by Kallysten
He stood from the bed, ready to show her out, but couldn’t help groaning as the movement jostled his arm. Immediately, her eyes widened and she looked him over, her gaze stopping at his arm where blood made his jacket and shirt adhere to his wound. On the black leather, the blood barely showed.
“You’re hurt.” Her hand rose toward his arm, hesitating before she reached it. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing. You need to go now.”
He blinked, taken aback, when she turned away and left the room. He wouldn’t have thought it would be that easy. And indeed, it wasn’t. When he followed her out, he found her in the small bathroom, rummaging beneath the sink for the standard-issue first aid kit.
“Ariadne,” he started, but she interrupted him before he could say anything more.
“Take off your shirt and jacket.”
His protests that he was fine didn’t help in the slightest. When he didn’t do as she asked, she simply stepped forward and took matters into her own hands, pushing at the collar of his jacket. He tried to evade her, but the wall behind him stopped him. He caught her wrist.
“Stop that. I don’t need your help.”
“Maybe not, but you want me out of here. Let me look at that wound and I’ll leave.”
Too tired to argue anymore, Wilhelm gave up. The sooner she left, the easier it would be. He shrugged out of his jacket, then pulled off his shirt, wincing when the fabric pulled at the edges of his wound where the blood had started to dry. When he looked at her, Ariadne’s gaze was not directed at his wound, but at his chest instead. He watched, a little bemused, as she bit down on her bottom lip. When she noticed he was watching her, she blushed, her cheeks suddenly bright red, and cleared her throat before turning away to grab a wet washcloth.
Trying to ignore the way her heart was beating faster suddenly, Wilhelm let her do as she pleased. She cleaned the bloody slash, muttering the whole while that stitches would have been a good idea, then disinfected it before starting to wrap a bandage around his arm. Wilhelm was aware that soldiers of the Guard were trained into giving first aid; he had never known until that moment that gentleness was part of the curriculum.
Her touch was careful, almost delicate. It had been a long time since anyone had touched him like this. It had been a long time since anyone had touched him at all. With each of her movements, the urge to touch back rose in him, to brush his fingers to her hand or cheek.
He remembered a child whose hand he had held, and suddenly wondered when he had stopped seeing that lost child when he looked at Ariadne, and when he had started seeing this strong woman instead. Years earlier, her teenager’s antics had amused him, but even then they had announced her future strength. A strength that would have complimented his own so well if he hadn’t pushed her into someone else’s arms.
He looked from her hands to her face. She was looking straight at him. Something passed between them, something Wilhelm couldn’t have described or explained, but something that he knew she felt too when her hands stilled on his arm. All of a sudden, years of making sure Ariadne would be safe had a new meaning as the world shifted just enough to make everything clear.
Ariadne blinked and the moment ended, but it wasn’t over. She leaned in and pressed her lips to his in a kiss that was warmth and sugar. A kiss that was sunlight and life itself. A kiss that was everything Wilhelm could not afford to want.
As gently as he could, he broke away and steeled himself when her eyelids fluttered in confusion.
“You should go, Aria,” he said very low, not trusting his voice to remain steady if he tried to speak any louder.
To his surprise, she left, without a word, without a look back.
* * * *
You know who was surprised? I was.
I never intended to kiss him. I never imagined I’d feel something if I did.
But I did feel something. Something I couldn’t describe either back then, something I still can’t explain today. Something I had never felt until that day, and that I never felt since, except with Will.
I was also pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who had been shaken by that kiss. Will could deny it all he wanted; I knew now what was going on. I knew the reason for years of protection. I knew whom he had been talking about when saying that vampires could love. I knew the reason for the roses.
There was just one problem. Lorenzo.
I had told Lorenzo I loved him, and I meant that. My feelings for him hadn’t changed. Nonetheless, they paled in comparison to one simple kiss.
I couldn’t go back to my apartment—to Lorenzo—with my heart still beating too fast and too wildly. I couldn’t go back to him until I understood what was going on.
The sun was just rising when I walked outside. At this hour, there wasn’t anyone in sight. The air was fresh, cool; exactly what I needed to clear my head. Except that when I started walking around, I could smell their scent, carried by the soft wind: the roses from the Remembrance Wall. I followed the scent of fading roses to the lists of my fallen comrades, and stared at the names without really seeing them for a while. Too much was going on in my head for me to know what to think or feel. And as time passed, as I walked through Newhaven, painful step after painful step, the stitches on my abdomen pulling more and more, it didn’t get any better. Nothing made sense anymore.
It was midmorning when I returned home. I was exhausted. All I wanted was to slide into bed next to Lorenzo and pretend that nothing had happened. But I couldn’t do that, because Lorenzo wasn’t in bed. When I unlocked the door as quietly as I could, he was there in an instant, pulling me in and drawing me into his arms, holding me so close that I gasped at a twinge of pain. He didn’t let go.
“Don’t leave me. Please, Aria, say you won’t leave.”
His words were a broken whisper against my neck. Before I knew it, almost before I understood what I was saying, I was promising that I wouldn’t leave him. Not ever.
