A Shadow of Light

by Bella Forrest

  As I lay down on the bed, my heart broke when he climbed on top of me and began gently undoing the laces on the bodice of my gown. As he did what he came there to do, I tried to shut my mind off what was happening. I tried to think of him as someone other than the young man who enamored me over the past weeks, but I couldn’t. Yuri was just like every other man: out to use women like me.

  When he was done, his weight fell atop me and without asking me, he removed the mask. I didn’t have the will to resist. At that point, I didn’t care anymore if he saw me for what I was, because I saw him for what he was too.

  When our eyes met, I could barely recognize him through the blur of my own tears. Despite the haziness, however, I could still make out the shock in his eyes upon realizing who it was that he just laid with.

  “It’s you…” he managed to say as he got off me and pulled his clothes back on in a hurry.

  I tried to show him that I was strong, that my heart wasn’t breaking in two at what had just occurred between us, but my resolve was crumbling. I sat up and took my place on the edge of the bed, trying not to cry as I pulled my dress back on. I wanted to get out of that room as quickly as possible, but found that I was shaking so badly, I could barely get the dress on.

  His face softened as he watched me struggle. I couldn’t decipher the expression on his face.

  Is he disgusted by me? Does he think less of me now than he did before?

  “Stop,” he ordered me after I failed once again to get my arms through the sleeves of the dress.

  By pure instinct, I heeded to his command. That was the training the Duke had put me through. Every order was followed immediately and without question. I dropped my arms to my sides, allowing the top of the dress to fall over the bunched skirt of the outfit.

  Yuri approached me and held my arms, coaxing me to stand up. Afraid that the skirt would fall to the ground and once again expose me completely to him, I hung on to the dress, holding it just below my waist as I let him study me.

  I didn’t dare look at his face as he perused me, but I sensed it when he swallowed hard. “Why do you have so many bruises?”

  Why does it matter? As usual, I didn’t respond. In my book, he didn’t deserve a response. Not after he had just used me.

  “Who did this to you? Is this why I can’t walk with you anymore? Is this why you wouldn’t accept even the smallest of gifts from me?”

  I hated his questions. I didn’t want to have to answer them. After all, what was the point? I was fully exposed to him now. The charade we had was over. “Is there anything else you would have me do for you?”

  “Yes. Answer my questions and tell me your name.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both.”

  Yuri frowned at me and the silence was so long and deafening, I finally managed to look up at him. I was surprised by what I saw there, because what I saw was something I never saw from the Duke or from any man who’s had me before. Guilt. I saw Yuri’s guilt.

  “I’m so sorry,” he told me.

  I couldn’t fight back the urge to scoff at him. “You’re sorry? Would you have been sorry if you had never seen who was behind the mask?”

  He gulped. “I was sorry even while I was…while we were… This is wrong. I never should’ve gone along with this.”

  “Then why did you?” Why does anyone? Do they have any idea how much ruin they bring to us?

  He didn’t respond. Instead, he lifted the bodice of my gown over my body and began lacing it up. “This time, I really do understand,” he said. “Nothing has changed. In my eyes, you’re still the beautiful woman in the woods, the same one I wouldn’t mind taking a walk with every day for the rest of my life, the same one who enamored me from the first moment I laid my eyes on her.”

  He kissed my lips—the most tender and precious kiss I’d ever experienced.

  “I’m sorry I did this to you. I’m sorry you have to go through this, but know that I will spend my whole life making it up to you. I swear it.”

  He was true to his word. I don’t think Yuri ever forgave himself for sleeping with me that night. In fact, even when I made advances on him over the past centuries, he never did quite respond.

  He was the one who turned me into a vampire. He did it so I could protect myself from the Duke. Yuri was the one who always looked after me and protected me for hundreds of years.

  I hated it when he was with any other woman aside from me and I knew that he hated it whenever I was with any other man aside from him, but that was the way it’d always been with Yuri. We couldn’t stand being apart, but somehow, we both knew that we couldn’t be together either. I asked him once why that was and his blunt answer was enough to give clarity to our situation: “I want to be with you, Claudia. I think you know that, but I don’t think you’ll ever enjoy us being together until you get that sixteen-year-old victim out of you.”

  That was the day I realized that Yuri saw right through me. I knew that he didn’t care about my past, that he would accept me if only I could accept myself. He also knew that I would always find it difficult to ever forgive him for sleeping with me that night. Until I was ready, until I could let go of my past, we both knew that we could never really be together.

  Leaving The Shade, that’s exactly what happened to me: I realized that the past really didn’t matter, that I’d been wasting my immortality being so caught up in avenging my past against someone I had already ended. I was punishing both Yuri and myself for a past neither of us could ever change.

  What I would do to take it all back and do things differently…

  My thoughts were interrupted when the door creaked open and Sofia emerged. I hadn’t heard from Sofia since she had told me that she was going to escape.

  “Sofia!” I jumped out of the bed to greet her. “Were you able to do it? Were you able to find a way to escape to The Shade? And now you’ve come back for me?”

  She shook her head and gave me a soft smile. “I got caught. You really can’t trust some people.”

