Page 29 of Fated Blood

Finally, the black sludge is just a drip. I lower myself to the floor, curling in the fetal position, facing away from the hole. I can feel the sludge dripping from the corner of my mouth like drool, but there isn’t enough of my consciousness left inside me to care.

I hear rocks crashing behind me, like an avalanche, but I don’t have the strength to move. My eyes flutter closed, my mind searching for some comforting vision in my last moments, but there’s nothing left.

Nothing left to do but surrender…

“I—I could have loved you forever…” I croak, and everything goes black.

Chapter10

Sebastian

Fayla’s lying in a pool of black death, just like he did. I’m frozen in place, flashing back to that day. My first kill, my biggest mistake. The only vampire I’ve ever regretted killing, simply because I didn’t intend to kill him at that point.

Now I have something new to regret, something worse. I drove her to this. It was in my power to feed her. Hell, I could have even grabbed a hold of her and killed her while she fed, but I didn’t, I couldn’t. I could let her die, or at least I thought I could, but killing her myself was out of the realm of my capabilities.

Her screams are still echoing in my mind even though she hasn’t made a single noise since she fell down and curled up. My fingers are bloody, flesh scraping away with every pull of the rocks. If I can just get my shoulders through I'll be set. Just one more rock, one more… I try to push through again, reaching for her, dragging and clawing my way through the hole.

“Fayla, don’t you dare die!” I roar, hoping my own blistering determination will rile her enough to keep her fighting.

I still can’t fit! It’s still not enough! I roar, screaming as I push and pull against the limits of my own flesh. I have to get to her, if only so she doesn’t die alone. If only I can hold her just once more…

Save her…

My mind wails, beating against the inside of my skull incessantly. I know without a doubt that I want to save the daughter of my sworn enemy, the daughter of the man who's responsible for the creation of the Blood Knights, for centuries of hatred and bloodshed. None of that matters anymore, not who she is. Not who her father is. Her face flashes in my mind over and over; sleeping and peaceful, then full of lust and a need she doesn’t understand. Her innocent smile, her uncanny knowledge of things she should have no idea about if she doesn’t even know what sex is.

“I…could have loved you forever…” she breathes.

I know in my heart those are her last words. I scream, a desperate pleading sound, and push harder. My bare feet are being rubbed raw by the rough stones, my shoulder that’s still stuck being fileted by silver, flaked mortar, but I don’t care. I keep screaming, pulling myself through the hole as if my life depends on it.

When I hear the pop and the ripping squelch, I don’t even register the pain that comes with it. I fall forward so suddenly that I land on my face, cutting a huge gash down the side of my face and through my temple.

I’m free! I got through!

But my arm lays limply at my side. It’s dislocated, the skin stretching horrendously as my too-heavy arm is pulled down by gravity. It doesn’t matter. I leap to my feet, making the distance between Fayla and I but a single step, and then she’s in my arm. I roll her over on her back, seeing the eyes so full of life now clouded and tinged with blackness.

“Fayla!” I scream, shaking her, but it’s no use. She isn’t there anymore.

I’m too late.

Tears pour from my eyes, streaking down my dirty cheeks. I touch my bloody fingertips to her beautiful lips, wiping the black away and coating her lips red, instead. I pull her stained dress up and off her shoulders, spitting on the scrap of fabric so I can clean all the black, deathly liquid away and see her face for the first real time in all its entirety.

“I’m sorry…” I gasp. “I’m so fucking sorry, Fayla… You didn’t deserve this!”

It’s true, she didn’t. She didn’t deserve to suffer like this just because of the hatred I held in my heart for her kind. She didn’t deserve to die because her father killed my ancestors. She was goodness, she was light. She was an innocence I wanted to destroy, a light I needed to smother. Now that I’m in the darkness of her death, all I want to do is turn back time and do it all the right way.

In one last desperate attempt at reviving her, I rip open my wrist with my own teeth and force the ragged flesh to her mouth. It fills her, pouring out the corners of her lips unswallowed. I push my dislocated arm up against the wall, resting her body on top of mine as I feed her. Her bare legs are tangled with mine, her breasts pressed against the planes of my chest, but I feel nothing. I deserve to feel nothing.

“I should have fed you sooner, Fayla. I should have shared my blood with you, so you were sustained until your family arrived. When we were ultimately rescued, I’d beg your father’s forgiveness. I would have done anything to stay by your side. I would renounce my leadership of the Blood Knights, embrace becoming a vampire. I would have taught you all the things lovers can do, shown you a world so vast and beautiful you could never have imagined it, never knowing it was there.

“We could have had children, a family…we could have been happy. You’d be alive if I—” I choke on the words, unable to speak anymore. Her body is more lifeless now than Mara’s as she still tries to clamber through the bars.

This is the biggest mistake of my life, my hardest loss.

I’ll never recover from this.

I deserve to die.

I’ll bleed out in her mouth and die with her…

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