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"What do you mean?" Ashlynn asked slowly as she held Nyrielle’s hands tightly. "What do you mean that your body dies?"

"You can feel my heartbeat slowing when the sun rises each day," Nyrielle said, choosing the safest place to start from, hoping to ease Ashlynn into what would happen to her when dawn came.

"More than just slow, a vampire’s heartbeat during the day is so weak that it can barely be heard by normal ears, even with your head pressed to our chest."

"Our breathing stills as well," Nyrielle continued. Her hands grew restless as she spoke, and her thumbs began to make slow, gentle circles over Ashlynn’s fingers as she continued to speak. "You won’t notice a vampire’s chest rising or falling, and because our bodies have grown cold, even a mirror placed before our lips and nose wouldn’t show a hint of fog. "

"Marcel taught me sorcery once," Ashlynn said, looking deeply into Nyrielle’s eyes and seeing clouds of doubt and worry there, unlike any she had seen in her lover’s eyes before.

"He called the technique ’Death’s Deception.

’ It slows my heart and breathing until I resemble the dead. Is it, is it the same as that?"

"I know the spell you speak of," Nyrielle said. "What happens to vampires is... similar. Close enough that you understand, but what we experience goes further." Gently, Nyrielle guided Ashlynn’s hands to her soft cheeks before pulling away and looking at Ashlynn’s hands in hers.

Nyrielle’s flesh had always been pale, having never once known the caress of the sun’s rays since the day she was born. Her life had been one of eternal darkness that left her even more ghostly pale than her progeny, as if she’d been carved from the purest marble.

Ashlynn’s skin, on the other hand, though she was pale by human standards after spending much of her life hidden away indoors, was a delicate shade of light peach that carried the warmth and hue of both life and youth.

Her skin was smooth and supple, without the slightest sign of wrinkles or the drying of age.

Only a few calluses from years spent gardening and her recent lessons in swordwork marred the soft perfection of her tender flesh.

"Life is like water," Nyrielle said without taking her eyes off of their hands.

"Right now, I seem just as soft and full of life as you are, but when the sun rises, I will wrap what life my body contains around my soul to keep the abyss at bay until the sun sets. There won’t be enough left to sustain the soft skin you touch so freely.

When the sun rises, there will be little of me left but skin and bones," she said softly.

"Ah," Ashlynn said softly as the final piece of the puzzle fell into place and she realized once again that Nyrielle had the same concerns as many young women in love. Growing up, she’d heard that some young ladies were so worried of their husbands seeing them without their faces painted that they would rise before dawn, having their servants tend to their hair and makeup before their husbands even woke.

What Nyrielle was facing wasn’t as trivial as being seen without her face paint, but the root of it was at the same point.

For Nyrielle, when the sun rose, she would lose more than just the essence of life that gave her softness and beauty, she would also lose the strength that allowed her to stand tall as Ashlynn’s protector.

She would become weak and vulnerable, barely able to perceive the world around her, and little trace of the woman she had been for Ashlynn all these months would remain.

"I don’t know what it will feel like," Ashlynn said slowly as she reached up to place a hand under Nyrielle’s chin, lifting her lover’s gaze back up to meet hers. "To watch you wither away and ’die’ when the dawn comes. It might frighten me the first time I see it," she admitted.

She could say that she wouldn’t mind, that nothing would bother her, but the truth was that it might be as deeply unsettling as Nyrielle feared it would be for her. So instead of giving her lover empty platitudes, she gave her the purest truth she could.

"But the first time I see it won’t be the last time I see it," Ashlynn said, cupping Nyrielle’s face and gently wiping away the faintly pink tear that had begun to form in the corner of her lover’s eye.

"I will stay with you tonight, and tomorrow night, and many, many nights after that.

Because the person I love is in here," she said, resting her hand over Nyrielle’s thundering heart.

"And if you need to wrap every bit of life you have around your soul to resist the abyss when the sun rises," Ashlynn said. "Then you can wrap me around you as well, and I’ll fight alongside you. Just like I promised under the Ancient Oak the night we met. I’m here with you, for as long as we both live. "

"I don’t deserve you," Nyrielle said softly, biting her lower lip as she stared at Ashlynn with shining eyes.

"Humans have called me a monster for more than a hundred years and... I’ve been a monster in more ways than one," she said softly.

"Yet when I tell you about the monster I’ll become when the sun rises, the withered husk who is unable to die, you tell me that you love me still and you will not leave my side. "

"We both have monsters within us," Ashlynn said as she fought off intrusive thoughts of what she intended to do with Owain Lothian when she finally got her hands on him to focus on the woman in front of her.

"But I know the real you. The shy, nervous you who is afraid to reveal her vulnerable self to the woman she loves.

The tender, sentimental you who kept the crystal from the first lesson you gave me on sorcery, just so I could use it as a lamp when I spend the day with you. .."

"I know you," Ashlynn said, wrapping her arms around Nyrielle and drawing her close enough to press their foreheads together.

"And I know I have much, much more to learn about you. So don’t ever worry that there is some hidden part of you that I cannot accept," she said softly.

"Because even if there is a part of you that shocks or frightens me, I will learn to love that part too. "

"I was supposed to be the one comforting you, my darling," Nyrielle said softly. "I brought you here to protect you from your nightmares. So how is it that you are the one comforting me?"

"Because you understand me, my love," Ashlynn said, running her slender fingers through Nyrielle’s silky, raven hair.

"You know that I didn’t need your strength, wrapped in a suit of armor and wielding a sword to fight my nightmares.

I needed your softness, your openness, and your vulnerability so we could face the dark together. "

"I don’t need a champion who never falters or fails," Ashlynn said, brushing her lips against the softness of Nyrielle’s.

"I need a partner who struggles together with me. Who gives me a chance to be strong for you, even when you’re being strong for me.

And you do that for me in ways no one else in this world can," Ashlynn said as she crossed the final hairsbreadth of distance between them, kissing Nyrielle deeply and passionately until her heart raced and she felt breathless.

"There are still hours before dawn breaks," Nyrielle said with a mischievous gleam in her eyes as Ashlynn caught her breath. "How would my darling Ashlynn like to spend the time?"

"With nothing between us," Ashlynn said as her hands began to roam over the soft, satiny fabric of Nyrielle’s dress in search of the laces that kept her corset in place.

"From now until dawn breaks," she said in a voice that grew thick with desire.

"And even when dawn comes and you sweep me into a dream that’s safe from nightmares, I want nothing to come between us. .. now, or ever."