Page 28 of When Day Breaks

I don't say a word, and I keep my arms at the side of the tub as hers are now pulled into her lap. I can't touch her, but she's too close.

This was a mistake.

"I never predicted your betrayal," she breaks the silence and says to me as the rain patters against the windowpanes and the scent of the October air mixes with the candle lit nearby. I can feel her breathing against me, the water waves gently in the tub.

I look down to see Lucynda's bright white strands melt into the soapy shimmer of the water, swirling around my chest. Her dark, black roots are starting to show, giving me a glimpse at the parts of her she tries to keep hidden if only to repress the life she refuses to be a part of.

I don't know how to respond to her statement, though I know the truth that rings behind it. It makes me feel amiss, hollowed and pissed off at myself that I had so much power and I used it to break apart the only person who could possibly save me from my demons. Instead, I used mine to bring out hers and now, she's on the edge of no return because I didn't want to pursue something that could only be my weakness, my undoing.

"I don't know what you want me to say." I don't let my voice get louder than the rain, or the hiss of the burning candle. This moment is far too intimate. I know no one else can hear us, but this is only for us.

The water ripples as Lucynda brings her knees up to her chest and she leans forward, wrapping her arms around them and leaning her head down. I miss the warmth between us, but I don't move as she positions herself anew, and it takes only a second to realize that she's starting to cry.

Her soft sniffles and a few quieted whimpers are let out. It's hitting her. What she's done, what I've done. She wasn't allowed a moment of grief because she was so overcome by the curse that the emotion of sadness and the feeling of pain were irrelevant to her at the time.

Now, it's torturing her.

I lean into her, wrapping one of my arms around her body and using the other to brush her wet hair to one shoulder so that I can get a better look at her from the side.

"I've got you," I whisper to her, knowing that I can't say anything else in the moment to prevent her from feeling the guilt that eats at her.

"I killed all those innocent people," she whines, her cries becoming more audible as she lifts her head up and turns to the side to look up at me. "I don't even know how I could have enjoyed something like that and it was like a sport to me. I…" She trails off as sobs wrack her, her body shaking as her tears spill.

"You couldn't help it." I wrap both arms around her, holding her in and trying my best to comfort her. But I've never had to comfort anyone in my life. No one has done so for me so that act is foreign but somehow, I know how to comfort her. I've done it before and will do it for as long as she'll let me.

"Icouldhelp it." She wipes tears aggressively as they fall from her eyes, mixing with the bathwater. "Ichoseto act on the one thing I knew I didn't want. My desire to hate the monsters so much that all I wanted to do was to hurt others."

"Revenge," I whisper, knowing that is the one thing she's talking about. The one thing I made her believe she desired most of all.

"I'm so sick of that word. Why is that something that anyone desires? Look at where it’s gotten us." Water splashes around us as she turns around to face me, she brings herself up on her knees and waves her hands around us. "Look at us!" She shouts again, purposefully slamming her hands back into the water and that's when I realize that underneath the layers of soap and bubbles, the water is tainted with red. Blood she's worn since the night she committed her intended requital against me, tryingto pay me back for the pain I inflicted on her by murdering innocent people in the midst of her curse.

"In vampirism, it's inevitable to want blood, little one. And given who we are and what we've gone through, and what's happened to you, your actions were not of your control." I try to reassure her that her actions weren't of her own natural doing. She was cursed, forced to want for something she didn't necessarily seek the need for to begin with. It's not her fault. She has to see that.

I see her tears still falling from her grayed irises, her body half out of the water and her breathing is harsh as she tries to talk down on herself. She's tormented with the pain caused to her and hating the way she justified that.

I lean into her, brushing wet strands of her hair from her face, taking any trace of tears with it, and resting my hand against her neck, needing to feel her pulse before I decide to feel anything else. Because Ican'tfeel it.

I can't feel sorry.

I can't feel pain.

I can't feel desire.

My focuscan'tbe on me. It needs to be on my queen and the kingdom I've betrayed.

"You and I, we were born in blood," I tell her. "We weren't given a choice. And the trajectory of our lives are manufactured from the cards we've been dealt. Vampire or not, Lucynda, you were always meant to fall on hatred for those who have betrayed you."

Her face falls, her eyes close and her lashes flutter against her cheeks. The rain picks up heavier now, thunder growling in the mass of the darkened sky.

"What about you?" Her eyes open back up softly to look at me, swollen from crying.

Her eyes tell a story of broken promises and hidden happiness. I can't stand to look into them knowing that I am a cause for both.

I reach for her and turn her back around, nestling her against my body once more, and she lets me.

"It's my fault you're cursed," I start. I know that when she talks of monsters and darkness, I am now a subject in both of the categories in her life and her curse is only in question because of me. "Vampirism isn't supposed to feel this…"

"Guilty," she finishes for me. And she's right.

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