Page 88 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

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Salt Lake City, January 20, 2025

My Little Cabbage,

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

Lord Byron wrote that. If you know the poem, or if you don’t, don’t bother with the rest. This is the part that matters, the part I hold in my heart and whisper to myself today, staring down at the valley that holds you, wishing I were the one holding you.

But you do walk in beauty. You’re all that’s best of dark and bright. The rest of the poem goes on to glorify innocence, but we both know innocence is wielded as a weapon against young women. A whip to wound us, ties to bind us. A commodity to be traded and sold. By the time we know what innocence truly is, it’s been taken from us and we’re shamed for its absence.

You’re not innocent, and I’m sorry for everything that hurt you, but I’m so glad you’ve walked in enough darkness that your eyes adjusted. That you could see the subtle creeping moonlight, frozen under your gaze. That you could pin it in place long enough to give it form once more, to breathe life into the memory of the girl I’d lost long ago.

I’m sure you’ll wonder, about that first moment. If I was following you. If there was a reason I was there at exactly the right time, if there was a motive behind saving you outside the train station. Because in your life—in my life—no one does anything without a motive.

I want you to know, you must know:

There was no reason. I was there to find myself, and I found you on the way.

It was luck, or fate, or the universe at last allowing us both a tiny triumph. I saw a beautiful woman. I wondered what made her eyebrows draw low like that, what she would look like if she were laughing. And then I saw her look left instead of right, and I knew I could save her.

All my countless years wandering, I fed on lives, I envied lives, I ended lives, but I think you’re the first life I ever truly saved.

Even before I realized it, even before I knew you, you were changing me. And I am forever changed. Forever grateful for a universe with a sense of humor, determined to prove I could still be surprised. Forever yours, because as you said, forever is composed of nows. I’m yours now, I’ve been yours since that very first now, and that’s an infinite collection of nows you can hold on to. Time isn’t real, but moments are.

Don’t forget.

If my heart beat, it would beat your name.

Lucy