Page 20 of Inevitably Yves

“A letter. I never opened it. I couldn’t.”

“Yves.” He’s out of bed and across the room in a blink. “It’s from me, isn’t it?”

“I think so. Your scent was ever so faint. Thorn stole it from a museum here in town with a vampire exhibit. He said it called out to him for some reason.”

“Why didn’t you read it?”

“I think I was afraid of what it would say. I thought it would be all I had of you besides the ring. It was too much to bear.”

He smiles, taking the fragile letter from me. “I will read it to you. I know exactly what it says. It’s not a letter, Yves. It’s a diary of sorts. Sit, my beloved, and listen.”

Nodding, I move to the armchair next to the fireplace and take a seat. I must thank Thorn again for his instinct, and that darling mate of his for showing him the exhibit in the first place.

“February, seventeen-twenty,” Damiano begins after carefully unfolding the sheets of paper. “Amsterdam is cold. Frigidly so. It’s days like this my mind torments me with thoughts of a warmth I knew once upon a time. A warmth no fire could compete with. I see his face in the falling snowflakes and my nearly dead heart twists in my chest.”

I rub my own chest, listening to his words.

“Cillian would love it here, I think,” Damiano continues. “He would enjoy the architecture. He was always fascinated by it. Perhaps he could have been a builder if the Church hadn’t called to him.”

Damiano walks in a small circle, his energy dripping with sad nostalgia.

“I have prayed, begged to any deity listening to take his memory away, to show me mercy, but relief never comes. I am haunted by memories of a love so real and deep I will never have it again. I’ve tried to hate him for choosing Hadrian over me, but trying to hate Cillian is like hating the moon for shining, hating flowers for blooming, hating rain for falling. It’s impossible and fruitless. So instead I lie here in a dark, cold flat, facing another night alone but allowing the memories of our love to warm me.”

He folds the paper in half, wiping away a tear of blood that slips from his eye. His pain is powerful to draw a tear after all these centuries alive.

“Dami…”

“I left it in that flat. I left all my notebooks there. For some reason, Amsterdam made the memories stronger. I don’t know why.”

“I was there, Damiano. I was with you.”

His jaw drops. “You were… At the same time?”

“Seventeen-twenty? Yes. We spent a few months there on our way to the Americas. Once again, we circled each other but missed.”

Damiano’s eyes harden. “I cannot wait to torture the truth from him. What he did to us, Yves…”

“He took a lifetime from us.”

“Several lifetimes. I thought I was going mad because I couldn’t forget you.”

I scoff a laugh. “I understand. I did the same.”

Damiano walks back to the bed, places the letter on the nightstand, and sits. “Come back over here.”

Rising, I join him on the bed once again.

“Tell me about your family,” Damiano says. “Who was first?”

“Syn,” I answer. “He was with me today.”

“The two men with you love you. Deeply. I felt it.”

“Yes, I am a fortunate man to have found them and enjoy their affection and loyalty.”

“But they have mates now?”

“Fated,” I answer with a smile. “It fills me with pride that I led them to this happiness. They don’t love me romantically, not anymore. I admit that my motivation for turning each of them was misguided. I desperately wanted to find the mate destined for me, so for a time, any man who caught my eye in a particular way, became mine.”

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