the sound transformed his face from austere to beautiful. "I fell out of the first tree I tried and broke my arm. You carried me all the way back to the manor, even though you were smaller than me. You told my father it was your fault, that you'd dared me to climb higher. He had you whipped for it."
Adrian's smile faded. "That's horrible."
"You never blamed me. The next day, you came back with herbs your uncle had given you for my bruises and told me you'd teach me properly this time. And you did. By the time we were teenagers, we'd climbed every tree in the province." Kieran's expression grew tender. "You were fearless, Elias. Stubborn and brilliant and so full of life that just being near you made me feel like I could breathe."
"When did friendship become... more?"
Kieran's cheeks actually colored—a vampire blushing, Adrian marveled. "I was seventeen, you were fifteen. We were swimming in the river during summer, and you'd just finished telling me about your plans to travel, to see the world beyond our village. The sun was setting, turning your hair to gold, and you were laughing at something—I don't even remember what. And I just... knew. I'd loved you for years, but in that moment, I realized I was in love with you."
"Did you tell me?"
"Not for another year. I was terrified. Not just because we were both men—though that was dangerous enough—but because you were my best friend, and I couldn't bear to lose you." Kieran's voice dropped. "But on my eighteenth birthday, during the feast my father threw, you snuck me away to the gardens. You kissed me first. Said you'd been waiting for me to figure it out for ages."
Adrian's heart clenched. He could almost see it—two young men stealing kisses in the moonlight, believing they had all the time in the world.
"We were careful," Kieran continued. "We met in secret, made plans to run away together once you turned eighteen. We were going to go to the coast, board a ship to somewhere no one knew us. Start over as merchants, or scholars, or anything that meant we could be together."
"But someone found out."
Kieran's face went cold, hard. "My father. He'd been having me followed, suspicious of why I was refusing every marriage proposal he arranged. He found us together in the old mill, and he—"
Kieran stopped, his hands clenching into fists. When he spoke again, his voice was hollow.
"He killed you, Elias. Ran you through with his sword while I watched. And he would have killed me too, but the witch—she appeared before he could. She'd been watching us, she said. Moved by our love. She offered me a choice: die with you, or live until your soul returned. She'd bind us together across lifetimes, but I'd have to endure the separation, the pain, the waiting. However long it took."
"And you chose to wait," Adrian whispered.
"I chose you," Kieran corrected. "I've always chosen you. Even across a thousand years of suffering, I'd choose you again."
Adrian's eyes burned with unshed tears. "I don't remember any of it. I don't remember loving you, or dying, or any of it. How can you be sure I'm really Elias?"
Kieran reached out slowly, giving Adrian time to pull away. When he didn't, Kieran cupped his face with a gentleness that belied his deadly nature.
"Because my heart doesn't ache right now," he said simply. "For the first time in a millennium, the pain is gone. And it's because you're here, touching me, breathing the same air. My curse knows you, even if your mind doesn't. Yet."
"Yet?"
"The memories will return," Kieran said. "Slowly, in dreams and visions. The witch promised me that. When your soul was ready, when you'd lived enough to understand what was taken from us, the memories would wake."
Adrian leaned into Kieran's touch, his eyes drifting closed. He was so tired, emotionally and physically drained. And Kieran's hand was cold but comforting, familiar in a way that shouldn't make sense but somehow did.
"I'm scared," Adrian admitted. "Of the memories, of Viktor, of all of this. But also..." He opened his eyes, meeting Kieran's storm-gray gaze. "I'm not scared of you. I should be, but I'm not."
Kieran smiled, sad and beautiful. "Your soul remembers that I'd never hurt you. That I'd die before I let anyone else hurt you. Some things transcend memory, Adrian."
"Will you stay with me tonight? Just... stay close? I don't want to be alone."
"Always," Kieran promised. "For as long as you want me, I'm yours."
As Adrian finally surrendered to sleep, curled up on the monastery floor with Kieran's coat as a blanket and the ancient vampire keeping watch, he had his first dream of that past life.
He saw a boy with dark hair and gray eyes, laughing in summer sunlight. And he knew, deep in his soul, that he'd loved that boy once.
And maybe—just maybe—he could love him again.