Chapter Text
Anna pulled the comb brutally through her curls. Once she’d had servants for this task, but lately she could not stand the seeming betrayal of letting anyone else’s hands do it. Syanna had always loved the waviness of Anarietta’s honey brown hair, but had the gentlest of touches when it came to a snarl, taking the time to parse through the strands until they were separated again. Anna had neither the patience nor the inclination, and ripped through the day’s tangles with single-minded purpose.
A breeze lifted the loose strands of her hair. She didn’t remember opening the window, but it was cracked nonetheless and winter’s chilled air was seeping into the room. Winters in Toussaint were not as foully snow-ridden as those further north but the cold this year felt worse than normal.
She heard the footsteps just as she closed the latch on the window. “I told you to leave me be,” she snarled. Her guard captain had taken to nannying her in the months since Syanna’s murder, and it took a much sharper tongue to keep him in line and her privacy intact. She spun around from the vanity, expecting to reprimand her ever-hovering guard captain only to find it was not him.
The man – creature – who stood before her was dressed all in simple black robes, and his face was covered in a thick hood. She knew him nonetheless – his wickedness radiated from him too palpably to let his disguise succeed.
“Beast,” she growled, her heartrate speeding up, her voice catching in her throat before her anger pushed past it. “Have you come to collect the second sister then, to add to your vast collection of foul deeds?”
The vampire dropped his hood. His face, though pale and drawn, was still human – if you could call it such a thing to begin with. “No,” he said.
Anna’s fingers shook where they clutched the comb, and she thought briefly of calling for her guards before discarding the idea. If the monster was here to kill her, the guards would not stop him – that horrible night so many months ago had proven that. No, calling for the guards would only get them killed as well.
Blast that witcher for not taking the Beast’s head when he could have.
“Then what have you come for? To gloat, perhaps – to torment me?” She held her chin high, refused to let her voice break. Syanna had deserved so much more, but the least Anna could do was not show her fear in front of her murderer.
“Also no,” the vampire said. He held his hands clasped in front of him, worrying at the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. “I… I came to…” he stopped, the small muscles of his cheek twitching perceptibly, visible even across the distance that separated them.
“What?” Anna demanded, imperious despite the current of fear that was twisting her belly. “You came to what, vampire?” The air was cold, and she was dressed for bed in her nightgown but she refused to cross her arms over her chest, refused to show weakness in what could be her last moments alive.
“I am not sure,” the vampire said, as if he himself found his actions puzzling.
Irritation overwhelmed her fear. “You just… dropped by. To see the sister of the woman you murdered. To see the Duquessa of the city you rampaged through. And you did this on a whim?”
He moved too quickly to see, as if his body only existed in this world in flashes: one moment standing before her, and then next he had her pinned against the wall by a hand around her throat. The comb fell uselessly from her fingers and she scrambled for purchase against his hand, finding his grasp steely and unmovable.
“You were next on her list,” he said calmly, his face still stern, no expression other than the furrowing of his brow and the tightness of his jaw. “She would have had me kill you, rip out your heart. Instead I killed her, and you call me murderer.”
“As do our people,” Anna bit out. His hand wasn’t quite tight enough to cut off her oxygen, just enough to keep her from breaking free. “Whom you and yours slaughtered by the dozens, lest you have forgotten!”
“She should have come to me,” the vampire growled. “Lives would have been spared – “
Anna spat in his face, and his brow furrowed even deeper, just a shade shy of truly monstrous as her saliva trailed down his cheek like a tear.
“How dare you,” she hissed, “how dare you blame her for your own actions, how dare you claim innocence in this matter. You alone made your choices in the end – the choice to ravage, the choice to kill her!” She thrashed against his hand, loathing his touch, yearning to scratch out his eyes with her nails even if they would grow right back.
“She knew what I was!” the vampire roared, flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth. “She knew, and she manipulated me, and…”
“And so you murdered innocents without her command, to spite her,” Anna sneered, unafraid of the way the vampire’s face was contorting into rat-like incisor fangs and a thicker brow. Let him kill her, the brute – at least then she and her sister would be reunited.
There came a loud knock at the door. “Duquessa?”
“I am fine,” she shouted quickly, “leave me be!”
The vampire frowned, his features retreating into his normal mockery of humanity. “You would send them away?”
“Of course. I will not have you kill them too.”
“I will not,” the vampire said, his dark eyes bearing an emotion that Anna could not place, even if she had cared to evaluate it. “I would not – that is not why I came here.”
“So you have said, and yet I feel your claws against my throat.”
The vampire’s hand dropped immediately to his side, darting away like a startled bird. Hesitantly, he wiped his cheek with the sleeve of his shirt, and moved further away from her.
“I hate you,” Anna seethed, her hands going to her throat and feeling for the ring of bruises she knew would be growing there. “I hate it more that I cannot kill you, that my guards cannot kill you, that if I were to ask for your head it would only cause more innocent deaths and yours would still be denied me. I despise you, monster – no wonder Syanna did as well.”
“She loved me,” the vampire said, then quickly corrected, “Once. She loved me once. I know that now.”
“Her greatest error. And you have come to this realization too late, monster, for I assure you she is still quite dead. Any affection she may have held for you means nothing in the face of your crimes.”
“She betrayed me,” he said. “I could not find it in myself to forgive her, knowing what she made me do. I still cannot, but I… I know now it was not all a ruse, not in the beginning.”
Hatred sprouted in her chest, turning her voice rough. “Does that give you some measure of comfort, to know that the woman you carved into may have cared for you at one time?”
“No,” he said quietly, staring at the floor. His form began to evaporate. “It does not.”
“Good,” she snarled. “May it plague you for the rest of your bedamned life.”
She caught one last glimpse of dark, glistening eyes and then the vampire turned to smoke and fled the room.