Seeing his face reminded him of everything he’d lost. His true face, the one he wore without effort, was the face of a monster, not a man. His human face was just a mask. One he’d worn countless times in hundreds of years to lure the unsuspecting to their deaths. Neither face was worth looking at.

He closed his eyes, but the image of the savage he’d seen in the window was burned in his mind. Killer. Murderer. Beast. Butcher. Bourreau.

His thoughts had stirred the voices and for once, he let them rail. He couldn’t deny their words. Death had been his human trade. If only he could hide behind the hood now. He glanced at Chrysabelle. She had handed off the schematic to Mortalis and now covered herself with a blanket. She claimed to know his history but hadn’t said much about it. Did she think he’d gotten what he deserved?

In his human years, how many murderers had he dispatched? How many thieves? Rapists? Many from his time had believed the weight of the condemned’s vile deed passed over to the headsman upon death. No wonder the women of his village refused him. Despite the hood, they knew who he was. What he did. Even in the tavern, he’d sat alone, relegated to a tankard reserved solely for him so that no one else might have to drink from the same cup.

‘Are you not talking to me?’

Her question brought him out of his thoughts. ‘What? No. I didn’t hear the question.’

‘I asked you to tell me about the night you were turned.’ Her shoulders lifted slightly. ‘If you want to.’

‘That’s not a story you need to hear now.’

‘Your persuasion doesn’t work on me, remember?’ She pulled the blanket up to her chin. ‘Besides, we might not have a later after this trip.’

He focused on the weave of her blanket. If she wanted to know how he’d become a monster, so be it. ‘It was late, well after midnight, when I finally arrived home. I entered our cottage and went first to see … ’ He swallowed at the tightness in his throat. ‘I went first to see my daughter, Sofia. I always checked on her first.’

‘You had a child?’

‘Yes, I had a child.’ An angel. That’s what Sofia had been. Everything that was worthwhile in his world had narrowed to that tiny, giggling human being. The first time her soft hand had wrapped his pinkie finger, the fierceness of a thousand warriors had leaped up inside him with the need to protect her. And yet he’d watched her die.

She shook her head. ‘Never mind, go ahead, I won’t interrupt again.’

But he was too lost in the rising emotions of that night to care. The swell of fear, panic, helplessness, and grief would have suffocated him had he still been mortal. ‘A dark shape bent over Sofia’s bed. Too large to be Shaya. I grabbed him, pulled him away. Even in the moonlight coming through her window I could tell something was wrong with Sofia.’ His sweet angel had been as pale as the bed linens, her perfect rosebud mouth gray, her body limp.

‘The creature overpowered me. He bit me, started draining me. I cried out and the sound brought Shaya running in. The vampire left me and attacked her. I found enough strength to beat at him, but not enough to stop him. He finished with Shaya, then told me that one as strong as I would be perfect for his family. He tore at his own wrist and fed me his blood.’ The bitter memory ran down Mal’s throat. It was the last time the taste of blood had turned his stomach.

‘Power surged through me, and when I realized that he was saving me, I couldn’t stop drinking. I determined I would save Sofia and Shaya as well … ’ He’d thought only for them. For their salvation. ‘Too late, I tasted death in his veins. I had taken everything.

‘I mimicked what he’d done and fed Shaya from my own wrist. As soon as she revived, I scooped Sofia into my arms. There was still breath in her, still a trace of life. But then I couldn’t do it.’ He shook his head slowly and blinked hard, trying not to remember the exact moment the spark of life had died in his precious child’s eyes. Had she thought he’d let her die? Or had she understood what he’d saved her from? All the years he’d spent chained in that ruined dungeon couldn’t compare with the agony of not knowing.

‘I knew what I had become. I could not pass that curse to my own child. I could not damn my own flesh and blood.’ His innocent Sofia. Better she die and cross heaven’s threshold than live a cursed existence. Better he live with the guilt than she find out the monster he’d become. Or hate him for turning her into one too. ‘Shaya never let me forget I could have saved Sofia. Never.’

‘You made the right choice in a very hard decision.’

He snorted softly, hating himself for that night all over again. Aching to feel Sofia’s arms around him once more. To hear her soft ‘Papa’ whispered in his ear. To inhale the scent of grass and sun in her hair after she’d been playing outside. Pain wracked his chest. Let Chrysabelle think what she wanted, but truth was truth. ‘Don’t romanticize it. I let Sofia die.’

‘At least Sofia had a chance to know you and Shaya. Comarré never know their parents. Or any of their blood family, for that matter. You gave her that much.’

‘What about your aunt?’

‘She’s not really my aunt, that’s just what we call the older comarrés, but she is the comarré who was assigned to me when I was born. She’s about the closest thing to a mother I’ve had.’ Chrysabelle picked at the blanket’s stitching. ‘What happened after you realized what you’d been turned into?’