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#1.
The sun breaks over the horizon like the release of a held breath. It spills pale gold across the clifftop and lights the distant ocean in molten hues on one side; on the other it slowly reveals a vast forest below, vibrant and green and impossibly, wondrously alive. Wind nudges at lingering morning mist, tugs at leaves and grasses, brushes the strands of hair that spill loose from Dalyria's bun as she stands with her back to the world.
Aurelia is a few paces behind her. Her boots are planted in solid earth, her cloak flutters in the breeze, and yet the weight of the past night still clings: ash, blood, fire. Their master is dead. The master is dead. The bonds have shattered under their feet. Some ascendance, too, has taken place. And with his end, with their rise, a whole new future has opened up, wild and incredible, utterly unfathomable.
She can feel the sun on her skin: not burning, not scalding, only warming.
It isn't just a victory; it is nothing short of a miracle. So why does it feel so... incomplete?
Aurelia's gaze lingers on Dalyria for a long while. So still, so silent, standing in the dawn like a statue. She watches the wind tangle through that near-white hair, traces the soft curve where her neck turns into shoulder, sees her chin dipped down as if cradling some private grief.
It makes something twist sharp in her chest.
They hadn't spoken much since that final blow. There had been screaming, and the smell of scorched flesh, and the silence that followed had been too complete to break.
But now...
"You always wanted to feel the sun again," Aurelia says. She does not speak loudly—she never does—and yet her voice sounds harsh and awkward in the morning hush.
Dalyria doesn't even turn. Her eyes are fixed on the horizon. "Yes. I wanted to breathe again," she says, so soft Aurelia hardly hears it. "I wanted to be alive."
"And you are. You're standing here. In the sun. You're breathing."
Gods, she flinches internally as the words leave her. Has so much time under his heel scraped you entirely clean of intelligence? She wants to say something that matters. That helps. But she does not know how long it's been since she's said something real, and she does not think she knows how.
And Dalyria's lips twist. "This is just another trick. Just another cage. We're still not—" Her voice catches. "This isn't life, sister."
Aurelia steps beside her then, not quite close enough to touch, but close enough for her warmth to be felt, to feel Dalyria's in return. Warmth. So new, so surprising.
"I... I don't know what this is," she admits, watching the sea waves roil and writhe. "But I know we're not his anymore. I know it's more than we had before."
The sun climbs higher. It breaks fully over the treeline, and they don't burn. They don't even flinch.
"It's not enough," Dalyria replies. "I want to live again."
Their gazes meet, then, in a long quiet moment. Aurelia's tail flicks in the wind. Dalyria's eyes drop to her lips for the barest fraction of a second before she looks away again.
"I need to walk," she murmurs.
And so she does—down the slope, stepping away, disappearing into the forest still silvered with morning dew.
Aurelia watches her go, and the thundering of her own heart in her chest, so strange and awful and so terribly new, feels like it might tear her in two.
#2.
The village stinks. Spoiled air and rancid sweat cling to pores like a second skin, and the moans of the ailing rise up all around them, a constant unbearable hum. Aurelia keeps her tail tight against her leg, her ears lowered, her voice a hush as she moves from home to home right behind Dalyria.
They don't feed. Not once.
Instead, Dalyria kneels. Touches steady fingers to swollen lymph nodes, wipes vomit from mouths with damp cloth, speaks to frightened parents in a tone so impossibly gentle it cracks something open in Aurelia's chest. A bitter tincture Dalyria brewed eases the worst of the fever, and one child wakes. The rattle in another's breath begins to subside. And the villagers—initially so terrified of their red eyes, of Aurelia's red skin and dark horns—say thank you.
Aurelia watches Dalyria smile at a mother cradling her boy, and she thinks she's never seen a more beautiful sight in her life.
The sun has long dipped below the horizon by the time they walk away. The village behind them disappears to darkness, and Aurelia can't hold it in any longer:
"Look, you still save people."
Dalyria's pace falters. Her shoulders stiffen and Aurelia wants to reach out, touch her, remind her that she's here. That she's not alone.
When Dalyria turns, there's a hollowness in her eyes that goes beyond the dark rings that encircle them.
"That doesn't change what I am."
