Page 40 of The Vampire's Hunter

“I lost them a very long time ago,” Corbin said, treading gently. “I don’t see why it’s—”

“Because it’s important to you,” Dani snapped, glancing over her shoulder toward him. There were tears running down her face, fat, wet tears, tears full of real emotion, something he’d once worried he hadn’t felt in decades. Not until Dani at least. “They were important to you, so they’re important to me,” she whispered, instinctively knowing the kindest thing she could say. “Tell me about them.”

Corbin stood silent for a long time, searching for the right words to say, and realizing there were no words that would ever do them justice. They were thoughts, feelings. Memories lost in the sands of time, slowly drifting away with each passing day.

And still, their loss haunted him.

“Rosalind would have loved you,” he said finally, speaking of her for the first time in an age. “She was a kind and gentle woman, a survivor, much like you. Fearsome only when she needed to be. Plague had taken most of her siblings very young, so she wanted a large family. Most women at that time did. She always longed for a sister. She was, in truth, a woman set in her ways—quiet, full of virtue—but I think, despite your differences, she would have adored you.”

“And your children?”

Corbin hesitated. “It’s still too difficult to speak of them, but we…we lost them, shortly after Rosalind faded away. Elias and Gertrude. Elias lived to the old age of twenty and three, only to be lost to smallpox. Gertrude barely made it to two.”

“I’m sorry.”

“When Rosalind died, they were lost without their mother. They relied on her, as children are ought to do. Sometimes, I think…sometimes I think if she hadn’t died so soon after I… after I was changed, that they would have lived, too. That I would have been able to see them through.”

“You can’t possibly know that, Corbin. You can’t blame your—”

“I can,” he said, not allowing a moment of her pity. “I can and will continue to blame myself, because their deaths were mine too.”

Dani lifted a brow, clearly misunderstanding.

“Shortly after I was turned, I…I tried to turn Rosalind.”

The sharp hiss of Dani’s breath told him she knew. She knew what a poor choice that’d been, though at the timehehadn’t. “Newly turned vampires have little control, you see,” his voice continued, though it felt as if it’d been, disembodied from him. “They’re not yet fit to become sires. Had I known…had my own sire ensured I was properly educated then, maybe…”

“Oh, Corbin.” Dani stood, making her way toward him.

“I do not want nor need your pity.” He shook his head, refusing to accept her outstretched hand.

Slowly, it returned to her side once more.

“I only ask that you try to understand, why I—”

“Why you refuse to turn me,” she finished for him. “Why you’re afraid.”

“It’s not turning you I’m afraid of, Dani,” he said, finally holding her stare. “It’s the risk of losing you, that thing that makes youyou. It’s not something I can do.”

Dani was shaking her head, refusing to see his reasoning. “But Corbin, if you don’t turn me, you’ll still lose me. I’ll grow old. I’ll rot away and turn into—”

“But first you will have lived,” he countered. “First, you will have lived a long and happy life, far away from this world.Thatis what I hope for you.”

“And what about what I hope for, too?” Dani patted a hand against her chest, indicating the heart that beat beneath. “Have you ever stopped to consider whatIhope for too?” She shook her head at him, incredulously. “All my life I’ve been preyed upon, hurt, by men like you.”

Corbin bristled at the insinuation, but still she continued.

“I can no longer find a home among humanity when I’m the only human in every room who knows about you, your world, about all the dark and twisted and beautiful things that wait just beyond the dark. That kind of knowledge, when you bear it alone, it kills you softly, sweetly, Corbin.”

“Dani—”

She held up a hand, causing him to fall silent once more. “I’m not yet finished,” she said, inhaling a breath clearly meant to fortify herself. “I know your world. I know the human one too. I’ve seen the darkness in both and been given a chance to choose, and while I’m certain my brother will hate me for it, it’syourworld I choose. The world I know best. The world without rules. The world that, if you turn me, will empower me in ways I’ve never known, because I will be born anew, and most importantly, I will be able to share in that newfound power with you.” She met his eyes then, her irises once again teeming with tears. “I’ve loved you for years, Corbin, even when you have not loved me.”

The silence that stretched between them then felt vaster than eternity.

“Please say something,” Dani whispered.

Corbin shook his head, sitting down on one of the nearby choir chairs, before he ran both his hands through his hair. “You know nothing of what you speak,” he said, refusing to look at her.

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