Page 86 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

When she suddenly clapped, the sound of it echoing like a strike of lightning through the quiet space, I flinched. “Great! Thank you for your cooperation. You probably don’t know this, human, but Rune asking you to do something is kind of a big deal around here.”

I prickled, narrowing my eyes as I stared at her in disbelief. “Huh,” I said. “The ruler of Aristelle asking you to do something is a big deal? Thanks for explaining that to me. My silly human brain struggles to comprehend vampire affairs sometimes.”

She scrunched her face up, as if thinking hard about whether or not I was employing satire. “I’m bored of this conversation. Goodbye.”

I lifted my brows as she sauntered off. She was strange, but I thought her heart might’ve been in the right place. Maybe.

Remembering Rune’s words, I ascended the winding steps to the second floor. I moved slowly, weaving through the bookcases that were teeming with magick more often than not. Occasionally, I’d inspect a book, sculpture, or painting more closely, and each time I wondered if Rune had read the words on the pages or hand-picked the art. He couldn’t have chosen every piece, right?

Just before I reached the closed-off room in the back left corner, I caught a glimpse of a huge painting. In front of it was a bench in the shape of a crescent moon.

The painting looked so familiar, but I wasn’t sure why. It was vibrant, sky blue, with black brushstrokes that reminded me of the turned clan’s trademark tattoos. Though it was mostly abstract, I could make out a figure drawn in black just off the center, kneeling with his head in his hands. Though he had no face, I could read his devastation from his crumpled posture, like wadded up paper. All around him were specks of black, circles, and what appeared to be chain links and shackles. Some of the circles were solid—black holes or pits that led to nowhere.

I was entranced by this figure’s loneliness, my own pain reaching for his. I took a step forward, and that was when I remembered the artist Reggie had told me about.

He manages to convey the imprisonment of immortality so heartbreakingly even as he uses only the brightest, most vivid colors. It’s a juxtaposition, you see. Because you cannot actually live forever. You can only exist.

I somehow already knew that Rune had chosen this painting. That he had gazed upon it and had seen himself in its darkness, no matter what he said about his soul or humanity.

The puzzle of how I knew this weighed heavily on my mind as I entered the room he’d wanted me to see. A light flickered on above when I entered, triggered with sensory magick. At first, I didn’t understand what it was that I was seeing.

The walls were the deepest blue, nearly black, with the constellations meticulously painted in all of their splendor. One wall had them charted scientifically, while another was an artistic depiction of the heavens. On the ceiling lay the great expanse of the Milky Way, iridescent, multicolored hues of the eternal galaxy. My breath hitched, my heart steadily pounding as the room came to life, the colors swirling and the stars lighting up with magick.

The floor was covered with a soft carpet. Plush cushions and furniture sat low to the ground. In the center of the space was a long oval table with a perplexing arrangement of quartz pillars surrounding a bowl. Stacked against each wall were rows and rows of thin books on jutting shelves with labels plastered below. I frowned, puzzled as I read the neat typography.

Instrumental: Piano

Instrumental: Strings Orchestra

Valentin Folk Style

I moved to the folk stack, reaching for a book labeled Frida and Friends, along with a year and the name of a town I didn’t recognize. When I unfastened the leather binding, I realized it wasn’t a book at all. It was a leather envelope, with smoky quartz spheres inside.

My heart was racing now. I’d heard of ways to capture and replay memories of music using magick, but the technology was rare and unbelievably expensive. Back home, the most we got were the occasional lackluster local group and traveling musicians who weren’t good enough to play anywhere else but small villages like Crescent Haven.

I’d dreamed of the ability to listen to music from all over the realm, for as long as I could remember. Jaxon and I were going to see every major music hall, and I was going to immerse myself in the local scenes of each city and town we passed through. It was all a part of the future I’d painted on the horizon.

Something inside me bloomed, the sound of fate humming so loudly now that it felt like I was back atop a firebird streaking across the night sky.

I placed a sphere in the bowl in the center of quartz amplifier rods, and I waited. Tendrils of light swirled inside the sphere, sparking brighter at contact with the bowl. When nothing else happened, I wondered if I needed to chant something, or maybe dump the whole satchel of spheres in at once.

Rune could’ve maybe provided some instructions.

But then I heard the delicate sound of a woman laughing and the rich vibrato of a fiddle. Percussion was next, perhaps people stomping and clapping. When a woman began to sing, I gripped the edge of the table so hard my knuckles turned white. I steadied myself, close to toppling over from the melody flooding the room and smacking right into me.

My ears tingled, chills sweeping over my skin. I slowly raised a hand to my trembling, grinning lips. A sound between a laugh and choked sob escaped me.

Her voice was soft and haunting, sweeping me under her tune like a steady creek deep in the woods. The stars and whorls of color on the walls and ceiling grew brighter and more vibrant.

I never wanted this to end. I wanted to flood my ears with music every second of every day. How could Rune tolerate silence when he had all of this at his disposal? I took in the room with new eyes as the song shifted into a beautiful, soulful fiddle solo, finally understanding just how much music was contained within these four walls.

It suddenly broke my heart that I only had this one, fleeting life. My time here was so limited, nothing guaranteed. I wasn’t sure it would even be possible for me to listen to every piece of music in Rune’s collection, unless perhaps I locked myself in here and refused to leave.

Which actually sounded appealing as I considered it.

I lay back on the carpet, only getting up to place a new sphere in the bowl when the old one had run out of music. I gazed up at the stars, grinning like a damn fool, tears streaming down the sides of my face uncontrollably.

I cursed my mortality just as much as I thanked Helia for my humanity, one impossible without the other. It was only because it was all fleeting that these moments meant so much to me. It was only because of my humanity that I could feel all of this so deeply, so viscerally. When Frida sang of love and heartbreak, I felt it too, even if I’d never been in love before. The more I listened, the more she’d become a part of me, a piece of her soul getting lodged in mine just like a friend or a lover. This woman I’d never met and would never meet—who I felt as though I knew even if I’d only ever heard her beautiful words and piercing voice.

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