I held on to that promise. He’s the one who left. Four years passed before he did, though. Four years of being near Will almost every night, of feeling his eyes on me, of trying not to look at him in return. Four years of pretending, from both of us, that nothing had passed between us, that nothing had changed when everything had.
Chapter 9
“Let’s put everyone on high alert tonight again. No R&R permissions, all Guards including reserve ready to join the walls if needed until midnight.”
On the other side of the conference table, Bergsen didn’t react in any way to Wilhelm’s suggestion. Leaning back in his armchair, he turned to the two soldiers sitting on his left on the long side of the table and merely raised an eyebrow, inviting them to comment.
“The Code Red has been in effect for four nights.” As usual, it was Carter who spoke first. She had a few years more experience than her counterpart, although they shared the same rank. “If we declare it yet again and no attack comes, morale will continue to decrease. I think we should lower it to Code Yellow.”
By her side, Stevenson kept his eyes on the notes in front of him for a few more seconds, tapping a pencil against the table the entire time. The sound seemed louder than it really was in the large conference room, empty save for the four of them. They had tried meeting in Bergsen’s office at first, but it was too small for a four-way discussion that sometimes lasted five or six hours. When it had been just the two of them, Wilhelm and Bergsen had rarely taken more than two hours to make the same kind of decisions that were on the table today, but then the entire point of having Carter and Stevenson there was to train them so that when the time came, they would be able to do their job.
“There haven’t been any demons at the walls for six nights now,” Stevenson said at last, his voice slow and steady.
“My point exactly,” Carter jumped in. “It’s unlikely—”
“Major, please, let Major Stevenson finish.”
She pinched her lips tight and inclined her head. Stevenson picked up where he had left off as though h
e hadn’t noticed the interruption.
“The last time a situation like this happened was seventeen years ago. When they finally attacked after eight days, they came in such numbers that they breached the walls and went as far as Ninth Street.”
“We fought them all night long,” Bergsen continued grimly when Stevenson stopped. “And by morning, the sky was covered enough that they didn’t retreat as we expected them to, so we had to continue the fight without the vampires. It was a butcher field.”
“But it hasn’t happened for seventeen years,” Carter argued, “so we don’t know that it will now.”
“We don’t know that it won’t, either,” Wilhelm shot back. He didn’t like the woman; she had been Bergsen’s choice, and Wilhelm had never agreed with it. “Are you ready to take that chance?”
She held his challenging gaze—for three seconds—before lowering her eyes.
“Major Carter does have a point about morale, though,” Bergsen intervened. “See what the kitchen can do on such short notice to make something special. Then announce the Code Red is extended.”
Carter and Stevenson seemed startled to be dismissed so early, and Wilhelm was as surprised as they were. There was still a lot to discuss. They stood without a word however, and saluted before leaving the room.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Bergsen asked after a few moments. His fingers were drumming lightly on the armrest of his chair. “She was just giving an opinion, which is what we’ve asked them to do, so what was the point in chewing her out like that?”
Wilhelm blinked, surprised. He hadn’t realized that he had, indeed, been past the point of rudeness with Carter, but now that Bergsen had pointed it out, he couldn’t deny it.
“I’ll apologize to her. I guess I was a little distracted.”
“Distracted, huh? The same kind of distracted that sent you to the emergency room five times in the past seven weeks? And it would probably have been more if we hadn’t had these few quiet nights. You’re not trying to get yourself killed, are you?”
Wilhelm scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then what’s going on, my friend? If you need time off, we can give you that. God knows that a couple weeks in bed did wonders for me.”
There was an edge of derision to his words. He had enjoyed his stay in the hospital no more than Wilhelm would have.
“It won’t be necessary.”
Bergsen didn’t miss a beat. “Is it about the girl?”
The question was the last thing Wilhelm would have expected. He tensed. “What girl?”
“The one who showed up here, years ago, and wouldn’t leave until you talked to her. The one you stuck into a desk job the day she graduated. The one every group leader we have says we should promote and you’ve tried to convince me isn’t leadership material. The one you asked a nurse to tell you about when she was in the hospital. That girl.”
Closing his eyes, Wilhelm leaned back into his chair. “Aria,” he murmured. “Her name is Aria.”
“So, it is about her, then.”
Wilhelm remained silent as he thought. He had known Bergsen for longer than anyone else in the city, possibly longer than anyone still alive on the planet. He was the closest thing Wilhelm had to a friend. “Yes. It’s about Aria.”
Bergsen stood and walked to the cabinet on one side of the conference room. It contained plans, maps, reports about past battles, and—at the back of the cabinet, behind everything else—two glasses and a bottle that was as old as Bergsen. He brought them to the table and poured a finger in each glass.
“I thought that was off the menu for you,” Wilhelm commented as he accepted a drink.
Bergsen raised an eyebrow. “Do you plan to tell Laurie?”
“No.”
“What she doesn’t know can’t hurt me. And speaking of Laurie… She has been telling me for years that you needed a woman in your life.” He paused to take a sip of his drink and grimaced lightly. “Please tell me you waited until that child was of age.”
Glaring, Wilhelm finished the glass in one long gulp.
