Chapter 423: Momentary Connection
Penelope followed the vampire through the dark bent trees surrounding his castle. Her eyes followed the unnaturally curved trees to the bright opening at their center where the greenhouse must have been.
"Why did you do this to the trees?" She asked. It was so bizarre.
"I like the dark. The island was supposed to be dark, but Nedra couldn’t do it," he told her. "Instead we have this incessant sun. But the plants like it."
So he liked plants... that explained the greenhouse of course. It was interesting that he had chosen to keep an opening where the sun could shine through so that he could keep a greenhouse. This hinted to there being much more to him than the cold, heartless monster that anyone would assume him to be.
"I wonder how it has affected the lycans and alyko here to not have the moon and its phases," she wondered aloud.
"They do not seem to be negatively affected by it," he replied, following the well-worn path that led out of this dense forest and into the sun.
"That can’t be true," she scoffed. "To have no night to dream under, no Mother Moon to protect us and hold our secrets. No reminder of the months and the seasons. This place is frozen in time."
"Time here is much more complicated than that," he said vaguely. "But to be frozen in time is a nightmare, I agree." A muscle feathered in his jaw as he said it, and Penelope picked up on a heaviness that suddenly seemed to settle around him.
"What has it been like? To exist forever?" She asked in a small voice. It sounded awful. Death was a common fear for those who were living, but no one would truly want to live forever without the option to die.
"Powerful. I suppose that is what my kind cherishes. The power that is unsurpassed when there is no threat of an end," he replied then swallowed after he did. "But it is also..."
"Lonely?" She asked and then stopped breathing for a moment when he turned to glance at her and the truth of that characterization shone clear in his eyes. Lonely, indeed.
"I suppose it is, yes," he admitted, his voice turning a strange gravel that spoke of his thirst. She shivered.
"Do you have... family?"
He smiled. "You wish to know about me? With my death now so present?"
"I just can’t imagine existing as long as you have. It is incomprehensible. You are an anomaly to the living who measure everything based on endings. You have no ending," she said, her eyes searching the grass and plants and underbrush that they walked through. It was true for the flora here as well. Nothing that was green here would live forever. It would die as well. He was the only one whom that did not apply to.
"I am searching for my ending," he said quietly. "I have seen too much. At some point you stop feeling anything at all. Everything is dull and colorless. Every experience is as flat and uninteresting as the one prior. Death is a gift, Penelope."
She slowed her steps as she watched him walk ahead with his hands in his pockets as he had done countless times, no doubt. This path was worn by his steps. This path had been walked so many times before. And for some reason, despite all that she knew the creature to have done, she ached for him, for the path he had been walking during the time of his existence was even more traversed than this one. It was carved deep into the earth by his steps that could not cease. By his wanderings that had no hope of an end. No completion to his story.
What Zagan was describing was miserable. Would it truly be difficult to understand why he had collected the alyko—his one hope at ending his centuries-old existence? Would it even be so difficult to understand his apparent ease with ending the lives of those around him? He viewed death as a gift. He envied it. And as he said, he had ceased to feel emotions like those around him did.
She thought of the feelings she had—of the passions for her work and for rescuing the alyko like her who had been maligned and sacrificed in one way or another by their packs or their families. But should she live for centuries, would she still have the heights of those passions and the valleys of those disappointments to drive her forward? Or would everything flatten out as she watched the tides of time come and go over and over again?
Without realizing it, Penelope had ceased walking, a sudden understanding of him blooming deep within her center. She didn’t want it—she didn’t want this epiphany. She didn’t want to sympathize with his plight. She didn’t want to understand how he could cage the alyko or easily dispatch the living. But there it was—an aching understanding that had her overcome with sadness for him.
"What is it? Are you not well?" He asked, and then he was there in front of her only a breath away. Her eyes lifted to his, and somehow she imagined she saw genuine worry there.
"I am sorry," she said, her voice wavering as she did. "You have... you have suffered so much. I am sure of it, and I never allowed myself to consider that before. I can’t imagine having no... ending. No completion. Just a series of the same. It would all just... run together endlessly."
Zagan’s eyebrows pinched together when he felt her words prick something in him—like the pins and needles of a sleeping limb that was trying to regain its feeling. "You are sorry?" He asked, truly astonished when he saw wetness in her eyes that made them glisten even more brilliantly than before.
"No wonder you have done all of this," she whispered to herself.
"Do not feel sorry for me," the tone of his voice flattened, and Penelope shivered with the sudden chill that his presence brought. "Do not imagine that you understand me, Winter. You do not."
"I do not mean that I understand. I could never truly understand, but Zagan I..." she started in a desperate rush to put words to this awareness, but he grabbed her arm and tugged on it to shake her out of the gush of emotion that he could sense coming. He did not want it. He did not want to be tempted to feel what she was inviting. It would not help.
"Do not feel sorry for me," he repeated, this time through gritted teeth and with a cold threat that attempted to swallow her compassion. The use of his name was like a blade to his throat. But wasn’t it a blade to his throat that he wanted? Wasn’t that what he was after all along?
Her eyes went wide and she stared up at him, but her momentary fear was overcome with that same welling sadness. "It is okay," she whispered, the warmth of her breath that spoke of life and all of its promises fanning over his face. He blinked, his touch softening on her arm.
"What is okay?" He asked, his eyes squinting against her warmth, that prickle of the lost limb intensifying in his chest.
"I... I don’t know. I just want you to know that it is," she breathed. "It’s okay. It’s going to be okay."
"Those words..." he whispered, a memory playing at his thoughts, tempting him to remember something long buried. His fingers slid down her arm, making her shiver under his touch, his eyes narrowing when he noticed it and his fingers pausing at her hand, tracing it down to the very tips of her fingers before finally dropping his arm at his side.
’It’s going to be okay,’ the simple sentence repeated in his mind. Why was that affecting him so? What was it tugging at him to remember?
"Penelope?" He said quietly, his eyes sliding to find hers.
"Yes?" The look he was giving her made her heart thud hard against her ribs. It ached to hear the words he wanted to say.
"Have I known you before?" He took a step closer, his hand lifting to her chin and then running it down the length of her neck as he looked for any punctures. But there were none. He had not drank from her there. Why did it feel like he had?
She swallowed nervously, and he watched the action, hearing her heart flutter and cause a temporary tremor in the flow of her blood under his hand. That blood that was so enticing, and yet right now there was something else he wanted more, and he couldn’t understand it.
"I don’t think so," she breathed, swaying slightly with the way her head suddenly felt light with his close proximity. Instead of being terrified by how close he was, she felt... protected.
He hovered there, his head bent so closely to hers and his hand paused on her neck with that touch that was surprisingly light. And then he released her. She blinked, confused at the change and at having that protection of him pulled away so abruptly.
Penelope watched him sever himself from her and whatever it was that had momentarily connected them. He backed up, his eyes distant now—lost somewhere else.
