Bleeder [Blood Magic, Book 1]

Chapter 20: Always

But it also meant he knew how much this whole day had torn me apart - yet he was going to allow it to end like this anyway.

It was your ultimatum, that annoying voice in my head reminded me. He's just honouring it.

That was all it took to unleash the first wracking sob. Keel froze where he was in the middle of the room, inhaled sharply and clasped both of his hands to his rib cage, as if his chest was aching right alongside mine. When he turned to face me he wasn't so much pale as white. But he was about to walk out of my life, so what did it matter what he thought of me? I was bone-weary of playing it tough and always trying to figure out how best to behave around the Nosferatu. Couldn't I go back to just being Mills, the wallflower, who had half the life experiences of everyone else and was a little bit jealous about it? That Mills wasn't afraid to cry and she never worried about whether it showed weakness or not, because she didn't care. Down here, I had to. Everything was a game, a role, a ploy. If I wasn't engaged in it, I wasn't trying hard enough to survive, but between the captivity, the sorcery and Keel, I didn't know who I was anymore. And now I'd made a wager, and lost, without truly considering what I was losing first.

Worse still, I'd just gone with my gut again. If I'd considered it even ten seconds longer, I would have realized I'd probably learn enough magic to escape long before the king's plans of "mothering" me turned into actions, but now I'd sabotaged that too, and would have to finish figuring out my powers all by myself.

Keel found his momentum and strode over. "Come on. Let's go." he said, tight and controlled. Guard Keel, not Prince Keel. He played his roles too.

"I don't want to," I cried into my knees. If I was going to be pathetic, might as well go all in.

"Well, you can't stay here forever," he stated stoically, resisting my swirling whirlpool of grief.

"I don't want this," I told him through the waterfall of tears.

"I know. You told me."

"No, this," I said. The water in my eyes had rendered him into a blurry, detail-less shape. "Us like this. Done."

"I thought you said..."

"Screw what I said."

Keel glanced at the shelf where he'd hidden his tool and then back at me. His odd look told me he didn't get the slang, but I was too depressed to explain it.

"We can't go on like this, Mills. Always at each other's throats. One day we're going to go too far, and not even your magic is going to help."

He was right, of course. This was all too volatile. And if it needed to change, I was going to have to step up, because it was my emotions we both kept tripping over.

"What else don't I know?" I asked, hoping this wasn't too little too late.

It took him a second to catch the direction I'd swerved the conversation in. "Lots. But if you mean about you, you know it all now."

"And you meant what you said about my not having to participate in that other part of your father's experiment?"

"Yes," Keel said with a sigh. "Just like I meant what I said about not wanting to have my face melted off again."

I balled my hands into fists and jammed my palms into my eye sockets, wiping away the tears. Then I looked up at him towering over me. The ceiling light was behind him, so some of his face was lost to shadows and I was grateful for that. I'm not sure I could have said what I did otherwise.

"Can we try again?" The question came out small and scared. I wished more than anything I could go on without him, pretend we'd never met, never become entangled, but I couldn't bear the thought of it, nor the endless, unrelenting hell my life would return to without him. Keel had gotten too far under my skin. Even so, he had every right to say no, and probably should. Our worlds were just too different.