“Don’t be crass. I haven’t touched her. Nor do I plan to.”
“That explains the bad moods.”
Wilhelm continued to glare and reached for the bottle to help himself again, this time more generously. “What are you implying?” he grunted. “I’m not a lovesick teenager.”
After barely wetting his lips from his drink, Bergsen laughed quietly. “When’s the last time you were in love?”
The glass made a soft clinking noise when Wilhelm set it on the table again, his movements very slow and deliberate. “Who said anything about love?”
“You’re over three centuries old, Will. I hope you wouldn’t put yourself in such a state if all you needed was to get laid.”
Said so bluntly, the words were like a slap. Wilhelm was too stunned to react.
“Why don’t you go to her?” Bergsen insisted.
The confession was almost shameful to make. “She has a boyfriend.”
“Isn’t she worth fighting for?”
Wilhelm could have sworn Bergsen was rolling his eyes at him and he felt slightly offended. “I’ve been fighting for her every night for more than ten years.”
“Then get her. Or try to. At the very least, you’ll be able to tell yourself you tried.”
The dry retort on Wilhelm’s tongue was never voiced. Instead, he looked at Bergsen with some resentful surprise. “You know, usually I like it when you make sense.”
Once more, Bergsen laughed. This time, Wilhelm laughed with him.
* * * *
Sometimes, Wilhelm hated to be right.
The massive scale attack he had predicted had finally happened, and although the walls hadn’t been breached yet, every single member of the Guard was there and fighting. Wilhelm was only concerned about one of them, however. On the extended battlefield, he hadn’t seen her for hours, but every move he made was for her, to go back to her, and to finally tell her.
After his talk with Bergsen, he had decided that he had to at least try to talk to her. He wasn’t sure what he would say, but if she would only let him kiss her again, then he knew everything would be all right. What they had felt when they had kissed before was bound to be there again, and neither of them could deny its existence. He wouldn’t let her deny it the way she had let him. He didn’t know what would happen next—he had never felt this way for anyone—but he would figure it out. They would figure it out together. He was aware that he was avoiding thinking about Lorenzo, but he would cross that bridge when he got to it.
A long, strident note echoing over the battlefield made Wilhelm’s knees want to fold beneath him in relief. This was it. The demons were retreating. Newhaven would endure a little longer.
His relief was short lived, however. When he followed the ebb of fighters back inside the walls, one of the soldiers who were in charge of opening and closing the wounded doors caught his attention. At once, he knew something had happened to Aria. That was the only reason why the soldier would talk to him.
“How long ago?” he asked. “How bad?”
“Less than an hour. Pretty bad, I think.”
The medics gave Wilhelm dirty looks when he hopped into an ambulance, but they let him ride with them back to the hospital. He jumped out before the ambulance had come to a complete stop and ran, stopping only at the nurses’ desk to ask where Aria was. He was relieved when they gave him a room number and hurried away without listening to anything more. She couldn’t be hurt that badly, not when he had finally decided to tell her.
When Wilhelm entered the room, Lorenzo was there. Of course he was. Wilhelm would talk to him later about letting her get hurt yet again. Dismissing the man from his thoughts, he turned his attention to the bed and the pale woman lying in it.
He had to grab the door to hold himself upright, and only after a few seconds did he manage to step back and leave. There was no heartbeat in that room.
* * * *
The door just a few feet to Wilhelm’s right kept opening and closing with the flow of visitors, an incessant ballet to which he was all but oblivious.
At first, most were going in. Wounded humans who had realized that the small cut they had wanted to put a bandage on might need a few stitches after all. Friends, humans and vampires alike, who were coming to check on those soldiers who had been taken from the battlefield before the end of the battle. Parents called in to say goodbye to their loved ones, or to hold their hands and wish for the best.
Regular visiting hours wouldn’t start until ten in the morning, but nurses and hospital personnel had stopped trying long ago to keep visitors out of their ward after visiting hours on battle nights. All they asked them was to be quiet, and to keep their visits as short as possible.
Eventually, the stream reversed, and patients and visitors started leaving. Most were silent as they went, but the salt of tears was heavy in the air.
An overhang a few feet long protected the entrance of the hospital, but from where he sat, Wilhelm could still see the sky. The inky darkness lightened as he watched without really seeing, the blue coming from behind the hospital and spreading toward the horizon. It slowly turned from the color of a stormy sea to that of the purest mountain lake. Occasional clouds drifted through as light as foam, and just as ephemeral. At noon, the sky was so blindingly white that Wilhelm had to close his eyes. But behind his closed eyelids, the white persisted, shifting from one moment to the next until it took the form of a sheet drawn over a still body. Wilhelm jerked, his first movement since he had sat down on the concrete with his back to the hospital wall. When he opened his eyes again, the sun was drawing a thin line just beyond the edge of the overhang.
The line thickened as the sun started moving lower toward the horizon. Then it lengthened. Wilhelm kept his eyes on it, and to him the line barely seemed to move at all. Only when he blinked did the sunlight appear to jump forward. Jump toward him. It did so until there were only a couple yards left, and minutes were all that separated it from Wilhelm.