Chapter Text
“And when tomorrow evening comes— have you decided? Will you join me?”
“Yes,” she answers without thought. Years of bargaining with death to bring her brother back to her had finally been answered. How could she squander this chance, refuse the deal she had been begging for?
“Even though you must die?”
The room goes quiet and all that Panos can hear is the rapid beat of his sister’s heart. He can smell the salt of tears welling in her eyes— for perhaps the last time— before they even rise. He does not want to kill his sister. He does not want to kill his sister.
Aitana takes a moment to search each of her brother’s unblinking eyes in return. The irises are a different hue now, but the same glint remains. She nods once. A life for a life, if that is what the night willed.
“I have already lost you to death once. I shall not let it separate us again.”
His smile breaks like the dawn, fangs gleaming in the low light of their old home. Panos had been Aitana’s current age when he disappeared. It was strange how now, reunited under the light of the moon, they were almost like twins.
Aitana’s eyes crinkle with a grin of her own as she lifts her wrist to him. He stares at the offered flesh in silence, though the room is not silent for him. The rush of blood is the only thing loud enough to drown out that sinister voice in the pit of his stomach, demanding that he drink.
“You cannot take this back,” he warns. He does not want to kill his sister.
“I know,” she nods. It is not his choice to make.
With an ease unlike any human, Panos hoists his sister to her feet and leads her to the bedroom she grew up in. Funny, that she would die in it, too, but sorrow does not crease her features. A bird, she cannot see what kind, shuffles away from the commotion of its captors. She ignores the fear in the shine of its beadlike eyes as she sits on the edge of her bed. Again, she holds out her arm.
“Don’t you have to drink?”
“Yes.”
“Will it hurt?”
The kindred pauses, stood as still as marble before her.
“Nothing will feel greater.”
Aitana wrinkles her nose in protest at that. Reuniting with her brother could trump any ecstasy.
Panos cradles her wrist reverently with both hands. The moonlight streaking through the window paints him in a ghostly light, impossibly young for the time he had been gone. Aitana nods once more, almost imperceptible, as he lowers his face. He hesitates, just to hear the beat of her heart once more. Fangs slot their way into flesh and at first, Aitana braces for searing pain. But as soon as it starts, it melts into exhilarating euphoria. Her body is dying, yet has never known greater bliss than this.
The rest of the world fades out from view. Panos drinks his sister’s vitae down in calculated gulps, though his expression betrays it is not without enjoyment. For Aitana, it feels like her body has lifted off the bed and started to float away, caught between life and death in that spectral liminality. She cannot speak, but her lips sigh and part, the lights of her eyes dulling.
Conquering that starving beast inside, Panos pulls off Aitana’s wrist and tears a small line open in his own. The blood drips into her mouth in limp spurts, the wound trying to close itself as he brings his sister through the throes of the embrace. Her body convulses and Panos pulls her close to his chest, cradling the younger sister the way he had missed while he was gone. Instantaneously, the curse of Caine takes hold and she stares at the bird with newly tinted eyes. In a flurry of feathers, the bird is drained and for the last time, Aitana has sated her hunger.
The room is silent. The rapid thrumming of her heart no longer fills her ears, her lungs no longer inflate to breathe, and all Aitana can smell is the metal of her brother’s vitae. The feeling of suspension fades and Aitana is plunged into the loudness of the world again. She can hear the buzz of the streetlamps, the rattle of pipes, the beat of a heart at the door.
Panos and Aitana turn to face their youngest sibling, stood awestruck and horrified.
“I heard speaking. I thought—”
Aitana tries, fruitlessly, to wipe at the blood coating her chin.
“What have you done to our sister?”
Panos stands, first, and Ilma flinches at the movement, stepping back into the hallway.
“Ilma, listen to me,” he tries to coax a steadiness into her that he himself does not have.
“What have you done?” This time, the accusation is thrown to Aitana, who still sits at the mattress’ edge.
“What I had to do,” she answers coolly enough for both vampires. “Don’t you want to see our brother again?”
Ilma moves back another pace, hands shaking at the sight of the monsters that replaced her siblings. She is the only child left of a doomed lineage, there is nowhere left for her.
“Ilma,” Panos tries the name on his lips for the first time in many years.
“Don’t,” she snaps back, voice hoarse. The smell of the blood is nauseating. She does not want to cry.
“We do not have time for this,” he turns to Aitana, then, eyes narrowed. She is more patient than him, she has not felt the affliction of their clan take hold of her rage quite yet. She is still so young. She will not go with them, but she cannot be permitted to run, either. Aitana’s eyes are pleading. Do something.
Panos places himself between his sisters and meets Ilma’s eyes. He is not a master of the mesmerizing discipline, but he will try what he knows.
“You will forget this night,” he speaks evenly, words saturated with compelling blues, “You had a nightmare.”
Ilma nods, listlessly. “I had a nightmare.” She turns and drags her feet back to her own room.
Sunrise threatens to fall within the hour, so Panos alights with his sister to his haven, where the five members of his coterie await them. Aitana is given a room and the hour is spent going over again the politics, the court, their weaknesses, and their strengths.