Page 34 of Lux

He eyes a clock on the wall. Dark with two spindly legs drifting around a stylized full moon. It’s gaudy and garish like everything else in this place. Tarnished by time, valuable only to one who owns it.

“I will accompany you, but I hope you have enough sense not to get yourself into more trouble. I have enough tension with Jack to contend with already, thank you.”

He setshis cup down onto the matching saucer. They are chipped, yet gleam, barely used.

This vamryre has so many useless, pointless things, but I can tell he values them all. A sense of care is evident in the neglect. How the dust protects them with a shallow coating. As long as they remain untouched, left behind, he is the only one who can enjoy them. Cassius craved gold and glitter, but this vamryre prizes dusty, valueless things.

“You are staring,” he sniffs, setting his cup aside. Staring at him, I am. Those cold, green eyes observe me with an intensity a mortal could never possess. Most vamryre don't view the world as he does: through contracts and payments, but also some small shred of kindness—twisted though it may be. After all, he chose to help me despite his master’s wishes. I still can’t fully understand why..

“What are you?” I ask him.

He chuckles. Nods. “I am what you are. A creature of the night, sustained by blood, damned by the mortal world?—”

“Liar,” I say. “You are something else.”

Something that lurks beyond most mortal’s grasp of time—mine even. I only caught a glimpse of the broad expanse of Cassius’s real mind—the one he kept us away from. He is older than dirt, as some mortals might quip. So old the meaning of life was lost upon him, and he collected his pretty trinkets to distract from that fact. To hide from the emptiness that threatened to consume him day in and day out.

Until…

Until he met me.

No.Don’t want to remember. I shake my head to clear it.

“Tell me,” I demand of the vamryre before me. I remember the way he was in the face of the fae Lord Master. Unafraid. Mocking, even. “You do not fear them. You have no master to call you back. How?”

Altaris laughs. It’s a sad, broken sound as if he didn’t mean to make such a noise at all. It comes from deep in his throat, past the bravado and lies and pretty clothing. Deep down, he is far different from Cassius.

Where my old master shunned his humanity, Altaris clings to it. Just a small, teeny tiny sliver he’s kept tucked in that expansive mind for centuries upon centuries. He hoards it. Values it.

That humanity is what makes him so dangerous.

“There is something else you want to ask me,” he says, his voice soft and haunting. Broken.

The vulnerability itches and scratches at my soul. Don’t like it. Don’t. Only Niamh can reveal this side of herself to me. I want to coddle that weak flame—her humanity. Maybe one day I will snuff it out. Maybe never. It is mine to tame and keep safe.

Altaris’s pity is a different creature entirely. I don’t like it. It reminds me…

It reminds me of something I’d long since forgotten.

“I know you,” I say. “From before.”

Before I came to the mortal realm this time?

Or even before then?

Before this twisted remnant of my soul was all that remained of who I once was?

Before Cassius, even…

I look at the vamryre, expecting answers, but he just nods. Merely once.

“I did,” he says. “I know you, still. You are Caspian, once as a toy of Cassius. Any more, and I think you may not like the answer. Ask me about the fae instead. Your fae. How I know her true nature.”

I grunt.

He smooths his fingers over his lap, his expression pensive. “I’ve seen it before,” he admits. “The damage done when those fae breed with the wrong kind. The children they make. Wretched creatures who belong to no one.”

He’s broached this topic on purpose. He wants me to think of something. The biological reason for sex and mating, beyond pleasing one’s master and bringing new victims into his fold. Children. Procreation.

---