𝐈𝐥𝐥-𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 ✔️

46

I chuckle softly. He doesn't. My face then drops as I say, "I don't negotiate with terrorists."

"You've started World Wars. Are you saying that's not terrorism?" he questions.

I pause for a moment.

"Terrorism, or retribution?" I question.

I begin taking steps toward him. He shifts his weight from foot to foot anxiously, as do the vampires behind him. Once I'm only a few centimeters away from him, I say, "My answer is no."

I rip his heart out. The other vampires know that it is fight or die - so that's exactly what they do. They run at me, trying to kill me, I rip their hearts out, I do spells to burn them. The fire spreads to the house and the structure becomes covered in flames. 

One by one I kill the vampires. It's not hard. A vampire against a God, I would win every time. As the bodies drop, the flames continue to spread. Once the last body hits the grass, I look at the flames I know I must walk through to go get him.

The fire is hot against my skin as I enter. I'm not sure where to go, but a hallway to go downstairs seems like the best bet. I walk down the steps, the fire hasn't reached the basement yet. It was dark down here, hard to see, I crushed stones as I walked further.

"I've been waiting months for you, darling," I hear his voice.

And then I see him. Behind bars. Holding a flower. My eyebrows lowered as I thought about why it looked so familiar, and then I remembered why.

"You look even more beautiful now than centuries ago," he says.

"I wonder how I will look after I execute you?" I respond.

I grab the bars and tear them apart. They hit the floor and he now has enough room to get out. He struggles to push himself to his feet, I'd guess that he hadn't eaten in several months. 

"I'm sure still beautiful," he says. I roll my eyes.

I grab his arm and begin pulling him up the stairs. He asks me, "Did you hear my prayers?"

"No," I lie. "Actually, I did, I just chose to ignore them."

Adonis suddenly grabs me and pulls me out of the way as a part of the ceiling above me collapses where I had been standing. While I look at him, annoyed, he looks at me with a slight smile. 

"That's alright," he says. "I could pray to you now. Get down on my knees."

I drag him out of the burning house and do not speak until we're on the grass. I cross my arms and say sternly, "The next time you're on your knees will be when I execute you in front of everybody."

He doesn't look at me while I talk. Instead, his eyebrows are pulled together and he looks around the burning country. He questions, "Did you do this, Valeria?"

"And worse," I say without remorse.

His dark eyes move around my face as he looks confused. He asks quietly, "What happened to you? You aren't acting like yourself."

"Maybe you just don't know me that well," I respond quickly.

"I know everything about you, Valeria, my heart has belonged to you for centuries," he responds just as quickly. "Are they making you do this?"

"Nobody is making me do anything," I snap. But while it's me talking, it's not really me. It's a part of myself - it's her, who has taken over. She controls me now. Every action, every thought, it's all her. She exists more than I do now, and she was going to continue to fully take over until I was gone.

"Don't let him question you," she says.

"Valeria-" he says my name. I do a spell, it causes his eyes to shut, I am now stronger than a demon who was able to slaughter 200 angels at once. 

𓆩♡𓆪

A D O N I S 

I wake up in yet another cell. But this time it was different, this time I was being held by the woman I love to be killed the following day. 

She isn't herself. This is not Valeria. I don't know who this is, but it's not her. I'm unsure of how to get her back. My options are limited as I sit in this dark cell alone with nobody to speak to. 

"Kill her when she returns," I hear the voices I had been free of for a few months say.

"Fuck off," I mutter to myself. In the early stages, it was easy to resist. 

But I never really would be able to resist it. Right? I'd always get consumed by it. I'd always fail. Perhaps I should not fight this execution, death is better than living in a world where I cannot have her, death is better than living in a world where I cannot love her. I think back to when I had Selena infect me.

I clutched at the infected area. The pain came in waves. I thought of Valeria's face. I said quietly, "In another lifetime, I will be with her."

"There is no other lifetime, Adonis," Selena said to me. "Only this one."

And she was right. I sit in this cell, hearing voices to kill her while I await death, and I realize it. There is no way to end this. There was no way to be happy. 

And so, knowing I cannot have her, in the morning I would accept my death. 

Word Count: 1535