Page 66 of Let Sleeping Vampires Lie

The room went very quiet.

My pulse thudded in my ears.

“You knew when Raven went down last night,” he continued, “that if you failed, you’d take that poison with you. You knew it might drug you and Rene both. You did it anyway.”

“She would have died if I didn’t,” I said.

“I’m not saying you should have walked away,” he replied. “I’m saying you’d already hit your limit, and you didn’t hesitate to go beyond it. There wasn’t even a pause where you thought about what losing you would do. You thought about the mission. About Raven. About Rene. Everyone but yourself.”

“That’s what leaders do,” I whispered.

“No,” he said again. “That’s what martyrs do.”

The word landed like a hammer.

I looked at my hands, pale against the dark blanket. They were steady now. The tremor from earlier had faded. Only a residual ache remained, as if magic had left fingerprints along my bones.

“I don’t know how to be anything else,” I said, barely audible.

He shifted next to me, leaning closer, shoulder brushing mine.

“Then learn,” he said softly.

My head snapped up.

His eyes had gentled, but the determination in them hadn’t dimmed.

“Learn to fight for yourself the way you fight for everyone else,” he said. “Learn to say you matter as much as they do. Learn to let someone drag you out of the fire for once.”

“And you want to be that someone,” I said.

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. “I do.”

The force of that shook me.

“You’re asking me to change centuries of instinct,” I said.

“I’m asking you to stay alive,” he replied.

“That’s not exactly a small request.”

“I’m not a small man,” he said, mouth twitching just a little.

I huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh if it didn’t sting.

Silence fell again, but it felt different this time. Less like a battlefield. More like a crossroads.

“I don’t know how to do what you’re asking,” I admitted.

His shoulders loosened, the tension in his posture shifting into something that looked oddly like relief. “That’s the first honest thing you’ve said about yourself today.”

“I’m very honest.”

“With everyone but you,” he said.

He leaned toward me, moving slowly, giving me time to push him away if I wanted to. I didn’t.

He was close enough that I could see the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes, the faint scar near his jaw that I’d always suspected came from a long-ago battle he never talked about.