Chapter 4 Chapter 4

Zamir's POV

Everything changed, the night I saw Genevieve's doppelganger.

I had been sitting in my study for hours, the way I often did when I wanted to be alone. Nine hundred years of living will do that to you. Fill the quiet with ghosts and regrets until you can't tell the difference between memory and madness.

I stared at the long wooden box on the table in front of me. I knew what was inside it. I had known for decades, ever since I had it commissioned from the only blacksmith in the world skilled enough to forge such a thing. A dagger. Not just any dagger, but one that was capable of ending a vampire's life permanently. Mine included.

I had tried everything else. I had tried sunlight, stakes, starvation. Nothing worked. My body refused to give up even when my mind had long since done so. Nine hundred years, and I was still here, still breathing and dragging the weight of everything I had done and everything that had been done to me. It had started with Genevieve.

She was my human love. I had loved her in the reckless, all-consuming way that only someone who has never loved before can love. And for a brief, golden stretch of time, she had loved me back. But Morgana had seen to it that it didn't last.

Morgana, the witch who had wanted me for herself for as long as I could remember. Who had watched me fall in love with a human woman and decided that if she couldn't have me, no one would. And what she had done had destroyed the bond between Vampires and witches forever.

Morgana had poisoned me with Hemlock, a herb that stripped away reason and turned a sane man with something feral and unrecognizable. I had lost my parents in the madness that followed. My sister too. 

And then, at the very end of it, when the poison had eaten through every last piece of who I was, I had turned on Genevieve.

I had killed her with my own hands.

When the Hemlock finally left my system and my mind returned to me, I woke up to find her cold and still. I had sat with her body for three days before anyone found me. The pain in my heart had been inexplicable—that alone should have killed me.

After that, I became a witch hunter. If Morgana had taken everything from me, then I would spend whatever remained of my existence taking everything from her kind. I had brought in so many women to this manor, so that one of them could kill me and end my misery. And still, I could not die.

I sincerely doubted that Amira could do the job, where dozens before her had failed. Despite the fact that she looked so much like Genevieve.

The dagger in that box was my last option. I had been working up to it for years. Every morning I woke up and thought, today. And every evening I sat here and thought, maybe not yet.

I reached out and rested my hand on the lid of the box. Then I thought of the girl.

I had been passing the slave house in my carriage two weeks ago when I saw her through the window. First thing that caught my eye was her red hair, the exact shade of Genevieve's. They had the same eyes too. The same curve of the jaw. I had almost told my driver to stop before I'd even made the conscious decision to do so.

I went back the following day, just to be certain I hadn't imagined it. I told myself it was curiosity. That I only wanted to confirm she was real, and then I would move on.

But she was real. And when I saw her standing on that podium, trembling and terrified, something in me that had been dormant for centuries stirred. Maybe fate was not done with me yet. Maybe it was bringing something back. And that was why I bought her.

I was still trying to decide what it meant or what I intended to do about it, when a flash of light appeared in the corner of my room.

I didn't look up from the box. "I can see you, Calista."

There was a beat of silence. Then the light solidified into the shape of a young woman with bright eyes and a sly expression.

"I was just testing my magic," she said innocently.

I looked at her then, anger flaring up within me. "A witch testing her magic in the manor of a vampire hunter. You never get tired of that particular joke, do you?"

"You can't do anything to me and we both know it," she said cheerfully, dropping into the chair across from me.

I was on my feet before she even finished the sentence. With my fangs extended, I crossed the room in less than a heartbeat. But she vanished the moment I reached her, reappearing in the far corner of the room with a cackle that bounced off the stone walls.

"You're getting slower," she said.

"You're getting more irritating," I growled in annoyance.

She grinned. "I prefer persistent."

We had done this dance enough times that it had taken on the quality of a ritual. I almost found it amusing, though I would never tell her that.

Then she stopped. The laughter left her face all at once, replaced by something focused and alert. She turned her head slowly, like an animal catching a scent.

"I can sense something," she murmured. "Something is here."

Just then, the door to my study opened.

Amira stepped inside, her red hair loose around her shoulders and her eyes wide as she took in the sight of Calista standing in the middle of the room. She looked between the two of us in surprise.

Calista turned to me, and the expression on her face was one I had never seen before. It was somewhere between recognition and reverence.

"You found her," she whispered quietly.

"Found who?" I asked. "What are you talking about?"

But Calista wasn't looking at me anymore. She was already moving toward the table. She reached for the wooden box, flipped it open, and lifted the dagger from inside. Then she crossed to Amira and pressed it into her hands.

Amira stared at the dagger like it was a snake that might bite her.

"Stab him," Calista said softly, positioning herself just behind Amira's shoulder. "Go on."

Amira's eyes found mine across the room. Her hands were shaking, the dagger trembling between her fingers. She looked terrified and confused in equal measure, which was the only reasonable response to being handed a weapon by a stranger and told to use it on a vampire.

I didn't move, nor did I run. I simply stood and watched her in a distant and detached way, what she would do.

"Stab him," Calista whispered again. "Stab him. Stab him."

Amira took a step toward me, and then another. She held the dagger tighter, raised it a little higher... And then she drove it into my stomach.