Chapter 1

Elena's POV

Adrian was dying in my arms, two bullets buried in his chest.

The silver had pierced his heart, and blood had soaked through the whole front of his coat.

The guards had already driven the hunters back.

All that remained of the hall was the shattered crystal of the fallen chandeliers, the toppled long table, and the smell of blood, so thick it would not clear.

I knelt and pressed down on the wound with everything I had.

Blood kept welling up between my fingers anyway.

My own back had taken a few rounds.

The silver was lodged against bone, and the pain left me barely able to hold on.

But I didn't dare let go.

"Adrian. Stay awake."

I looked down at him, my voice shaking hard.

"The doctor's almost here."

"Just hold on."

He lay in my arms, his face a terrible shade of white.

Vampires were never warm to begin with.

But in that moment, I could feel him going cold, inch by inch.

He lifted his eyes to mine.

Those crimson eyes I had loved for so long finally lost their coldness.

There was exhaustion in them.

Regret.

And a guilt that had come far too late.

"Elena."

He said my name.

I bent close at once.

"I'm here."

I had said those words too many times.

When he fell apart after Clara was sent back to the human world, I stayed beside him.

When he shut himself in his study and wouldn't see me, I stood outside the door and kept watch all night.

I was always there.

But it had been so long since he had said my name with any tenderness.

Adrian's fingers stirred. He saw the tears gathering in my eyes, and only brushed the back of my hand, light as nothing.

"I'm sorry. I can't stay with you any longer."

My tears dropped onto his face.

"Don't talk like that."

"You're not going to die."

He only shook his head.

The movement was so faint I almost missed it.

"My only regret is that I ever married you in the end."

Everything in me went rigid.

The wound in my shoulder was still bleeding.

But in that instant, all of the pain went numb.

Adrian looked at me, his voice sinking lower.

"I used to think that since we grew up side by side, you would be the only wife I'd ever have."

"It wasn't until Clara that I understood what love really was."

My lips parted.

My throat was full of the taste of blood.

I wanted to ask him, what was I to him?

I had miscarried for him over and over, nearly losing my life just to bear his heir.

Countless times I had taken silver meant for him, kept watch over him without rest, even as he gave me nothing but a cold face.

And after all of it, he still regretted marrying me.

But I couldn't get the question out.

Because I already knew the answer.

Adrian looked at me, the last light in his eyes slowly going out.

"If there's a next life."

He said.

"I hope I never meet you."

My fingertips clenched hard. I could no longer tell which hurt worse, the silver in my body or the wound in my chest.

He no longer had the strength to make out my face.

"All I wanted was to let everything go and be with Clara."

As the last word left him, his hand slid out of mine.

I looked down at him.

For a long time I didn't move.

The noise of the hall felt very far away.

The guards were shouting for the doctor.

Someone tried to lift me off the floor.

But I only held Adrian.

I held the man I had loved my whole life, the man who, at the very end, had used his dying breath to deny everything I had been.

A great weariness came over me.

The wound in my shoulder bled and bled.

The burn of the silver bored along my bones, straight toward my heart.

I looked at Adrian's pale face, and at last the tears wouldn't come.

So it was true. He had never loved me, not even at the end.

I had once believed that if the Council sent Clara back, if Adrian married me, if I simply stayed at his side, then one day he would see how much I cared for him.

He never did.

In all our years of marriage, I gave him everything.

When he didn't want to attend a function, I went in his place.

Every time hunters came, I put myself in front of him without a thought for my own life.

When he said he didn't want children, I carried the Council's pressure alone.

Then he changed his mind and said he wanted a child after all.

I conceived, again and again.

And lost them, again and again.

The doctor said my body couldn't keep paying this price.

But I gave birth to that child anyway.

Because I thought that with a child, this household might finally hold something that was truly mine.

It didn't.

Even the way Adrian looked at our son carried that same faint distance.

His body stayed at my side.

But his heart had followed Clara back to the human world the day she left.

Yet all my life, I clung to nothing but an empty shell.

Blood ran out of my wounds.

The candlelight in front of me dimmed and dimmed.

At last I couldn't hold Adrian any longer.

As I fell, I heard someone call my name.

But I had no strength left to answer.

If there really was a next life.

I would never stand in his way again.

I would never wait for him again.

I would never throw away my whole life for a man who didn't love me.

I would let him have what he wanted.

And let myself go too.