Page 88 of Red Ruin

“What? Why?” She stops hard, allowing me to catch up.

My mental fog clears as I bump into her back.

Salivating, I inhale her irresistible scent. “You’re bare under that skirt.”

“Whose fault is that?” she snaps.

“Mine, I hope?”

“Remy. Remington.” She whirls to pinch my jaw. “Duke Azrid. Why wouldn’t the Northern Legion send help? Isn’t this all your house’s territory?”

I cover her hands, relaxing into her touch. “Mmm.”

“Work with me here,” Iris murmurs, her magic sliding through my veins.

Her guidance slowly pieces together my memories, but I don’t want to remember so many lifetimes of blurred-together battles.

Her coolness brings back pasts I need to forget.

A recent nightmare stabs to the front.

Standing in the suffocating darkness of the Azrid crypt, I wear a child’s body for the last time. Faceless elders take turns touching my shoulders with bony hands.

Die well, Remington.

True rest has come.

“I was sent here to die,” I say calmly.

Her fingers freeze at my jaw. “What…does that mean?”

“The vampire bloodline can’t grant true immortality, but it allows us to be reborn.” As long as any shred of soul remains in the family crypt, we can regenerate our childhood body.

Waking to a closed coffin lid.

Again and again and again.

I lean into the comfort of her fingers. “I’ve been revived from death countless times over hundreds of years. Now the essence of my soul is depleted. As I can no longer be re-born, I was sent to the Farguard and tasked to die my final death the way a responsible Azrid does. Alone.”

Her heart quickens.

It’s worth living until now to feel her being moved.

“There are hundreds of transcendents assigned to the Farguard. The Northern Legion won’t abandon them, let alone the humans living in the border cities all through these mountains.”

Sweet Iris.

“Faervaine can no longer protect its fringes.” The imperial is failing in every one of my fractured memories. “The Farguard is the final resting place for the empire’s most unfavored. Petty criminals, scorned Guides, and Sentinels who offended the wrong officials.”

“Not everyone. Vhex is a?—”

“A duke?” I chuckle. “Ask him why his family sent him to the Farguard. Well. The family he hasn’t killed.”

Her blue eyes flick back and forth, rapidly processing.

“Am I talking to the real Remington right now?” she asks carefully.

“More or less.” I cast through my head and frown. I can only access scrambled pieces of the past. A fact here, a law there, a flash of my father stabbing my sister through the heart.