  My heart sank. I breathed out a sigh and shrugged. “I guess this is it then? I deserve this fate. My fault for being so stupid all these years.”

  I couldn’t have predicted what Sofia was going to say next in a million years, but when she said it, it was music to my ears.

  “No, Claudia. We’re going back to The Shade.”

  Chapter 34: Ingrid

  My daughter was a relentless plague I couldn’t seem to get rid of. Her words cut like a knife and kept cutting even as they circled my mind over and over and over again.

  You might be surprised at how powerful a force love is, Mother.

  Mother. She called me mother. She told me she loved me. Naïve young woman. I scoffed even as I sat on that wretched cot inside that wretched hunter dungeon, lamenting my humanity. However, as much as I hated to admit it, I could call her naïve and innocent as much as I wanted, but deep inside, I knew the truth. She was stronger in spirit and more powerful in her love and kindness than I could ever be. Sofia was everything I was not, everything I wished I could be. Perhaps that was why I loathed her so much.

  I couldn’t understand how she could be so strong and powerful even clothed in her frail humanity. When I realized what Aiden had done, that he had exacted the ultimate punishment upon me by turning me back into a human being, it tore me apart. It felt like losing everything that had made me who I was. I lashed out. When Sofia visited me, she came as a wave of calm in the storm I was brewing up. I took one look at her—beautiful and brave—and knew that there was something deeply wrong with me for envying her instead of being proud of her.

  I was still musing over her words when Aiden showed up, messing with my conflicted emotions even more.

  “How could you do this to me?” I glared at him.

  He just stared as he stepped in. The bars behind him shut closed and we were left alone.

  I tried to hold my glare at him as he stared right
back. I knew, however, that it was a battle of wills I couldn’t win. I shuddered as I looked into his green eyes, butterflies fluttering in my stomach—a sensation I hadn’t felt since I turned into a vampire. I couldn’t help but break the stare as I bowed my head, my eyes downcast. “What do you want from me, Aiden?”

  “Can you never be Camilla again?”

  “Isn’t that what you’ve turned me into? Am I not once again human? Weak and vulnerable to your every advance? Pining for you? Unworthy of you?”

  “Is that what you felt all those years we were together, Camilla? That you were unworthy? That you were weak?”

  I didn’t respond. I couldn’t believe my ears. How could he not know the answers to the questions he was spouting out? How could he not know that that was exactly how I had felt? More than that, I couldn’t believe that he had actually called me by that name again. Camilla. I couldn’t understand it, but my heart leaped at the sound of him saying that name again.

  “I never saw you that way. You were vibrant and strong-willed and adventurous. You were sweet and kind. You were beautiful in every way as Camilla Claremont, and then you became Ingrid Maslen and now, look at you…”

  His words stung. All these years, I looked down on the person that I was. To be told that he found that person beautiful was daunting to me. How on earth could he have seen her as beautiful?

  “What do you want from me, Aiden?” I asked him, hoping to end the confrontation as soon as possible. “I’m human now. Shouldn’t I be released from this prison by now? Or do you torment and brainwash humans too?”

  Aiden shook his head slowly. “What do I want from you? I just wanted you to know that what you wanted—Sofia ultimately belonging to your beloved lord, Borys…it’s not going to happen. We’re about to turn Derek Novak into a human being—just like you—and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  I was surprised by the effect those words had on me. I was made livid by the idea, reinforcing that a part of Ingrid Maslen still remained with me. “She belongs with Borys Maslen!” I screamed at him.

  Sadness unlike anything I had ever seen before filled his eyes. “I wish you wouldn’t say that. I guess human or not, you will always be Ingrid Maslen. Goodbye.”

  Left to myself, I felt the hopelessness of my defeat. It felt like Sofia had won over me. She took everything from me. I had nothing left. Nothing. Sofia, on the other hand, was about to get everything she had ever wanted. It didn’t seem fair, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  Why live to see her celebrating her triumph over me?

  Desperate, I took a shard of glass from the ground, left over from a glass of water I’d thrown against the wall. I tried to recall the last time I had felt pain as a human. Horrible memories I had long buried flashed through my mind, reminding me how cruel humans can be, how coldhearted and merciless they were. I don’t want to be among them. I slashed the glass over my wrist, wincing at the pain.

  I waited, as I watched the blood gush out of my wrist. I was expecting to immediately sense the call of death upon me, but nothing happened. The blood just kept gushing out and trickling onto the ground until to my shock, the gash on my wrist slowly began to close.

  I stared at my wrist in horror. What’s going on? I slashed the knife through my skin again—this time a deeper, more lethal gash. Within minutes, the same thing happened.

  I had no idea what was going on, but one thing seemed certainly true despite what they had done to me: I was still immortal.

  Chapter 35: Derek

  I did not know how it had happened or who instigated the news, but word of the hunters coming to the island spread like wildfire. As was expected, the news came with several degrees of mixed reactions—mostly negative. The vampires who remained neutral were beginning to question my sanity. Those who were loyal, on the other hand, did not find it hard to voice out their concerns on the matter. While some were quick to assure me that they had my support, I knew that their trust in me was wavering.

