Gabe

After all this time. She finally saw me.

But now, I wish she hadn’t.

The way she looked at me will forever be imprinted in my mind. Hate, loathing, fear. Her judgement ripped through me like a knife gutting a fish. Those few words I uttered were not enough to stitch together my broken and bleeding chest. I’m sorry means nothing when you’ve taken something as precious as life.

I know that. I live with the guilt every day of my shitty life.

It was her fear that devastated me the most.

She was right to be afraid. I took that child’s life to keep myself alive. A soul I am bound to, reborn over and over, only for me to take it so I can live in eternal damnation. It is the Queen’s will. Her way to hurt my people the most. Where once we brought life into the world, just like Fern, now we are forced to take life to keep our own.

How cruel that today the soul I am forced to take in perpetuity was one she happened to bring into the world. I had almost stopped. When I’d heard her plea for me to leave, I had almost obeyed. My feet had moved towards the door, the song stuttering on my lips.

But I couldn’t do it and now his precious life has been destroyed by my touch, my voice.

He is not the first, and he won’t be the last. The same soul reborn, only to be taken by me repeatedly. I bear the scars of that one soul and all the mothers he has been born to. I leave a millennium of heartbreak behind me. Mothers’ tears burn my skin. There is no space left to feel anything other than their grief. I carry it with me every second of every long year of my damned life. We all do. For every single member of Clan Vitae has no choice but to do the same. Each one of us is bound to another soul. To live we must take it every single time it enters the world.

Only a handful have ever been able to fight the urge and refuse. They are free now from this cycle of life and death. I’ve never been strong enough to do the same. Not even Ether has. He is the strongest of us all, my brother-in-arms, my friend, my leader. Yet even he, with his pure heart, has never been brave enough. Mihr, my friend from before we were turned, he lives like a ghost, doing what Queen Adrielle demands. Silent. Untouchable. He is changed, dramatically so. No longer the man who loves to laugh. I try to make up for it with dry humour and sarcasm. Both Ether and Mihr see me for what I am.

I am weak.

Somewhere inside I still live in the hope that one day I can be free to atone for my sins. Free to live the life I held so dear before that fucking bitch took it from us all.

Live?

As I sit on the roof of this building, watching the dark of night absorb all light from the sky, I laugh at the absurdity of it. For the last one thousand years, I haven’t lived. Surrounded by the Shadowlands isn’t a fucking life. It’s a punishment, despite our home nestled amongst it. Even the Queen refuses to go there. She knows the dangers of stepping one foot inside a place that swirls with death, that seeps from the very ground we walk upon. Even with all her power she understands that some things are best left well alone. She might be able to control us, but she isn’t able to control a monster of her own making.

Yet, we are all still her slaves.

Clan Vitae are nothing but Queen Adrielle’s most feared Death Bringers. If Clan Lux are her soldiers, protecting her, punishing her enemies, then my people are the ones who inflict the most mortal wounds without breaking a sweat. We take life with one touch. It is as simple and destructive as that.

Yet Fern, this strange woman I have been drawn to for all this time, is everything I once was, everything I long to be again.

Fern. Her name suits her. It is the first time I have heard it, uttered by the man who just touched the woman I’ve longed to touch for so long. Below me, she remains with the mother I took from. Giving comfort after I’ve stolen joy. Giving support after I’ve destroyed. I wish I could remain here, with Fern. Follow her home, bask in her warmth, her light. She has been my secret salvation. Not even my brothers know that I travel here through a portal they have no idea exists. For many years now, I have been visiting Fern, this woman I am drawn to for no reason I can fathom. Whilst time spins fast in Ever Vale, here it moves so slowly she has barely changed from the first time I lay eyes on her here at this hospital where she works. Whilst I have lived another hundred years, she has lived only a few.

But it matters not. She has seen me now and I can never return.

I didn’t think my heart could bleed anymore, but it does. Right here, as I sit atop this building in another world far from my own, my lifeblood leaks from me in bitter haste.

Clutching at the brick beneath me, I lean forward over the side of the building, wondering what it would be like to let myself fall. To keep my wings firmly closed behind me, to crash to the floor, shattered and broken. I could do it. It would hurt, it would feel like my life had ended, but I wouldn’t die. I can’t.

No, the only death for me comes in the form of life and I am too selfish, too scared, to make that sacrifice.

Stretching my wings out wide I stand on the ledge, feeling the familiar heat of my muscles straining under their bulk. In the air I am weightless and my wings the source of power keeping me in the sky. On the ground they are a burden, gravity pulling them down. Still, they are the only blessing in my shit-filled existence. The trade-off for taking life is the ability to fly. A special kind of freedom that comes with a high price.

Behind me the sound of a door opens, and I twist on my feet, paying no heed to my precarious position.

“Wait.”

Standing by the open door, her white blonde hair lashing against her ivory skin from the wind, is Fern. She falters, her fingers gripping the door frame as she stares at me with eyes that cut right to the marrow, to the blood in my bones.

There is something about her, something alluring, something I must not, will not, give in to.

I need to fly away from her.

Behind me, my wings flap gently, preparing for take-off.

Fern’s eyes flick to them. She shakes her head, disbelieving what she is seeing.

“I cannot stay,” I say, before pinching my mouth shut.

Do not speak to her, you fool.

She has seen too much already. She shouldn’t have heard me, let alone seen me. It is time to go. I look up at the sky, bending my knees as my thigh muscles tense in anticipation.

“Please, wait. I want to talk to you.”

My head snaps down. Our eyes meet, her grey to my blue. Her warmth to my ice. She holds out her hand as though to reach for me. The thought of her touch has my thoughts spiralling to dark places. Places I haven’t allowed myself to go to for a very long time. My touch would mean her death.

No.

I shake my head, grit my jaw and push upwards into the sky.

Below me, her cry is carried across the wind.

“Come back. I need to know who you are…”

I do not return, choosing instead to fly away from salvation and towards the Shadowlands and death.