Aurelia swallows down the ache pushing up her throat. What we are, she wants to say, but Dalyria never lets them be the same.
"You didn't feed tonight," she says instead. "We didn't need to. And you... you stayed. You healed them. That's all you."
Dalyria looks at her for a long moment, and Aurelia wonders if she hears her heart stuttering in her chest. Wonders if she's making a fool of herself, standing here in the dark with her soul laid bare, raw and bleeding at her feet.
Then Dalyria looks away.
"You don't know what I see when I close my eyes."
"No," Aurelia replies, quiet. "But I know what I feel when I'm with you."
Dalyria doesn't answer, and Aurelia wonders if she'd even spoken at all, or if she'd only imagined it.
#3.
It's a breeze rustling wildflowers, birds diving overhead, the low hum of bees. The sun is warm and golden on her skin, and Aurelia closes her eyes for a moment to let it all soak in.
But still Dalyria sits across from her in the shade of a tree, with an expression on her face like she's staring down a blood-soaked battlefield. Her smooth hair is pulled into a low knot of pale frost, and her arms are crossed tightly across her chest.
"You're not going to burst into flames," Aurelia tells her, gentle as ever.
Dalyria only makes a low grumbling sound, shoots her a look. Not annoyed, Aurelia knows then, just tired.
So she smiles and pats the grass beside her. "Come on. It's warm. Smells like spring."
There's a pause. Dalyria doesn't move.
So Aurelia extends a hand, palm up. It's not steady—she tries to hide that—but it's open. That's what matters.
Dalyria stares at it, wariness in her eyes. But her fingers twitch against her own arm.
Aurelia's mind jumps unbidden to that fight, that night. An ocean of carnage, the viscera of seven thousand souls exploding as one, and thereafter Dalyria cleaned blood from her horns with shaking hands and neither of them said anything about how gentle she was being.
Truth be told Aurelia thinks of that moment too often.
"It's safe," she says then, and it's the most she can give voice to. With me lives just behind her teeth, caught at the very tip of her tongue.
And Dalyria's arms unfold. She doesn't take the hand. But she watches it, and watches it, a look in her eyes like she's staring at a mirror reflecting something she doesn't quite recognize.
Aurelia reaches out and grasps Dalyria's wrist. Lightly. Not to restrain. Just... to guide. Her skin is cool and there is tension in her bones, belying some wound that never healed quite right.
"Just look," she murmurs, more quietly than the breeze. And then she eases Dalyria's hand forward, out of the shade.
Sunlight kisses the back of her hand, gold pouring richly over pale knuckles and delicate veins. Dalyria flinches, sucking in a harsh breath as if it burns.
Aurelia doesn't let go. She waits.
And slowly, slowly, Dalyria's fingers uncurl. Her skin doesn't blister. It doesn't smoke. She stares at her hand, held in Aurelia's own, like she's never seen it like this before.
And Aurelia has eyes only for her. The way the sharpness in her expression softens, just a fraction, and the tension in her lips eases, infinitesimally.
"You can breathe," Aurelia whispers. "You can be here. You don't have to go."
Dalyria doesn't answer. But she doesn't pull away either—her hand stays in the sun.
"It feels strange," she comments. "Like I'm... trespassing."
"You're not," Aurelia assures. "It's yours, too."
#4.
They're not warriors. Not truly. Aurelia has been taught only caution and obedience, not the clash of blades. Dalyria's primary expertise was in stitching wounds, not inflicting them.
But they find themselves in need of coin, for the alchemist who claims to know some part of this cure wants more gold than they've ever seen in one place. So when a village outside Daggerford posts a desperate bounty for a beast that's taken over their sacred temple, they don't hesitate—they go.
Or rather Dalyria goes, and Aurelia follows.
The creature is not quite what had been described—and Aurelia knows the moment it turns toward them that they're not ready. It's a massive frightful thing, limbs bulging with unnatural muscle, and its eyes glow.
Dalyria casts the first icy bolt, hands trembling even as the spell leaves her. It freezes part of the creature's chest—but not enough. Not nearly enough. It barrels forward, only angered, and Aurelia barely dodges a swipe from its massive claws. She falls to her hands and knees, blade clattering from her grasp. It roars, furious, and kicks her into the temple wall.
