"You shouldn't be here." Marianna keeps her watchful gaze on Kinley as I stand next to her on the balcony that overlooks the east courtyard.

Kinley is down below in a black silk nightgown, walking the garden as the half-moon and stars give her light. She has her face to the wind, letting the cool breeze swirl her unbound hair all around her.

"Fever again?"

"Afraid so. She has not fared well since her arrival in Valderanna. She can't get comfortable and when she is able to find sleep, she tosses and turns in unrest."

Marianna's bloodline has been frozen. One of her sisters refused to sacrifice her firstborn so the Medici bloodline has been halted, forever barren until the child who should have been handed over dies.

In many ways, Kinley is the only child Marianna will ever have. She cares for Kinley as if she carried her in her womb.

"How much time do you think she has?"

The Dark Prince's crowning ceremony is tomorrow. It will be a full day of celebration that will extend well into the night and I fear it will be too taxing on Kinley. She is declining fast, the angel within her determined to take her before the Prince can hurt her again. Or maybe it's me. Kinley did say her nosebleeds sped up after she met me.

"If you had asked me this morning, I would have said a few hours. She seems to be doing better after the Prince forced her to drink some of his blood. Her fever went down, yet a mild one still lingers. It's impossible to know: a day, a week, a month? It's different every time."

Marianna swears under her breath when she turns and sees I am gone. I've done my best to stay away from Kinley, not wanting to chance the Dark Prince using her to get back at me. How can I stay away knowing that I could lose her at any moment to the vengeful angel that dwells in the place her love for me used to reside?

"I was wondering when you would show up." Kinley continues keeping her eyes closed and her face lifted to the wind.

I step closer to her, using the coolness of my body to help soothe the discomfort of her feverish skin. "It was best if I stayed away."

"Yet here you are." She turns around to face me. "Do you know what the most frustrating part of all this is? It's that I've learned I've had over two hundred different lives and I can't remember a single one. I'm an immortal whose existence amounts to nothing. I'm like a gust of wind. Here one minute, gone the next." Kinley brushes past me, taking a seat at the fountain in the center of the courtyard as she gazes at the clear night sky.

She jumps in surprise when I "materialize" right next to her. "What do you want to know? I can't fill in all the blanks, but I've known you for more life cycles than you think."

"Marianna said the Dark Prince performed a ritual to call my soul back to my body because I died before he could turn me immortal, so how did I die? Did one of your kind kill me like they had the girl I replaced? "

"One of your own kind killed you out of jealousy."

"What?" Kinley's head snaps from watching the twinkling stars to me.

"You weren't the only one who died that day. Another human died too. It was the day before the Prince was going to announce who his next Massarra would be. When the servants came to help get you ready, you were both found dead-poisoned. The other human wanted to make sure she was chosen and not you. Everyone knew by then you were his favorite. She tried to make it look like a vampire did it, even poison herself. But she made the mistake of using a different poison for herself. She didn't realize we could smell the difference."

Kinley's mouth stays parted while she tries to come to grips with the truth. She wasn't prepared to hear that a fellow human is the one who caused her death.

"That's just...depressing." Kinley's voice fades as she stares off into the distance, lost in her own thoughts.

I lean back on my hands, attempting to join her in observing the garden where moon drop flowers have started to glow in soft hues of white and lavender, yet all I find myself watching is her.

"Is that all you wanted to know?" I ask, no longer wanting to sit in the silence that lingers between us.

"I don't know what else to ask." She looks to me, more specifically the few fingers of mine that are touching hers.

"That archway over there." I point to it. "That's where we'd meet when there were parties. Not a lot of people come to the east garden as it is furthest from the grand hall and ballroom." I stand.

"Meet?" Kinley pushes to her feet and comes to my side to get a better look. It's hard for her to make out the archway shrouded in the dark of night.

"Believe it or not there was a time you didn't hate vampires. You envied them." I glimpse down at her for a moment before strolling along the path that will take us there.

"Why would we be meeting in the dark away from others?" Kinley follows me.

"It is forbidden to feed on a massarra. I obeyed that rule until one day you offered me a taste. I tried to stay away, yet I found myself in your room that same night."

Kinley stops walking. "I offered you a taste of my blood?"

"You did. One taste turned into multiple and, soon, I was hooked." The memories of those days burn low in me, slowly heating my blood.

"I willingly let you bite me?" Kinley's hand moves to her neck. I don't think she heard anything past the first sentence I just spoke.

"I learned to make it pleasurable for you. Often giving you small amounts of my blood. Vampire blood, along with its healing properties, can bring about a feeling of euphoria, even to humans."

"So you drugged me so you could feed on me?"

A soft chuckle rumbles out of me. "I suppose I did."

"I don't see why I'd ever have offered you my blood in the first place if it's forbidden." Kinley stops beside me underneath the archway. "That doesn't sound like me at all."

"You were young, sixteen. The young do strange things."

"How old was I when I died? The first time, I guess, before I was immortal."

"Eighteen."

