Location: Rochester, New York
Era: Early Spring, 1933
---
⌈ Evangeline ⌋
"I don't care what becomes of me. Just save her."
His voice, raw with desperation, pierced the quiet like a prayer spoken through blood.
I froze mid-note. My hands hovered above the ivory keys of the baby grand piano, the last chord left suspended in the air like a dying breath. The fire behind me crackled gently, its warmth indifferent to the chill that crept into my bones. Outside the tall windows, dusk painted the thawing gardens in shades of ash and violet.
Across the room, Cain looked up from his leather-bound tome. The candlelight flickered in his pale, ageless eyes. He studied me in silence, then arched a single dark brow.
"Something wrong, Bat-shel-ohavi?" he asked, voice low and smooth as velvet soaked in centuries. My beloved daughter, in his old Hebrew tongue.
I rose from the bench in one graceful motion, smoothing my gloved hands down the front of my lace-trimmed dress.
"Av," I murmured. Father. "I believe I'll take a stroll. The air is... heavy."
Cain closed his book with reverent care and vanished from his chair like a passing thought—reappearing on the wrought-iron balcony, his coat whispering in the early spring wind. He tilted his head toward me, the hint of a smirk playing on his lips.
"Coming?"
I smiled faintly despite the odd feeling clawing at my ribs. Trust Cain to bring levity even when death lingered near.
I joined him in a blink. The outside air was sharp with the promise of rain along with the familiar scent of blood.
Cain caught my eye, his expression hardening. No words were needed. We ran.
Through narrow alleys and shadowed side streets, our speed blurred the city into silence. The scent grew stronger. We followed the scent, it leading us to a back alley five minutes away from the Hale estate.
The alley lay before us like a crime scene. Blood streaked the stone walls. Two bodies, broken and bleeding, slumped in the dark artery of a forgotten alley. Blood painted the walls like art. The stench of fear and brutality clung to the air.
I passed the girl, leaving her for Cain to examine.
I knelt beside the boy. His silver-blond hair was thick with blood and street grime. His once-white shirt clung to him like a shroud, dyed through with crimson. His chest rose and fell in fragile gasps. One arm lay twisted beneath him at a sickening angle. His lips were split. Bruises bloomed across his jaw like ink beneath parchment.
I reached out and brushed his blood-streaked cheek with slow precision, feeling the faint flutter of his pulse against my palm.
"How unfortunate…" I murmured, voice smooth as still water, hiding the storm beneath.
In the corner of my eye, Cain crouched beside the girl. Her breathing was shallow—labored, but still present.
I didn't particularly care about saving the girl. My attention was more focused on how to proceed from here.
"Truly an unfortunate situation," I hummed, cradling his face in my hands, "must you embrace that whore called Death tonight, my dear? I had planned to turn you into a creature of the night on the day we met last year."
His lips barely moved, but I felt the ghost of a smile. His eyes fluttered, trying to focus on mine.
Cain's voice came from behind me, low but firm. "We should go, Bat-shel-ohavi. Others are coming. The Cullen patriarch among them."
I closed my eyes briefly. So they had sensed it too.
The hunger stirred inside me—hot, gnawing, clawing beneath my ribs. His blood sang to me. Tempted me. But I forced it down, sealing it beneath will and centuries of control.
I leaned closer, lowering my voice to a breath. "No more prayers, dear one. You've been heard."
In one smooth motion, I lifted his broken form into my arms. He was so light. His heartbeat was weakening fast.
"We'll take him," I said, rising to my full height. "Begin the change as soon as we reach the estate."
Cain stood, casting a glance at the girl. He nodded once. "And the sister?"
I turned, my eyes cold as snowmelt.
"Leave her. The Cullens will arrive in time. Let them play saviors."
Cain offered no protest. He knew me too well.
We vanished into the fog just as headlights curved toward the alley's mouth.
Location: Evangeline's estate, Rochester outskirts
Era: Early Spring, 1933
We arrived at the estate in seconds, a blur of speed and storm-touched air. Cain opened the heavy oak doors for me without a word. The warmth of the interior met the cold still clinging to my skin, but I didn't slow. I crossed the marble foyer and ascended the curved staircase, my heels silent on the polished steps.
Behind me, Cain followed, already preparing the room.
I laid Nathaniel upon the velvet-lined chaise in my study—the one beneath the chandelier of fractured glass and crystal thorns. The fire was already lit, casting soft, dancing shadows across the walls lined with shelves of tomes older than nations. His blood had stained my gown, but I paid it no mind.
His breaths were shallow now. Each one scraped out of him like a debt owed.
Cain appeared beside me, his pale hand already holding the crystal decanter. The liquid inside shimmered with a strange radiance—clear as water, but alive with whispers. Blood from the Old Night. A mixture we kept for rare turns. One that ensured stability. Power. Survival.
