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Fragile Things
Elarian
With a deep sigh carrying decades of disappointment, Elarian slowly repeated herself.
“Send him. Now. You are Blades under my command, not sniveling children.”
Her voice sank into the gray stone underfoot, and for a moment, it felt as if the crumbling castle might swallow them whole. Then silence followed, thin and wavering, until the Knight-Commander found his voice again.
“I cannot afford to lose another tracker, Knight-General.”
Elarian did not look up. She studied a silver portrait of a man in her hands, replaying their last encounter over and over again. Her nails—filed to elegant, vicious points—tapped a slow, deliberate rhythm against the lacquered table. The silver caught the lamplight and fractured into a thousand shards of cold, blue light. The man’s face stared back at Elarian, mocking her every move. Even rendered in tintype, the rough grain could not dull his too-perfect visage. Full lips curved into a smile, just enough to show the length of his fangs.
They would be the first things she removed from his corpse.
“And why have you lost so many trackers? Need I remind you how many years I was one? It is not as difficult as you posit.”
Arrayed around Elarian like rays of moonlight, a group of elves stared at her. She shifted in her seat.
“The vampires are stronger here, Knight-General. It…it’s the white-haired one. He has spies or can read our thou—”
Lucan.
The name wrapped around her like barbed wire. Elarian slammed her fist on the table as her pulse quickened. The elf closest to her startled in her seat.
“The shivaem Lucan Valmere is not your concern.”
Elarian’s voice echoed over the cold stone. Around them, the room sagged under the weight of stale wine and far too many failed campaigns. Maps pinned and repinned until their corners curled cluttered one wall, ink bleeding from old battle lines that no longer held. Candlelight guttered with the uneven draft blowing through the crumbling walls. Hit the hardest during the initial battle between vampires and moon elves, the Darkening now wore its ruin with pride.
“Come see what the bloodsuckers cannot destroy,” the old Knight-Commander had proclaimed. Elarian always thought him a fool. How inevitable that the vampire she could never vanquish delivered the killing blow.
She could picture it so clearly: Lucan’s fangs at her commander’s neck, soulless eyes staring at nothing as he fed. Every line of that wretched face had buried itself into her bones. In the gloaming hours when the moon hid behind the clouds and the shadows drew close, she memorized every detail of the vampire Lucan Valmere. The coolness of his undead flesh lingered long after the hunt.
“Now, let’s try this again. We know the vampire court is moving south. I need eyes on them now—not when it is convenient for you.” Elarian roughly shoved the sleeve of her tunic upward, revealing a jagged, red scar running the length of her forearm. “Need I remind you what happened the last time I went in blind?”
Always so beautiful when you bleed for me, elf.
Lucan’s perfect, ashen-gray face flashed before her, quickly followed by his hands covered in her blood.
As the elves watched in silence, Elarian slowly traced the length of her newest scar. She lingered at her wrist, imagining Lucan’s grip wrapped tightly around her, his cool breath brushing against her lips. Shivers from his ghostly touch raced down her arm.
Duty drove Elarian; she’d sooner cut off her hand than admit her obsession. Monsters only deserved destruction, and yet…
Her fingers tapped hard against the table. Eleven times they had failed to kill each other—his fangs so close to her neck, her blade inches from penetrating his undead heart. Her silver had tasted his blood, and it only left her craving more. Eleven scars nicked into his flesh over his neck, his wrist, his blasphemous mouth.
The first was a mistake. A hesitancy. Her hand had stayed by pity at the broken thing staring back at her. Each time after that, something unknown kept her from delivering the killing blow.
After nearly a century of this game, the vampire tormenting her dreams would finally perish.
He must.
Shuffling feet pulled Elarian back to the war room. Blinking, she straightened her shoulders. One hand smoothed her short hair while the other curled into a fist. Too many eyes were on her. Her Knight-Commanders would have turned away when her memories took hold; here in the Darkening, she found no such courtesy.
Why in the hells did you call me back home, Reshva? Elarian sighed. Of all the things to question in the Knightdom, Reshva’s judgment was the least of her concerns. The Voice had never steered her wrong before.
Casting her gaze around, she quickly found the new Knight-Commander before her. He stood a head taller than the rest of the moon elves around him. Soft blue eyes more at home in a quiet library than a tense war room held her steady gaze. There was a strength in his build that certainly belonged on a battlefield, but he exuded none of the elegant lethality that Elarian demanded of her Knight-Commanders.
