Page 21 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Chapter twenty

Bastien

H e knew she was coming. He’d seen her in his dreams. At first, he thought they were just shadows—echoes of the one he’d once tried to possess.

But night after night, she returned: holding a key, unlocking a metal box beneath harsh fluorescent lights, collapsing onto a floor, laughing over drinks on a patio, packing a suitcase in quiet urgency.

She wasn’t the same. Not the one he remembered. But she was a version of her, another woman he had tried, and failed, to make his own.

He knew where she was going.

And he was going there too.

This time, it would end differently.

He would finish it. End it.

And maybe then, the black thoughts that haunted his mind—and clawed at what remained of his soul—would finally fall silent.