"I'd almost forgotten what her descendants looked like," Cain murmured, his gaze on the boy's bruised face. "He shares all the same features of her offsprings. I thought He had his people hunt them all down to extinction."
"Now is not the time for your cryptic speach," I said softly. "I need your assistance, since this is my first time doing this."
I knelt beside Nathaniel, brushing blood-matted hair from his eyes. "Nathaniel," I whispered, allowing his name to form fully for the first time. "Your death will be the last thing that ever takes you."
His eyes fluttered weakly.
"I'm going to help you now," I said, voice low and firm, as if sealing a vow with the weight of the universe.
Cain handed me the decanter. I uncorked it and poured a few drops of the sacred mixture into a shallow silver dish beside me. Then, with the reverence of a priestess at the altar, I bit into the inside of my own wrist—just deep enough. My blood mingled with the ancient elixir, darkening it into a ruby glimmer that pulsed with unnatural heat.
I lifted the cup to Nathaniel's lips.
He tried to flinch at first, instincts rebelling, but his mouth opened just enough. I tilted the dish carefully. The moment the first drop touched his tongue, his body arched in pain.
Cain placed a steadying hand on his forehead. "He will scream," he warned. "Do not interface."
And scream he did.
The sound ripped through him like a soul tearing free, a howl soaked in agony and inevitability. His back arched against the chaise, muscles pulled taut, veins beneath his skin glowing faintly with unnatural light. The fire snapped violently in the hearth, throwing sparks as if recoiling from the power unfurling in the boy's blood.
I did not flinch. Instead, I moved closer and slid my fingers through the matted strands of his hair with gentle unhurried strokes. As if my touch might anchor him to something beyond the torment flooding his veins.
I got comfortable in my seat. Cain warned that it was going to take a while. Three days at most. Closing my eyes, I continued my stroking of his hair, my thoughts soon wondering to the past year. The day we met was one of if not the sweetest memories I hold dear to my unbeating heart.
---
⌈ Evangeline – One Year Ago ⌋
Location: The Masquerade Gala at the Emerson Estate
Time: Late Winter, 1932
The room shimmered with candlelight and champagne laughter. Music spiraled from the quartet nestled beneath gilded arches, each note languid and dreamlike. Silk dresses whispered across the marble floor. Velvet masks turned polite smiles into enigmas. Everything smelled of perfume, powdered skin, and wealth that had forgotten how to be quiet.
I remember feeling particularly bored.
Masquerades used to thrill me centuries ago. The anonymity. The theater. The flirtations behind fans and false names. But the world had dulled, and with it, my appetite for pageantry. I stood at the edge of the grand ballroom, swirling untouched wine in a crystal flute, my mask trimmed in obsidian lace, a spider spun in silver nestled just beneath one eye.
The humans were lovely in the way flowers are lovely before they wilt. Temporary. Predictable.
Until he walked in.
He wasn't announced with fanfare. There were no trumpets or trailing murmurs. Just a quiet ripple in the room's current as those nearest subtly turned their heads.
He moved like shadow—poised, deliberate, entirely self-contained. His mask was minimalist, black with delicate gold filigree curling along the sides, not to impress but to obscure. Silver-blond hair fell across his brow in defiance of whatever pomade had once tamed it. He wore the black suit of a mourning prince, and yet he wasn't mourning.
He was observing.
And his eyes—gods, even then—those violet eyes behind the mask glowed with something still and sharp. Like candlelight behind amethyst.
I found myself watching him.
Cain noticed, of course. He always notices.
"You're curious about one of the humans," he said, low enough only I could hear.
"Curious is too kind a word," I replied. "I'm bored. He's... unfamiliar."
"Unfamiliar," Cain echoed with amusement, sipping his wine like it didn't taste like ash. "That's rare for you."
He was right. I knew the entire Hale lineage. And yet I had never bothered to take notice of any of them.
I made my way across the floor as if pulled. We didn't speak at first. Not really. We passed by each other once—he gave a polite nod, I offered a subtle smile. The kind of ballroom diplomacy that goes unnoticed unless you're looking for it.
It wasn't until later, in the conservatory beyond the ballroom, where most guests wouldn't wander that we truly met.
He stood alone by the frost-laced windows, sketchbook in hand, drawing the shape of a lily beneath the moonlight.
"You're very talented," I said softly, my voice just above a whisper.
He didn't startle. Didn't flinch. He looked up at me with those tired, intelligent eyes and said, "thank you. May I help you with something? Or are you too hiding from the dancing wolves?"
I remember laughing genuinely. "A bit dramatic for a masquerade, don't you think?"
He offered a half-shrug. "I simply call it how I see it. They hide behind beautiful smiles and pride themselves on how much pretty stones they have on. All while they wait to see a weakness to skrike, to bite down on whoever has the prettier decorated neck."
Gods, what was I supposed to do with that?