  The arrival of the hunters seemed to spark hope of escape from The Shade from some of the Naturals. Gavin and Ian were trying to take my side in explaining to them that hunters didn’t exactly see humans taken captives by vampires as citizens of the outside world worth saving. They were made examples of, the human slaves of The Oasis, when they were massacred right along with their vampire lords. This knowledge didn’t serve well to quell the hopes of those who would rather cling to the unknown brought about by the hunters rather than to the chaos they were so accustomed to at The Shade.

  I myself was questioning my own judgment, but I knew Sofia, and I knew that she would not suggest something she believed could ever bring The Shade harm. Unless of course they’d gotten to her somehow and turned her against me…

  “Am I making the right decision?” I asked Corrine, after having found my way to her home at The Shade—The Sanctuary.

  She shrugged as she stared at me warily. We both knew that my coming to her for advice or any kind of conversation was completely out of my character. Still, she gave me a piece of her mind. “Well, I think you’re doing what you need to do in order to get Sofia back here. That’s what’s important—that she gets back here.”

  “Is it really possible that there’s a cure?” I asked the witch. “You know these things.”

  She paused, seeming to access a distant memory as she wrinkled her nose in thought. “There were attempts to find a cure before, but I haven’t heard of any successful ones that actually turned vampires back to humans. I wouldn’t even really call it a ‘cure.’ Vampirism, as we know it, is a curse, not a disease.”

  “I don’t think Sofia would propose something this big unless she believes it will work.”

  “I don’t doubt Sofia.” Corrine nodded. “I’m curious too.”

  “Perhaps it has something to do with her being the immune…” My eyes sparked with interest. “Maybe she has somehow become the antidote.”

  “The immune?” Corrine narrowed her eyes at me and I realized that since my arrival at The Shade, I haven’t actually told anyone about Sofia being immune to being turned into a vampire.

  “Claudia tried to turn Sofia. And at her request, back at hunter territory, so did I… She didn’t turn.”

  Corrine’s brows furrowed with confusion. “I didn’t think… Oh wow…”

  “What?”

  “Well, I thought it was a myth—that there are immunes. Somehow—and no one knows exactly how it happens—immunes survive the three days that follow after being bitten. Legend says that if the immune doesn’t die or turn in those three days, they disappear at some point. Or they go crazy. It’s because they’re still human, but their senses and emotions are heightened like that of a vampire’s. Their human mind is unable to cope with this and they snap… I didn’t think it was true. My mother always told that story to me like it was an old wives’ tale or something…”

  “Maybe that’s why Sofia was exhibiting signs of that psychological disorder you diagnosed her with…” I mused. “What was that again? LLI?”

  “Low Latent Inhibition.” Corrine nodded.

  “Wait. You mean there are more out there like Sofia?”

  “If the legend is true, yes, but so far, Sofia’s the only one I’ve actually ever heard of.”

  I frowned, suddenly remembering one insane person at The Shade. “Maybe there isn’t just her…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t Felix want to turn Anna before? That’s what I was told…”

  Corrine’s brown eyes narrowed. “He wanted to, yes, but there’s no indication that he ever did try to turn her. That’s what was so surprising about it. He was so in love with her one minute, wanting to turn her and be with her forever and then suddenly, he just abandoned her. When he left her at The Catacombs, she was already insane.”

  “What if he actually did try to turn her? Perhaps he really did want to be with her and he tried to turn her into a vampire, and she didn’t turn.”

&nb
sp; “You think Anna is an immune too?”

  “Don’t you think it’s possible?”

  The witch’s eyes lit up. “It does seem like a possibility. It could even explain why she went crazy. If you’re right about Sofia exhibiting the signs of LLI because of the fact that she wasn’t turned, perhaps Anna’s brain wasn’t able to handle it the way Sofia was able to. Still, the only person who could really verify that is Felix.” Corrine shrugged. “He would be the only one who would know if he had ever tried to turn her. Heaven knows we can’t get any trustworthy information from Anna.”

  I grimaced, remembering why I was so distraught in the first place. Right before I found myself meandering toward The Sanctuary, I was to meet with Felix and his men for negotiations with the humans. I had no idea how Eli and Yuri managed to find Felix—much less convince the man to have a talk with me, but they had somehow managed to do it and I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the meeting—one that, for some reason, they had decided to hold at the port—apparently Felix’s “neutral ground.”

  “Wish me luck,” I told Corrine before leaving for the port. A couple minutes later, I was fighting to hold myself back from ripping several hearts out. All of them. They’re going to drive me insane. I was summoning every ounce of self-control I still had left in me to not lash out at the people surrounding me, but I kept my anger in—mostly by letting everything they were saying go in one ear and out the other.

  “I’m not going to work with the humans,” Felix repeated, shaking his head adamantly.

  “It’s not like we want to work with you,” Ian shot back.

  “You’re here to work for me, boy, not with me.” Felix then glared at me. “See what you’ve done? You’ve let these weaklings entertain the delusion that they are somehow our equals.”

  “This island will crumble without us.” Ian was now on his feet, his nostrils flaring as he boldly stood up against a creature that could easily break his neck in two.