"If I was sixteen when I was sneaking off to get bit by you, it was my..."

"Second time being sixteen." I bite back a smile at how natural those words "bit by you" rolled off her tongue.

"I still don't see why I'd want to get fed on by a vampire, pleasurable or not." Her face scrunches in disgust at the thought.

"At first, I thought it was because it's what you thought vampires did. Then, you wanted to fit in desperately. I assumed you had overheard the fledglings talk about getting high off each other's blood. They tend to do that a lot." Kinley's glossed over eyes cause me to skip to the part that matters.

"I never bothered to question your motivations for it made no difference to me. I was getting what I wanted. It wasn't until after two years of this had gone by that I discovered the real reason."

"Are you going to tell me this discovery or keep it to yourself?" Kinley leans against the stone pillar of the archway, the coolness of it aiding in relief from her fever.

"You asked me to kiss you." I clear my throat to rid the desire building in it.

While my husked voice turns most humans into putty, with Kinley it causes her to put her guard up. I don't want to cause her more distress when she is already in a weakened state.

I expect Kinley to laugh, to call me a liar, to say I'm trying to trick her. Instead, she response with, "Did you?"

"No, and I have regretted it every day since."

I can't bring myself to tell Kinley how my change of mind came about. I don't want her to know the ugly truth about the real relationship between the Dark Prince and his massarra.

As much as I hate the angel for consuming Kinley, it's better for her this way.

"So kiss me now."

"What?" My ears must be deceiving me. There is no way Kinley said what I think I heard.

"If I asked you once before, it means I liked you, right? And if this whole story is a lie, what difference does it make? My days are numbered. I won't remember either way." Kinley's tone becomes sharp.

"No." I take a step away from her.

"No because you only kiss me when you are making deals or no because you only kiss me when it suits the evil that lives in your black heart." Even in the dark, I can see her eyes are narrowed at me.

"Neither of those reasons is why I won't." I clench my teeth.

"It has to be one of those if you won't. You are the one saying you regretted not kissing me after all these years and here I am giving you a re-do." Kinley squares herself with me, her jaw taut and stance grounded.

I can tell she thinks I'm lying to her, that I am making all this up to confuse her as a part of my sadistic mind games. I can only blame myself as I did ask her once if she wanted to know what it was like to lie with the same breed of monster that killed her parents. Now, I'm asking her to buy into the fact she once had feelings for that same type of monster.

I tell myself not to, to stay right where I am, yet I find my lips on hers anyway. It's a hard kiss that melts into one that is painfully tender as the years of longing override my frustration at our current situation.

Kinley's jaw goes slack, her body trembling from my unexpected gentleness. She may not believe me, but there is no way she can deny I have feelings for her. You can't kiss someone like I'm kissing her unless there is a part of you that belongs to the one whose mouth you're claiming.

Both my hands slide into her hair as I slip my tongue past her parted lips. For the briefest of moments, it's like time has moved back to year 575 of the Valderan calendar. I'm lost to the world around and lost in her, this human whose heart I can feel beating within me as it pulses through my veins.

I break away when the taste of salty tears tangles with our joined mouths. We are but rugged breaths as I rest my forehead against hers and lift my hand to the white glowing tears streaming down her face. They look like moonlight.

Kinley's skin feels impossibly hot. She keeps her eyes closed, her brow furrowed as if she is in utter agony.

"Forever mine," she whispers, as she slides her hand up my body and over to where my heart lies.

"Kinley?" My chest squeezes so tight it feels like it may crack open.

Her brow deepens before she finds the strength to look up at me. She smiles through the pain, through the strange flowing tears streaking down her face. She moves her hand from my chest to my face, her fingertips skimming my jawline. "Forever yours...Goodbye, my love."

Her hand slips from my face as her whole body roars up in a white flame that is blinding and hotter than anything I've ever felt. I'm forced to shield myself when a burst of energy consumes the fire, compressing it until it explodes and white glowing ash rains down on me and the moon drops.

The sounds of an infant crying push past the high pitched ringing in my head. Lying at my feet is a little baby girl; her screams of upset as she lies naked on the grass break me. I fall to my knees, curling myself over this little thing that is more precious to me than my own damn life.

Crimson covers my arms as I curse my existence and the angel that only let me have my Kinley for a few seconds before she took her. When the agony ripping me to pieces turns cold and hard, I sit up, an empty shell whose soul has departed for it can't handle the devastation of my loss.

I stare down at the baby before me covered in my red tears: emotionless, distant, and coldly. I pick her up and she stops crying as I cradle her against what is left of my shirt that got shredded in the blast of white magic that consumed her. Her tiny body is feverish still and she settles against the cold feel of my skin, muttering softly as she struggles to adjust to the newness of the world she has been thrust into.

On my way to the castle, I can already feel it as I hold her against me. I can try all I want to not feel for her, but I'll never succeed.

For now, I'll turn it all off. I'll pretend it doesn't hurt. I'll lock my soul deep inside me where it will remain until she finds her way back to me.