Of Blood and Bone ₰ The Originals

Chapter Two | Crown of Thorns

       Suddenly feeling out of my own skin, I untangle my legs from the duvet and throw it behind me. I force myself to stand, gently pushing my toes apart to accommodate the presence of my slippers. Rubbing my arm to pat down the goosebumps, I stifle a yawn as I walk to my tiny kitchen. A blue-tinged neon-lit dispenser stands at its corner, and I brush my fingers against the rounded metallic surface, twisting it open. A gush of cold air flutters against my sweaty skin, and for a moment, I stand there with my eyes shut as I attempt to calm my body.

     You left all that behind. Time to start living again.

     I reach a hand to one of the blood bags and slip it out of its hook, bringing the nozzle to my mouth. As I ingest the beatific life giving fluid, my thoughts run ahead. How was I supposed to live? After living a liberty-fuelled year at New Orleans, I no longer craved the shadows as much as I did before. I did not want to hide anymore, and deny myself the luxuries of the vampire life like I had been sustaining myself over for the past few months here.

     Regardless, however, of my innermost desires for the life I temporarily lived in that cursed city, I knew that I had not healed entirely from its wicked manipulations and scars curving upon my mind, and my very soul. I had grown to love the people in that city and watched them perish only to watch in shock as they resurrected from the grips of death. Nightmares plagued my nights, scorching trials that demanded even more of my sanity. I did not know when the utter dementia would stop, when I would finally stop seeing the Cimmerian cloaked man rustling in the darkest shadows of my apartment. When I would stop the torrents of guilt swathing my entire being whenever I brought myself to recollect the exact shade of blue his eyes were.

     Over the course of these turbulent months, I had a lot of time to reflect in retrospect upon my actions in the extreme past. Whilst I did regret running away from the man I loved a thousand years ago, I only did so because of the emotional lacerations I had left upon those I cared for. But I knew that, although I had not necessarily done the right thing, I had made the best of my circumstances. I had not forgotten, from the subtle correlation of direction of our eyes, or the soft touches, or even that glorious kiss we had created a fire from that havocked our belief in each other, the nauseous flame that licked at my conscience whenever Nik and his family came back to us with blood crusting upon every naked exposure of skin, coating his clothes like a tertiary surface.

     When, as he would lean over the makeshift basin, wiping off the crimson paint, the water had bubbled and thickened with its equal consistency and colour. The lies that spun its way from his fraudulent tongue as he told me that they were hunting a particularly wild boar, my trachea tightening, heat claiming the sides of my eyes as I nodded at Nik, letting him believe that I believed that he was still the same person I loved.

     There was absolutely no possible manner in which, had I stayed, our relationship would have endured the strain under his tightening of the strings, like he was the puppeteer and I was his marionette that he could manipulate whenever he thought he would lose me. Through his hand, he had forced me into a life that I did not desire, and by taking my choices away from me, I was reminded ― suddenly ― of my parents, and their coercion of marrying Luke because I was a girl, and I would not particularly amount to much, except reproducing, cleaning and cooking. Whilst I had no issue with women who did chose a life of marriage, I did believe that the life my society set out for me the minute I was born was far too mundane for me. I craved adventure, discovery, my own freedom. Nik had promised me a life of liberty, a life of my very own choosing . . . but by sipping the blood from my tarnished neck, he had done exactly what he vowed he would never do, subsequently decimating all the faith I had in him. In my eyes, in becoming that monster fleshed out of the blood and bone, he had morphed into every man I had known in that time: greedy, lustful and selfish.