On the night Elias first saw her, the moon hung low and red, like a wound that refused to heal. He stood at the edge of the old city, where cobblestones remembered centuries of footsteps and shadows still whispered the names of the dead. Elias had walked these streets for over three hundred years, yet nothing in all that time had prepared him for the way his unbeating heart faltered when she laughed.
Her name was Mira.
She worked in a small bookshop tucked between a café and a tailor's shop, a place that smelled of dust, ink, and forgotten dreams. Elias had entered only because the rain had begun to fall, sharp and sudden, and the windows glowed with a warmth he could no longer feel. He told himself it was shelter he sought, nothing more. But then Mira looked up from behind the counter, her dark eyes curious rather than afraid, and eternity cracked.
"Can I help you?" she asked, smiling as though night creatures and strangers with pale faces were ordinary things.
Elias nodded, though he did not know what he wanted. He pretended to browse, running his fingers along spines older than her country, older than the language she spoke. He listened to her hum softly as she arranged a stack of new arrivals. The sound was fragile, human, and achingly temporary.
He returned the next night. And the night after that.
At first, he told himself he was merely curious. Humans fascinated him the way fire fascinated moths—dangerous, beautiful, fleeting. But curiosity became anticipation, and anticipation became longing. Elias began to time his walks so he would arrive just before closing, when the city quieted and Mira locked the door, leaving only the two of them and the breathing silence between shelves.
They spoke of books at first. She loved stories of impossible love, of curses broken and monsters redeemed. Elias listened, hiding a bitter smile. He had once believed in redemption too.
"Do you ever wish you could live forever?" Mira asked one night, her chin resting on her hand.
Elias froze. The truth pressed against his lips like blood against a bitten vein.
"No," he said carefully. "Forever is a very long time to be alone."
She studied him, as though sensing a deeper meaning. "Then I hope you're never alone," she said.
If only she knew.
Elias was a vampire, bound to darkness since a winter night in 1719 when he had begged for life and been given something far crueler. He fed sparingly now, choosing those whose violence outweighed their innocence, but the hunger never truly slept. Every moment near Mira was torture—her pulse sang to him, her warmth beckoned. Loving her meant resisting her, and resistance felt like dying again and again.
Yet love, he discovered, was its own kind of hunger.
Weeks turned into months. Autumn bled into winter. Elias watched Mira wrap her scarf tighter against the cold, watched new lines of laughter form beside her eyes. She trusted him. Worse, she cared.
One night, as snow dusted the windows, she reached across the counter and touched his hand. Her skin burned, not painfully, but with a shocking aliveness.
"You're always so sad," she said softly. Like you're waiting for something terrible to happen."
"I am," Elias replied. "To you."
She frowned. "You'd never hurt me."
The lie lodged in his throat.
Elias decided then that he would leave. Love, he reasoned, was a luxury monsters could not afford. Better she remember him as a strange, quiet man than as the thing that destroyed her.
But fate, cruel and ironic, intervened.
The night Elias planned to disappear, he sensed danger the moment he stepped into the street. The air smelled wrong—sharp with fear. He followed the scent to the bookshop and found the door ajar, the bell broken on the floor.
Inside, Mira was struggling against a man with dead eyes and bloodstained lips. Another vampire.
Rage unlike any Elias had known tore through him. He moved faster than thought, tearing the attacker away, his fangs bared, his strength unleashed. The fight was brutal and brief. When it ended, the other vampire lay still, ash already forming where his body collapsed.
Mira stared at Elias, terror and shock warring on her face. Her gaze fell to his blood-smeared mouth, his exposed fangs.
"What are you?" she whispered.
Elias fell to his knees. Centuries of lies crumbled. "I'm so sorry," he said. "I wanted to leave. I never wanted you to know."
She backed away, trembling. "You… you drink blood."
"Yes."
"You could kill me."
"Yes."
Silence stretched, fragile as glass.
"Why haven't you?" she asked.
Elias looked up, tears he hadn't shed in centuries burning his eyes. "Because I love you."
The words hung between them, heavy with truth.
Mira's breathing slowed. Fear did not vanish, but something else joined it—understanding, perhaps, or courage.
"You saved me," she said. "From one of your kind."
"I would die before I harmed you."
She studied him for a long moment, then sat down across from him, close enough that he could feel her warmth again.
"I don't know what this means," she said. "I don't know if I can ever be the same with you."
"I don't ask you to," Elias replied. "I only ask for the chance to leave, so you can be safe."
Mira shook her head. "Running away doesn't feel like safety."
She reached out, hesitating only briefly before touching his cheek. "I don't love you because you're human," she said. "I love you because you're you."
For the first time in centuries, hope dared to bloom.
Their love was not easy. Mira aged while Elias did not. Nights were filled with difficult conversations, with fear and fierce devotion. He never fed from her, not once. Instead, he guarded her, cherished her, loved her with the patience of someone who understood the cost of time.
When Mira grew old, Elias stayed by her side, reading to her as she had once loved to read to him. When her breath finally stilled, he held her hand and wept for a life that had been unbearably short and infinitely precious.
Centuries later, Elias still walks the city at night. But he is no longer alone.
Love, he learned, did not save him from eternity but it gave eternity a taste worth enduring.