I asked for his name. He gave me a fake one. I pretended to believe it. We spoke about art. About the burden of beauty. Of how the world doesn't know what to do with those who refuse to perform. His mind was unlike the others. Wry. Quiet. Kind without simpering.
He never looked at me the way mortal men did. He didn't want me. Not in the way most did.
He saw me. Or maybe he saw through me.
I should have left it there—chalked it up to an evening curiosity and gone back to feeding on charm and empty glances. But I didn't.
I lingered.
---
⌈ The Months That Followed ⌋
I crossed paths with him again. And again. At museums. At galleries. Once, entirely by accident, in the rain outside a bookstore where he was buying a second-hand copy of Wuthering Heights.
"I like the monsters in love," he said when I asked why.
He wasn't flirtatious. He wasn't easy. He was real—unapologetically haunted, sharp-edged but not cruel. I began to orchestrate our meetings. Gently. Carefully. Always disguised as chance.
I should have grown tired of him. Mortals were not meant to hold my attention for long. But every time I pulled away, something tugged me back.
It wasn't love. Not at first.
It was compulsion. Not of the supernatural kind, but something deeper. A resonance. A reflection. He was young, but he held sorrow like an heirloom. And I, an ancient predator, found myself wanting to shield him from the rot of the world that I had long since accepted.
I wanted to see his art.
I wanted to hear his voice recite things no one else thought to speak aloud.
I wanted to know what shape his soul would take if death didn't get to it first.
And then—
One evening, while sitting across from him in the café he worked at part-time, something shifted.
He was tired that night. Drawn. He sketched in silence, and I watched the pencil in his hand tremble slightly.
He looked up, eyes meeting mine. And for the first time, he asked me a question with no agenda.
"Do you ever feel like you're supposed to be someone else?"
That was the moment I realized I had fallen.
Not in the way children fall—with fire and ache and hunger. No.
I fell like a cathedral crumbles—slow, sacred, inevitable.
---
⌈ Present ⌋
The fire cracked again, louder this time, bringing me back.
Nathaniel still writhed beneath my hand, the transformation far from over. But I didn't stop stroking his hair. Didn't stop whispering comfort in a language older than the stars.
Cain stood by the hearth now, eyes closed, listening. "You care for him," he said, not as a question, but as truth.
"I warned myself not to," I murmured. "But he reminds me of what I was before I died."
Cain gave a slow nod. "The connection is weak since he was still human, but it sounds like you have found your eternal mate. Congratulations, my dear."
The words settled like ash in my chest.
I froze, my fingers still woven gently through Nathaniel's damp hair. "My… eternal mate?" I echoed, the phrase unfamiliar on my tongue—like speaking a language I hadn't used in centuries.
Cain turned to face me fully now, his expression unreadable, hands clasped behind his back like a philosopher preparing a lecture.
"You've felt the pull," he said simply. "Haven't you? The compulsion that isn't compulsion. The tether that isn't forged by blood, but by fate. The ache in your chest when he's near. The way your hunger doesn't just want to consume him—it wants to protect him."
My throat tightened. I looked down at Nathaniel's pale face, still contorted in pain, and said nothing.
Cain took a slow breath, more out of habit than necessity. "We of the old blood rarely speak of it anymore. Too many have forgotten. Too many assumed it was myth. A vampire's eternal mate is not just a lover. Not a pet, not a companion, not a conquest. They are… the soul that mirrors our own. Not born of the same time, or even the same life, but shaped of the same essence. A twin flame, made immortal by destiny's cruelty or kindness."
I looked up at him sharply. "But vampires do not have souls."
Cain's eyes gleamed with something like amusement. "Don't they? If we were truly soulless, we wouldn't grieve. We wouldn't dream. And we certainly wouldn't love."
I turned my gaze back to Nathaniel, my voice barely audible. "I didn't plan for this."
Cain's smile was soft. "No one ever does."
He stepped closer, his tone gentler now. "You've lived a long time, Bat-shel-ohavi. You've seen kingdoms rise and gods fall. You've danced through centuries without once letting your heart be ensnared. And yet, here he lies… not as prey, but as your chosen."
I didn't respond. I couldn't. Because everything he said was true.
The way Nathaniel had shifted something in me—subtly at first, then all at once—wasn't just mortal curiosity. It had been a pull older than memory. A whisper in my blood. A tremor in the silence I'd long grown used to.
Cain lowered his voice even more. "When he awakens, you'll know for sure. The bond will settle, sharpen. He'll feel it too. You'll recognize each other not."
"And if he doesn't accept it?" I asked softly, fear coiling tight around my ribs.
Cain looked at the fire. "Then you will suffer. As all who love without return do. But I suspect," he said, glancing back at me with knowing eyes, "you won't have to worry about that."
I watched Nathaniel's chest rise in another shallow breath, the firelight casting gold over the bruises beginning to fade.
"We shall see soon enough."