Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“I’ll be fine.” The three words that’d become my mantra in the last four years. I’ll be fine.

Trauma could do shitty things to a person’s head, after all.

No one touched what belonged to me without repercussions. My class. My requirements. My student. Without a doubt, Lilia Vespertine was going to be a massive headache. But she was my headache.

“Your questions have begun to traipse a delicate line, as they relate to my activities.” “Sorry. I’m just curious, is all.” “Curiosity often leads us down a precarious path.”

Unfortunately for him, there was nothing left in me to appeal to, only a bottomless hollow in which to cast his useless tears. My heart was a graveyard. A cold and starving apathy entombed within slumbering bones. Nothing could make me feel sorry for him.

“Stay out of trouble, Curious Moth,” he said, as he strode for the door. Curious Moth. A nickname. A fitting one, too, given the fact that I had no intentions of avoiding the flame.

“That is the tragedy of women, isn’t it? We deny ourselves beauty for the sake of misleading men.”

“The wealthy possess an insatiable appetite for the rare and priceless. They stare because you’re the only thing worth staring at.”

“Go, Miss Vespertine,” Professor Bramwell whispered, his proximity setting my nerves aflame. “You’re far too young to live a life without mistakes.”

His dark chuckle tickled the back of my neck, and his eyes held a ruthless glint that slid through my bones. “My, you are a wicked little moth.”

He tipped his head, and I caught a flicker of intrigue in that coppery gaze. “Look at you. Such a bold moth. Far bolder than I gave you credit for.”

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.

“And so the moth befriended the flame.” “Huh,” I said, falling into step after him. “I didn’t think the flame was capable of being friendly.”

Some kisses were said to feel like fireworks. His felt like a slow-drip anesthetic, silently siphoning my senses, until all I could smell, taste, and feel was him.

She was the warmth of the sun on a cold and rotting corpse. The first breath after a lifetime of death.

“I don’t feel safe anywhere anymore.” “You’re safe with me, Lilia.”

“Don’t hide from me, Lilia. You are no less beautiful than that day you walked into my classroom and stole my fucking breath.” “It’ll scar.” I said, not only referring to the wound on my face. “It might. But it’ll also serve as a reminder that you fought a professional killer and survived. You’re stronger than you realize.”

“I feel it, too,” he said, as if reading my mind. “It’s inside of me. Burning like a fever I can’t shake. It’s a spiteful, prideful anger that refuses to admit the truth.” “What truth?” I asked, my voice shaky. Nervous. “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.”

Mortui vivos docent. The dead teach the living.