Something cracks. It might be her ribs. She doesn't black out, but the world shakes and blurs. Somewhere, she hears Dalyria scream her name. She staggers to her feet, spits blood. The thing lunges again, at Dalyria now, and—and Dalyria's body twists into mist.
It's still strange, that power; Dalyria has for the longest time been resistant to it. But she moves with preternatural, instinctive talent, like fog, as easily as thought. Aurelia only watches in awe as the swirl of silver-grey darts between the beast's snapping jaws and reforms behind it with eyes blazing. Her hand glows with necrotic force as she slams it directly into the creature's spine.
It reels. Roars again. But doesn't fall.
Aurelia throws herself into the fight then, lets her magic loose. They don't defeat it with grace. There's no elegance to it. It's pulverized stone and pain and panicked spells, only barely-grasped instincts and synchronized desperation. But eventually, somehow, they win. The great beast collapses, shuddering, emanating a long wet sound, and then stills.
Mist coils around Aurelia's arms as she reforms beside Dalyria, breathless and shaking. The air is thick and repugnant—but they're alive. In time the terror clinging and clawing at the inside of her chest will fade to nothing.
Dalyria is kneeling, her body solidifying too, shoulders shaking hard. There's a shallow cut trailing a line of blood down her cheek, and even as Aurelia knows it's nothing serious, every protective instinct inside her lights up on fire. She reaches out—then hesitates. Her hand hovers awkwardly in the air between them, and she does not know what to do with it.
Dalyria finally looks up. Her pale eyes are luminous, so very far away.
"You shouldn't have come," she says softly. "I could've handled it."
Aurelia laughs, a strange brittle sound. "You nearly got yourself killed."
Dalyria flinches, as though struck by the truth in her words. Aurelia kneels across from her, folding her legs underneath her, curling in her tail behind her.
The silence weighs too heavy, and she must speak.
"You say you want to leave this life behind," Aurelia whispers. "And I get it—I do. But..."
She trails off. Her throat feels tight. The words are bigger, heavier, than she knows how to say. But here, in this stone-encased silence, with the carcass of a dead beast at her feet and the scent of death so fresh in the air, there's a strange awful familiarity coiling in her chest.
The words come then; there's no stuffing them back down.
"Every time you talk about leaving this life behind, it feels like you're leaving me too."
Her voice is not shattering. Her heart is not breaking.
Dalyria doesn't speak. Her expression shifts—tender, stricken—but she says nothing.
Aurelia's heart aches. She hates the silence. It looms more threatening than any beast, any spell, weighted with a choice Dalyria has yet to make.
Gods, Aurelia wants her to choose them.
She drops her eyes to the ground. She has said too much, exposed too much. Her hands twist in her lap. She should stop talking.
"I don't care what we are," she says then. "As long as you're here. As long as you stay."
Finally, finally, Dalyria reaches out. Her fingertips brush Aurelia's cheek.
It's not an answer.
But it's not goodbye either.
#5.
Why exactly Dalyria goes, Aurelia does not know.
She barely knows when—only that she arrives just in time to drag Dalyria out as the mage's tower crumbles behind them. She's trembling with fear and rage as she bursts out what remains of the door, her boots slick with blood—some hers, some not. She doesn't care. All she cares about is Dalyria.
Dalyria, whom she deposits on the grimy ground of the alley, who instantly curls in on herself, pale in a way that has nothing to do with vampirism. There's a thin line of red along her lip, her eyes half-lidded and unfocused. The wind carries the stench of something burning, the sharp acrid bite of destruction, and it is distant but not nearly distant enough. Aurelia's chest tightens.
"Dalyria," she breathes, dropping to her knees. Her hands hover before landing firm on her shoulders, turning her over. "Dal, look at me. Tell me you're okay."
A flicker. Recognition, slow. A pained whisper: "Aur—?"
Relief is a visceral blow that has her doubling over. "What in all the hells were you thinking?"
Dalyria tries to sit up, but Aurelia holds her steady. "He said he could undo it," she says, barely a whimper. "He said there was a way."
Aurelia's vision blurs for a heartbeat. "By—what, by draining you dry?" Her voice rises, cracks. "You'd throw yourself away, chasing a life that doesn't want you anymore—"
She stops. Her fingers tremble against Dalyria's arms.
