Page 35 of Even Vampires Bleed
When it finally dies down, I realize that my cheeks are wet. I didn’t even realize that I had started to cry.
I try to dry my face with my sleeves, but nothing works. I keep crying, and all I manage to do is to get my shirt drenched.
I feel arms circling my back and the contact of an almost hairless head against my own.
Angie. Even Elhyor has longer hair than she does.
She’s not crying, though.
Somehow, even though she has known Léandre her whole life, and I only met him a few weeks ago, I’m the only one crying.
I know she’s tough. She had been trained her whole life as an assassin, after all. Shewas sentto Notre Dame to marry Elhyor and then kill him.
Yes, I know she’s tough, and yet I thought I wouldn’t be the only one breaking apart at the news.
No one is talking.
I feel Elhyor stroke my back, but my mind is elsewhere.
I dry my tears again, the best I can, and steel myself. When I’ve done exactly that, I take my distance from Angie.
I need to breathe.
“I need a new room,” I tell Elhyor, “as far away as you can from my older room,” I add immediately after.
If I have to see him every day, I won’t survive.
Angie and Elhyor seem to understand that I can’t cope with more questions, and Elhyor gives me a new set of keys.
“I’ll come see you later,” he tells me in a soft voice, and all I want is a hug. Except Elhyor doesn’t smell right. He’s not the one I want to hug.
I resist the impulse to hide in his arms, and as I flee the office, I hear Angie tell Elhyor, “I’m going to see him,” and then I close the door.
It’s not my problem anymore.
I, for one, don’t want to see him anymore.
It would hurt too much, and I’m not ready for the lack of recognition in his eyes again.
Instead, I make my way to my new room. As asked, it’s in the other corridor on the exact opposite side from my old one.
When I open the room, I weep.
It’s empty.
Completely devoid of anything that would make it welcoming.
It’s just a bed with white linens, a desk, and an empty wardrobe.
I shift to my bat form, and my clothes pool to the ground next to the door.
I fly to the bed and hide between the pillows, right under the duvet.
And then I cry myself to sleep.
19
Léandre
