Page 75 of Slaying the Vampire Conqueror

I caught his wrist, setting his hand down. But he still stared at that blindfold. His face hardened.

“You joined them.”

Hurt struck me. Then indignation.

You joined them,he said, with such judgment. What right did he have to say that to me?

Hejoinedthem. I had given my life to a goddess and a Sisterhood and a greater power he couldn’t even begin to understand.

He had given his life over to a damned warlord.

“You joinedthem,” I said, my voice a little harder, quicker, than I intended. Then I loosened a breath and softened.

It wasn’t his fault. Wasn’t his choice. He was a child, too. Just trying to survive.

“I looked for you, Vivi,” he whispered. “I looked for you for so long.”

One of the downsides of having no eyes was that there was nothing to distract you when images of the past returned. I had carefully erected a wall between Sylina and Vivi. Sitting here, next to Naro, destroyed it.

He and I had made it so far together. We survived the deaths of our parents, our sister. We protected each other from every danger—him saving me from the furious shopkeeper who tried to drown me for stealing, me saving him from the city guard who was ready to beat him to death. No matter what, it was him and me. Together.

I tried not to remember the night that Tarkan’s soldiers rolled through the city, the fighting reaching a crescendo, the fire and explosives lighting up the night as bright as midday.

“You were gone,” I whispered.

I was alone.

Naro wasn’t home. He was nowhere to be found. The explosives tore up most of the city. I waited for so long. I stood at the window and watched as more and more blocks went up in plumes of acrid smoke.

I waited even as our neighbors all fled. I waited even when the last one to go, an elderly woman with a crooked leg, stopped to bang on my door.

“We must leave, you foolish child,” she’d told me, trying to drag me away. “We must go right now.”

“My brother?—”

“He’s already dead,” she snapped. At the time, I’d hated her for saying that. Now, I understood the fear beneath her harsh words. She had likely watched the deaths of so many children. She didn’t want to see another one.

But I’d been furious with her. I hit her, yanked my arm away, and ran back into the house.

I would not go without Naro.

“I waited for such a long time,” I whispered.

“I was trying,” Naro said. “I tried to get back. But I got stuck in the western quarter. I was injured.”

I’d waited.

And then the explosion hit our little house, too.

I remembered little of it—only the loud noise, and then the silence afterwards, unnatural silence. I was lucky. If the old woman hadn’t come, I would’ve died. I only survived because I was in the back of the shack, not out in the street.

I’d opened my eyes to see the night sky, and nothing else. No house. No streets. No old woman.

“I came back as soon as I could,” Naro said, voice cracking. “And I found the house?—”

At the same time, we both choked out, “I thought you were dead.”

And then we both laughed, our voices a little too high and manic, and for far too long.

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