Chapter 25-Space to breathe

Chapter 25: 25-Space to breathe

Hours after Zolani and Lumi left her dormroom, Maisa waited patiently in her room. She counted every footstep outside her dormitory door until the guards changed shifts.

One, two, three... the voices outside grew distant as the older guards briefed the new patrol on their assignments. Metal armour clinked softly, boots scraped against the polished stone floor, and for a brief moment, every pair of eyes looked away from her window.

It was all the opening she needed. She slipped onto the windowsill, her heartbeat loud enough that she wondered if the entire academy could hear it. Her fingers gripped the cold stone ledge before she leapt.

Her body dropped two floors. Instead of the painful impact she expected, she landed in a crouch so lightly that barely a blade of grass bent beneath her feet.

She blinked. "Right..." it dawned on her. She wasn’t human anymore.

One glance over her shoulder confirmed that the guards were still facing the corridor. None of them had noticed that she had left her room. Without another thought, Maisa disappeared into the darkness.

She ran as fast as her feet could carry her. It was not because someone was chasing her or that she was afraid but simply because she needed space to breathe and silence to process her thoughts.

The academy vanished behind her as towering pine trees swallowed her whole. Moon light filtered through the dense canopy in scattered silver patches that danced across the forest floor.

Moss cushioned every step she took while cool night air rushed past her face. She pushed harder and faster.

The wind caught her brown hair, sending it streaming behind her like a banner. The branches blurred, tree trunks became dark streaks, and the forest transformed into nothing more than colours rushing past her eyes.

A laugh escaped her lips before she could stop it. She wasn’t laughing because she was happy but because it felt too surreal. It’s impossible even.

She had spent her whole life hearing stories about vampire speed, training to survive against it, learning that no human could ever outrun one.

Now, she was that monster. Every stride carried her dozens of metres away, and every leap felt almost weightless as the wind embraced her instead of resisting her.

For one strange moment, It felt like flying. "Is this really me?" she whispered the question into the night. "Am I really this fast?"

Her thoughts quickly returned in the way they always did. The freedom of running couldn’t outrun the heaviness inside her chest. One minute, she was flying, and the next, it felt like she was falling from the clouds.

Everything had happened too quickly. Only days ago, she had still been polishing her blessed dagger beside her father. She had still been dreaming about becoming the greatest vampire hunter the Everheart family had ever produced.

Now, she was a vampire. Not pretending to be one to infiltrate the vampire society on a mission. She was one of them. One of the night children, the kind that were afraid of daylight.

Her fingers unconsciously rose to her lips. They lingered there, her lips were still warm even at thar moment. She could almost still feel them, the two vampires.

Zolani’s hungry but gentle hesitation and Lumi’s careful uncertainty. The softness of the kisses neither of them had intended.

Her breathing slowed. "Is that what a kiss is supposed to feel like?"

The memory made something flutter warmly inside her chest. Immediately afterwards, pain followed. It ran throughout her entire body.

The flower beneath her collarbone pulsed. One petal glowed brighter than the others before slowly dimming again. Then another glow came, and it crashed down on her heart beneath the flower-shaped mark.

’Varitreya! Addessa!’ The names resonated in the core of her heart. The two untouched petals seemed...empty.

The bond ached painfully and longingly for the two. It wanted them to acknowledge her, and the need struck deeper into her bones.

It was as though the bond was quietly asking, "Will they accept you too?" And the other part was asking, "Will you accept them too?"

Maisa pressed her palm against her chest. "No... this..." she whispered desperately. "Please... I can’t. I don’t even know them."

The warmth refused to disappear, and it almost felt alive, demanding and impatiently uncertain as though fate had already made the choice and was simply waiting for her to stop resisting it.

Tears blurred her vision. "My life... doesn’t feel like mine anymore."

Her thoughts drifted elsewhere. She figured if she distracted her mind, her heart would cease to feel her mates, and she’d be free of the pain from the mark.

To another home, another family and another life that she had nearly a week before that now felt so foreign, her parents.

Her father’s proud smile the day she made her first vampire kill. Her mother’s warm embrace after every successful hunt. The cheers around the dinner table whenever another dangerous vampire family had been eliminated.

Everything she had been taught had believed had been turned to a fragment in her head. She looked down at her own hands.

Hands that had once wielded blessed weapons were hands that now possessed claws hidden beneath human nails. "Will a day come when these claws will raise against blessed weapons?" She wondered with a heavy heart.

Then, almost without thinking, her fingertips brushed across her lips again. Her cheeks warmed, and a miserable little laugh escaped her.

"Dad would kill me," she confessed. The words broke apart halfway through. "Mum too," she was certain of it.

If they ever learned the truth that not only had their daughter become the very creature they hunted, she had kissed vampires.

And the vampires she locked lips, exchanged saliva, and momentary emotions were not enemies, prisoners, or targets. They were her mates.

She could almost hear her father’s horrified voice. "Everhearts do not fraternise with monsters, Mai!"

Her mother would probably cry when she came to learn the truth. Then, she’d wipe her tears, take her place at the head of the table, and mark her as the target.

Her father would sharpen a stake at her mother’s command, rally other hunters, and come for her undead dead heart. The thought made fresh tears gather in her eyes.

"I’m sorry..." she whispered into the wind. "I’m so sorry..." she cried.