And as she stared back, her expression almost soft, I knew I could not leave her to face her damnation alone.
‘You think you know me so well,’ I said, and fear and sadness rocked my voice and made it shake. ‘But you forget the most important thing.’ She jutted out her chin defiantly, and I walked to her and smoothed the set of it away. Her skin was frost.
‘I love you, Kisaiya. You might not believe in fate, but I know mine is shared with yours. And no choice I take, earthly or unearthly, can be to step away from you.’
She had no tears to give me, but she held out her hand to mine, fingers splayed. I touched my fingertips to hers, and she gently, gently brought her mouth to my neck. I watched in the mirror as she bent over me. I sat alone, in that reflected world, alone in the shadowy room.
The sharp pain was unmistakable, and I felt a fierce cold spread from the point where her teeth had pierced me, so icy it was almost warm.
‘How long?’ I whispered.
‘A day,’ she replied. ‘It doesn’t hurt. It feels like nothing. And then you can drink of me.’
‘Vampyre?’
‘Vampyres. Together.’
I sat watching my reflection, wondering when it would fade. And then, the screaming began.
Kizzy ran to the window, pulling aside the curtain. Outside, the moon was a sharp slice taken from the lightening sky, and her skin shimmered in its glow. Daybreak was not far away. Kizzy made a sound like a scalded cat.
I ran to her side, slightly dizzy from her bite, and peered down. The room overlooked the courtyard we had entered, where we had encountered the sleeping strigoi. They had returned to the stable after the failed feast, and it was they who screamed.
Because the stable was on fire.
Quick as a bolt of lightning, Kizzy was on the windowsill, and then she stepped off it. I grabbed reflexively at her, but she did not fall. She flew.
Skimming the tops of the flames, she darted to and fro from the burning barn, keeping to the shadows cast by the fast-rising sun against the high walls, and I remembered the wagons ablaze, her determination to save Mamă, her scalded hands.
But just as it had our home, the fire already had the stable in its grasp. Shapes fluttered useless and ablaze into the air, were struck by the sun or else too far caught in the fire’s grip. Kizzy was screaming too, with anger and fear. She came close to the growing sunlight and I called out.
‘Careful!’
And then, she plunged, so suddenly I was sure she had been struck by the daylight, was dissolving to dust. But as I watched, my hands clutching at my still-warm cheeks, I saw her pluck up a figure from the ground. It was so pale, I thought it was a strigoi, but then I saw the shaven head and realised who it was.
Mira. Mira had burned the barn.
Kizzy flew back up to the window, and I dived aside. Kizzy tossed her inside. Mira sprawled onto the floor, coughing, and I ran to her as Kizzy followed after, landing light and graceful as a swan, throwing the curtain closed again, shutting out the growing light of sun and flame.
‘You little căcat,’ hissed Kizzy, advancing. ‘You murderer. I’ll kill you, I’ll—’
‘Stop, Kizzy!’ I stood between them, the two loves of my life, shielding Mira from Kizzy’s gaze.
‘They’re strigoi, Kizzy,’ said Mira from the floor. ‘They’re monsters.’
‘So are you going to kill me too?’
Now she saw Kizzy, and the wound to my neck, and cried out.
‘Saints! Dragă, you’re not one of them.’
‘Perhaps the only one,’ spat Kizzy, ‘after your antics. The Dragon will not be happy with you. He’s spent years building his court.’
‘Kizzy,’ I said, holding up a hand to calm her. ‘Did they choose too? Or did he force them?’
Kizzy hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You do,’ I said. ‘He forced them. They’re not like you. They’re slaves to their needs. We ran into one in the forests, a child. It’s a horrible life; you said yourself you would have made another choice had you known. Perhaps this is a mercy.’
The screaming had stopped. The air smelt of sweet smoke, sickeningly strong. Kizzy sighed. ‘Perhaps. Though Dracul will not see it that way. He will kill her, you know.’
‘Then save her,’ I pleaded. ‘Get her away from here.’
‘It’s daylight,’ she said. ‘She will have to make her own way.’
‘I’m not going,’ said Mira. ‘Not without Lil.’
I looked at her then, and my still-beating heart felt like it would burst. ‘I have to stay.’
‘Tell her, Kizzy,’ said Mira, searching my face. ‘Tell her to come.’
‘It’s too late,’ I said, and showed her the holes in my neck.
Mira’s silence hit me like a wave. She reached out to me, and her hands were warm and lovely. She spread them across my shoulders, rubbing along my arms, and my longing was so painful I thought it would be better to live without it.
‘Lil?’ Her eyes searched my face for an answer I did not have. ‘Then I’ll stay. I’ll stay and to hell with it.’
‘You will go,’ I said voice unsteady with tears. ‘Because I cannot have you live like this.’
She wailed like a child, and threw herself towards me, covering my neck in kisses as though that would suck out whatever poison Kizzy had put in my veins.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I came back for you. I came back—’
‘And now you have to go,’ I said, my eyes hazy with tears. ‘Kizzy can take you to Fen and Kem. You will not be alone.’
I wanted to tell her to stay. I wanted to tell her I wished I could give her all my endless days, that I longed to take what she was offering: to take her life and tie it to mine for eternity.
‘Kizzy? Will you take her?’
‘Fine,’ said my sister. ‘But it’ll have to wait until nightfall. I’ll return then, before you are full strigoi. It will not be safe for her then.’
She swept from the room, closing the door behind. The warmth seemed to flood back in, the fire blazing brighter.
Mira looked at me, and to my surprise there was a supressed smile on her face. ‘Do you want to bite me, Lil? Say you do.’
I laughed too, and an arrow of longing struck hard at my heart.
‘Mira—’ I began, but Mira pressed herself against me, her lips finding my collarbone, my shoulder, my breasts. I shivered in her arms, my still-warm skin dancing beneath her fingers. I kissed her too, everywhere she wanted, and we moved together as we never could in the forest with Fen close by. It was a bliss I had no words for, could only search for with my hands and my mouth, reaching for every part of her, bringing it as close as I could, until I did not know where her pleasure ended and mine began. And into her ear I whispered her name, and she moaned mine, and it was like she was calling me into true existence for the first, and last, time.
After, I wrapped my arms around her. I kissed her cheek and returned her whispered words from the hall, a lifetime ago.
‘I love you. Forever.’
‘It really will be,’ said Mira sadly. ‘I will stay. I want to stay.’
‘I want you to,’ I said. ‘But it is not right. You know that, don’t you?’