Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“What separates monsters from good men is only a matter of perspective. In your eyes, I’m a sick fuck for what I’ve done to you. But I, on the other hand, see you as a parasite.”

Without a doubt, Lilia Vespertine was going to be a massive headache. But she was my headache.

I’d never wanted anything so badly in my life.

Calling her beautiful was like calling the sun lukewarm. She’d blazed like the hottest part of a flame in that dress. And fuck me, I’d felt the heat.

The dead teach the living.

“Passions are useless, if we pursue them for others. They become obligations. Undesirable.”

“Because you’re better than them. Stronger. And unfortunately, you’ll have to fight harder for what you want. But you have an understanding of things beyond their comprehension. You’re exceptional,

“The mechanisms for achieving your goals are inconsequential, so long as they’re successful.”

“The dead themselves are harmless. It’s what they leave behind that inspires fear.”

“A reminder to appreciate life as a gift.”

“You’re a sickness inside of me that begs never to be cured. Infecting me with this unshakable craving for things I shouldn’t want.”

I both hated and craved the addicting way he’d hooked himself into my veins and fed me with this unbridled and reckless desire. It went against everything I was. Everything I believed. And yet, it was everything.

“You’re going to destroy me. And I won’t stop you. It feels too fucking good to stop.”

I wanted him in my blood, pulsing through me, heating my skin on the nights when I’d be alone in my bed, thinking of this moment. Right here. Right now. Forever.

The first breath after a lifetime of death.

He was right. He had absolutely ruined me. Torn me open to my darkest secrets, which he shifted and molded to fit himself there, and sewn me back together as something else entirely.

There was a beauty in it. The vulnerability I longed to see in him. The visible distress creeping over him was unfitting for a man so otherwise collected and detached. He was coming apart at the seams. Finally, a dent in the armor he wore like a second skin. What I’d mistaken as indifference wasn’t that, at all. He ached and burned as much as I did.

What I feel for you, Miss Vespertine, would destroy lives.”

It was there that I began to wonder if what I felt for Lilia was something more than I cared to admit.

I dared not slip into those thoughts, though, because I knew fate and the world didn’t give so freely. It lured us on a siren’s call and pulled us to the inevitable depths of pain that followed.

“You are a merciless vision of perfection.”

“You don’t have to be scared. I will never hurt you, Lilia. In fact, I’ll rain hell on anyone who ever hurts you again.”

I loved him. Every cell, every fiber of my being couldn’t hide that truth. Even if I wasn’t bold enough to say it or brave enough to risk the universe stealing it away from me, the words were as real as my fears. The words I kept secret like all my other trinkets–safely tucked away.

“That I would kill for you without a beat of hesitation, or remorse. And yet, at the same time, I could be reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash without you. I’m weak for you, Lilia.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You and I? This? There’s no escaping it. Doesn’t matter how fast you run, or how far you get, I will always be inside you just like this. In your bones and in your blood and in your head. It doesn’t matter what you tell the universe–what secrets you spill. Nothing can change what we are, what we’ve become.”

“I love you. And I don’t think I can stop loving you.”

“I have lived a lifetime in death–a cold existence in an endless void. Never feeling. Never knowing the warmth of touch. Every unfulfilling breath a suffocating reminder of how hollow I’d become. It wasn’t until you came along and cast the first ray of light that I felt a pulse of life. A pull that I couldn’t resist.” He thumbed the seam of my pressed lips. “Don’t ever hesitate to touch me, Lilia. You’re the only one who can. It was you who dragged my heart from this insensate slumber. And it’s you for whom it beats now.”

“It’s a fucking wreckage, though. Scarred and caged by ravaged bones. But it belongs only to you.”

most. I’d come to learn that at the heart of life was suffering, and pain was an inevitable consequence of love.

Love was also a sickness. An incurable disease.

Sometimes, the pain was too much to bear. But sometimes it felt good, because it meant that I was capable of feeling something

Mortui vivos docent. The dead teach the living.