"I know what he did to you. I know what you lost. I know what you want to get back. But I—" Her voice breaks, just a little. She forces it steady again. "You and I—we tore him apart. We're free now. We can breathe again. We can walk in the sun, feel the wind, choose who we are."
Her throat aches, but she forces the words out. "And still you keep reaching backward."
Her forehead is nearly touching Dalyria's as she leans in. She's held onto these words for far too long.
"If you keep chasing who you were... you'll never see who you are now."
Dalyria looks at her for a long moment. For once, she doesn't look away.
But Aurelia can't wait anymore. She takes one last breath—petrified it might be her last moment like this—and lets the truth bleed out:
"I see her. I see you. And I... I don't want eternity if I have to spend it watching you run from yourself."
From me, she doesn't say.
Doesn't say I love you. Not yet. Not even I want you. I always have.
But it's there. Waiting.
And she hopes—gods, she hopes—Dalyria hears it. Hopes that one day she will be able to say it.
#6.
They rise tall, these gates of Szarr Palace, rib bones twisted and blackened at the edges, silver along their arches. Dalyria is frozen for a minute, her hand resting lightly against rusted filigree. Marble that once ran red now holds only moonlight. But it is not beautiful—she knows well that the beauty here has always been a lie.
And she exhales, slow, before striding into this prison that made her.
The interior is untouched by time. Grand chandeliers hang like frozen spiders over velvet-draped chambers. Endless halls through which she walked with her eyes down, her mouth shut, only wishing she could be a ghost instead. She remembers too well the echo of heels on stone, the slick slap of blood underfoot. The silence between screams.
It's just a place now, she tells herself. He's gone.
But her body remembers before her mind does. Muscles tense. Her fangs ache. Her eyes flick around everywhere as she walks, half-expecting the master's cruel smile to bloom from the shadows.
It doesn't. Only Aurelia walks beside her, her crimson skin pale in the eerie light.
They descend into the lower levels, and the light dies further here. The shadows grow longer, bolder, reaching and whispering like they remember her, and she notes her pulse—still strange, still new, still unnecessary—has quickened in her veins.
Before she knows it they are there. The cells. Iron bars, etched with wards. Claw marks on the stone, chains still hanging where wrists bled out.
Aurelia stops dead. Dalyria turns, and sees her falter. Sees her shoulders quake, tail low, eyes wide with a grief she's held back for too long. Her fingers reach out tentatively for the bars of an abandoned cage, as if she thinks it will burn her. As if she hopes it will.
"I wasn't strong enough to stop it then," Aurelia whispers. "I was... I could've—should've—"
She doesn't finish. Her knees give out, and she folds in on herself, horns brushing the wall, shaking.
Dalyria kneels beside her, wordless at first. There's a tightness in her chest, sharp and sudden and familiar.
She takes Aurelia's hand.
"No one could've stopped him," she says gently. "And you're stronger now. You've given me a future." She lifts Aurelia's hand and presses it to her chest.
Aurelia lifts her head, eyes shining in the dark. Crimson and soft and hurting.
"You really think that?"
Dalyria nods. "I know it."
They stay like that for a moment. Monsters, maybe, but no longer his.
Later, later, Dalyria finds it. Her old medical journal.
The leather cover is cracked and flaking, the pages warped with time and blood and rot. But the pages inside still hold her hand, sharp and precise in places, hasty and passionate in others. She flips through sketches of anatomy, lists of symptoms, theories, hopeful scribbles. She presses the book to her chest.
This was her. That idealistic girl seeking knowledge to save lives. She's mourned her own death for so long she forgot: she isn't dead. She isn't dead. Not really.
That's still her. And she is more now.
She's not just surviving—she's becoming. Stronger. Free.
She lets the book fall into the fire she's building in the center of the room.
They light the place together. Oil along the halls, torches tossed through shattered doorways, and the fire catches fast—the library, the opulent staircase, the solid oak furniture. Books blacken and gold melts and the shadows finally scatter like rats. The palace shrieks as it dies, but neither of them look back.
They walk away with soot in their hair, smoke in their lungs, and something new burning between them.