Page 37 of Worse Fates

“Vidar.”

I find him naked in an empty clawfoot bath, staring blankly. Moonlight peaks through the heavy clouds, bathing him in a silvery glow.

“How long has apathy been with me?” he asks, a shake of emotion somewhere inside his scratched throat.

“Eight years.”

Eyelids slowly cover his bloodshot eyes as a sigh, heavy enough to bring me to my knees, escapes his rattling lungs. “I had no idea.”

I lean against the wall, watching my Maker.

He had no mirrors in the mansion, the days and weeks and months slipping past his fingers without notice. Gone was the Norse warrior vampire; he tempted women with ease and norival could out fight, or out drink, him. After so long, seeing his bone-thin face must have been a shock. Did he even recognise his own reflection?

“Did you kill Rurik?” Vidar asks quietly.

Walking towards the small, frosted, window, my shoes tap against the tiles. “Rurik lives, as does my mate.”

Vidar’s head drops back, eyelids opening as another sigh rattles from him. I don’t bother hiding my shock; Vidar hasn’t cared for any of his children for so long.

Is my Maker, friend and father and companion through these long centuries, returning?

“So you aren’t here to kill me. Why the late night visit, then?” He glances my way. “Surely you should have your pretty mate in your arms.”

Running my fingers across the ghastly pink wallpaper, patterned with cabbages, of all things, I wonder briefly where Ramy acquired the house. “He does not want me.”

A frown pulls Vidar’s skin uncomfortably tight. “He’s your soulmate.”

“‘A factory-made copy’ were his words.” I try for sarcastic but end up sounding sad and very tired. “He thinks I can’t love him, because I loved the others.”

“He doesn’t feel the connection?”

“He does, and deeply.” I remember the way he clung to me when we first met, desperate for my touch as I was desperate for his. I explain the rest of the events from the past few days to my Maker, then breathe out as I add, “Then we fought tonight and it was… ugly.”

A dusty chuckle leaves Vidar, a sound like he’s clearing his throat of cobwebs. “I can’t imagine you fighting with your mates. Good for him.”

Stunned, I reply, “Good for him?”

Vidar shrugs, a spark of light glinting in his pale grey eyes. “You’ve finally got someone with a backbone, I like it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You lose yourself in your mates, Luc. The relationship becomes more about them than you.” He pins me with a stare strong enough that for a moment, it’s like having the old warrior back in the room with me. “You loved them, of course. But why did they love you?”

I push myself up, shaking my head. “They deserved to be happy, they were only here for a short time.”

“And whose fault was that?”

My back goes rigid. “I did not, and I will not, risk any of them dying an agonising death simply because—”

Vidar raises an eyebrow. “Because?”

My fist slams against the ugly wallpaper. “...Because the weight of immortality has been getting heavier and heavier…”

In the following silence, after revealing my not-so-secret, wind whistles through the house’s old bones. An owl hoots somewhere far away and a full cloud drifts in front of the moon; leaving us in darkness.

“You always lost them, Luc,” Vidar tells me, gentler than I would’ve expected. “Watching your brother's painful death was awful, but that didn’t mean your mates would’ve died, too. You suffered for centuries, when you could’ve been happy.”

“I was happy with each one,” I whisper, head bowed.