Page 82 of Nocte

“Tell me more.”

“You can see the brush strokes,” she says, my hand still clutched to her breast. Every breath she takes, I feel. In and out. Out and in. “You can tell what the artist was thinking, what he was feeling. You can see everything he was feeling.”

But how? I look at the canvas and see colorless, formless shapes. Then I blink. Look again. Faces appear in the blurred, painted mess. Shapes. Structures. People on a lawn of green. I think.

Fuck. I can’t remember how to interpret these strokes and blotches and colorful things.

Because Cassius made me forget how. I remember, I think… Art. Museum. I remember.

He made me forget. For the same reason he wants to erase her, he made me forget.

“Tell me more,” I snarl, commanding her.

In a soft, halting whisper, she complies. “You can see the sunlight there.” She points, her voice so fragile. I have to strain to hear her—me, with superior hearing. I have to strain to hear her. “If you look closely enough, it’s like you can feel it, on your skin. You can hear their laughter, their chattering. This is magic.”

Her eyes water again and more tears spill, glistening glass from this angle. My fangs ache and tease my lower lip painfully. I’d bite her to get her to stop. I’d bite her to make those tears continue to fall.

Beautiful things. No, ugly. No… beautiful. Raw and real. I see her tears, and I remember what it feels like to feel. Something other than hate and rage. Something softer than lust. What? What?

I look at her, and smell her scent, and it’s closer, just within my reach.

What? What?

“Tell me,” I beg of her. As if a vamryre could ever beg. But it’s my voice I hear echoing back.Tell me. Tell me.

My old master would relish in my desperation. He would draw it out. Make me dance for him. Perform for him. Kill for him.

There was a prize at the end of those murders. I think. I wanted something. I think. Something badly enough to kill for it. To kill and kill.

I didn’t want to. That’s the lie he made me accept. Believe. Internalize.

I didn’t want to kill for him. I never did.

My free hand is in her hair, my fae’s, tangling and coiling the strands together, creating a makeshift leash to tether her to me with. Prevent any escape. “Tell me more.”

She does. Gentle and soft, her voice is a salve on old wounds. Festering bleeding wounds that Cassius made me ignore.

Art means something to me. Meant something. Once…

I don’t care,the monster in me hisses.The past. Old mortal bastard. Don’t care!

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to remember.

So, I let her speak. I let her sing to me, my little fae bird.

And in her voice, I start to recall something fractured, fragile, and forgotten.

Humanity, I think.

Whatever it is, I hate it. Loathe it. Despise it in me.

Whatever it is, she has it in spades. If I can’t remember, I can drain it from her.

Drain her dry.

CHAPTER31

Niamh