Page 59 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 2

“You’re in it for revenge,” I said.

“You’re goddamn right,” he snarled, wheeling around to face me. “I need to make sure she gets what’s coming to her. She killed my family!”

The moment had switched into something slow and crystalline, with my options branching out before me. I took a deep breath and chose one.

“Not all of your family,” I said.

Damien’s face crumpled, and he lurched over to me, slumping down onto the forest floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

“I’m so sorry for everything I had to do to you. I hated myself for it, but I’d already come so far. I couldn’t?—”

“You couldn’t blow your cover,” I said for him, and he nodded miserably. Sometimes it was easy to forget not all vampires had been around for centuries. Damien was good at putting up the smoothly confident front of the older vampires, but right now, it was painfully clear he was just some guy in his thirties stuck in a horrible situation. I patted him awkwardly on the shoulder.

“I don’t… Um,” I started hesitantly. “I don’t remember anything from back then, but… We could start over, maybe? If you want.”

“I’d like that.”

The clinical part of my mind worked overtime, and then it connected the dots.

“Your ring,” I said slowly. “The signet ring with the crescent moon on it. It’s the alchemical symbol for silver. They were—we were—the Argents.”

“It was our dad’s,” Damien said. “I had to keep something of them. You understand, don’t you? I… I couldn’t risk keeping the surname, but renaming myself Sterling seemed safe enough.”

I didn’t know if I did understand. Just like Damien, I had always considered my adoptive parents to be my family. I loved them in a familiar, distant way. I called them every few weeks to tell them largely made-up stories about my life. Until recently, I hadn’t put all that much thought into my birth family.

“Can we keep walking?” Damien asked. “I think it’d help right now.”

I nodded, stashing the protein bar for later, and we set off again.

Our next break was quieter. I ate the protein bar, then a slightly squished sandwich from the bag. Damien sipped on a synth blood pouch, keeping an ever-watchful eye on the woods. We’d swapped stories as we’d walked—he told me about our childhood, and I told him about jobs I’d done. Together, we helped each other fill in the blanks; now I knew more about the years I couldn’t remember, and he knew what I’d been up to. Things were definitely more relaxed between us.

“So,” Damien drawled between sips of blood. He drew the syllable out in a way that aroused my suspicions. “You and Gabriel.”

I groaned. I both did and didn’t want to talk about it. It felt like prodding at an injury, but I was in the mood to make myself feel worse. I understood Gabriel’s reasoning, sure, but that didn’t make the whole shitshow hurt any less.

“I said we could try hanging out. I didn’t say you could start doing big brother shit right off the bat,” I muttered, kicking at the fallen leaves petulantly. They sent up a waft of mold smell.

“Humor me. I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.” That landed too close to something raw within him, I could tell.

I sighed. “I like him a lot, but we’re kind of dealing with a lot right now, you know? We were already trying to save magic as we know it, and now he’s dealing with killing his dad and getting saddled with a day job on top of that. Part of me gets why he dumped me.”

Damien grunted.

“I’m not saying I’m cool with it,” I reassured him, managing to talk around a stubborn lump in my throat. I absolutely refused to cry. “It’s just… We’re both kind of coming into our own, I guess. Figuring out who you are as yourself is hard enough without figuring out who you are with someone else on top of that.” I sounded like such a reasonable, mature adult. God, I wanted to scream.

“So, you’d rather be a lone wolf, handling things on your own?” Damien asked dryly. “Not dragging anyone else into your problems, keeping everyone around you safe by not letting them in?”

“I mean…” I shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it like that, but yeah. Kinda.”

“Well.” He thought for a moment, toying with the straw of his synth blood packet. “That seems pretty stupid.”

I let out an outraged squawk. I wanted to wallow, not be lectured.

“Do you want Gabriel to deal with all of his stuff alone? Do you want him to keep everything to himself?”

“Of course not, but that’s different!” I sputtered.

“Oh, so he deserves compassion and help, but you don’t?” he asked innocently.

---