As I lay down on the bed, my heart broke when he climbed on top of me and began gently undoing the laces on the bodice of my gown. As he did what he came there to do, I tried to shut my mind off what was happening. I tried to think of him as someone other than the young man who enamored me over the past weeks, but I couldn’t. Yuri was just like every other man: out to use women like me.

When he was done, his weight fell atop me and without asking me, he removed the mask. I didn’t have the will to resist. At that point, I didn’t care anymore if he saw me for what I was, because I saw him for what he was too.

When our eyes met, I could barely recognize him through the blur of my own tears. Despite the haziness, however, I could still make out the shock in his eyes upon realizing who it was that he just laid with.

“It’s you…” he managed to say as he got off me and pulled his clothes back on in a hurry.

I tried to show him that I was strong, that my heart wasn’t breaking in two at what had just occurred between us, but my resolve was crumbling. I sat up and took my place on the edge of the bed, trying not to cry as I pulled my dress back on. I wanted to get out of that room as quickly as possible, but found that I was shaking so badly, I could barely get the dress on.

His face softened as he watched me struggle. I couldn’t decipher the expression on his face.

Is he disgusted by me? Does he think less of me now than he did before?

“Stop,” he ordered me after I failed once again to get my arms through the sleeves of the dress.

By pure instinct, I heeded to his command. That was the training the Duke had put me through. Every order was followed immediately and without question. I dropped my arms to my sides, allowing the top of the dress to fall over the bunched skirt of the outfit.

Yuri approached me and held my arms, coaxing me to stand up. Afraid that the skirt would fall to the ground and once again expose me completely to him, I hung on to the dress, holding it just below my waist as I let him study me.

I didn’t dare look at his face as he perused me, but I sensed it when he swallowed hard. “Why do you have so many bruises?”

Why does it matter? As usual, I didn’t respond. In my book, he didn’t deserve a response. Not after he had just used me.

“Who did this to you? Is this why I can’t walk with you anymore? Is this why you wouldn’t accept even the smallest of gifts from me?”

I hated his questions. I didn’t want to have to answer them. After all, what was the point? I was fully exposed to him now. The charade we had was over. “Is there anything else you would have me do for you?”

“Yes. Answer my questions and tell me your name.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.”

Yuri frowned at me and the silence was so long and deafening, I finally managed to look up at him. I was surprised by what I saw there, because what I saw was something I never saw from the Duke or from any man who’s had me before. Guilt. I saw Yuri’s guilt.

“I’m so sorry,” he told me.

I couldn’t fight back the urge to scoff at him. “You’re sorry? Would you have been sorry if you had never seen who was behind the mask?”

He gulped. “I was sorry even while I was…while we were… This is wrong. I never should’ve gone along with this.”

“Then why did you?” Why does anyone? Do they have any idea how much ruin they bring to us?

He didn’t respond. Instead, he lifted the bodice of my gown over my body and began lacing it up. “This time, I really do understand,” he said. “Nothing has changed. In my eyes, you’re still the beautiful woman in the woods, the same one I wouldn’t mind taking a walk with every day for the rest of my life, the same one who enamored me from the first moment I laid my eyes on her.”

He kissed my lips—the most tender and precious kiss I’d ever experienced.

“I’m sorry I did this to you. I’m sorry you have to go through this, but know that I will spend my whole life making it up to you. I swear it.”

He was true to his word. I don’t think Yuri ever forgave himself for sleeping with me that night. In fact, even when I made advances on him over the past centuries, he never did quite respond.

He was the one who turned me into a vampire. He did it so I could protect myself from the Duke. Yuri was the one who always looked after me and protected me for hundreds of years.

I hated it when he was with any other woman aside from me and I knew that he hated it whenever I was with any other man aside from him, but that was the way it’d always been with Yuri. We couldn’t stand being apart, but somehow, we both knew that we couldn’t be together either. I asked him once why that was and his blunt answer was enough to give clarity to our situation: “I want to be with you, Claudia. I think you know that, but I don’t think you’ll ever enjoy us being together until you get that sixteen-year-old victim out of you.”

That was the day I realized that Yuri saw right through me. I knew that he didn’t care about my past, that he would accept me if only I could accept myself. He also knew that I would always find it difficult to ever forgive him for sleeping with me that night. Until I was ready, until I could let go of my past, we both knew that we could never really be together.

Leaving The Shade, that’s exactly what happened to me: I realized that the past really didn’t matter, that I’d been wasting my immortality being so caught up in avenging my past against someone I had already ended. I was punishing both Yuri and myself for a past neither of us could ever change.

What I would do to take it all back and do things differently…

My thoughts were interrupted when the door creaked open and Sofia emerged. I hadn’t heard from Sofia since she had told me that she was going to escape.

“Sofia!” I jumped out of the bed to greet her. “Were you able to do it? Were you able to find a way to escape to The Shade? And now you’ve come back for me?”

She shook her head and gave me a soft smile. “I got caught. You really can’t trust some people.”

My heart sank. I breathed out a sigh and shrugged. “I guess this is it then? I deserve this fate. My fault for being so stupid all these years.”

I couldn’t have predicted what Sofia was going to say next in a million years, but when she said it, it was music to my ears.

“No, Claudia. We’re going back to The Shade.”

CHAPTER 34: INGRID

My daughter was a relentless plague I couldn’t seem to get rid of. Her words cut like a knife and kept cutting even as they circled my mind over and over and over again.

You might be surprised at how powerful a force love is, Mother.

Mother. She called me mother. She told me she loved me. Naïve young woman. I scoffed even as I sat on that wretched cot inside that wretched hunter dungeon, lamenting my humanity. However, as much as I hated to admit it, I could call her naïve and innocent as much as I wanted, but deep inside, I knew the truth. She was stronger in spirit and more powerful in her love and kindness than I could ever be. Sofia was everything I was not, everything I wished I could be. Perhaps that was why I loathed her so much.

I couldn’t understand how she could be so strong and powerful even clothed in her frail humanity. When I realized what Aiden had done, that he had exacted the ultimate punishment upon me by turning me back into a human being, it tore me apart. It felt like losing everything that had made me who I was. I lashed out. When Sofia visited me, she came as a wave of calm in the storm I was brewing up. I took one look at her—beautiful and brave—and knew that there was something deeply wrong with me for envying her instead of being proud of her.

I was still musing over her words when Aiden showed up, messing with my conflicted emotions even more.

“How could you do this to me?” I glared at him.

He just stared as he stepped in. The bars behind him shut closed and we were left alone.

I tried to hold my glare at him as he stared right back. I knew, however, that it was a battle of wills I couldn’t win. I shuddered as I looked into his green eyes, butterflies fluttering in my stomach—a sensation I hadn’t felt since I turned into a vampire. I couldn’t help but break the stare as I bowed my head, my eyes downcast. “What do you want from me, Aiden?”

“Can you never be Camilla again?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve turned me into? Am I not once again human? Weak and vulnerable to your every advance? Pining for you? Unworthy of you?”

“Is that what you felt all those years we were together, Camilla? That you were unworthy? That you were weak?”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t believe my ears. How could he not know the answers to the questions he was spouting out? How could he not know that that was exactly how I had felt? More than that, I couldn’t believe that he had actually called me by that name again. Camilla. I couldn’t understand it, but my heart leaped at the sound of him saying that name again.

“I never saw you that way. You were vibrant and strong-willed and adventurous. You were sweet and kind. You were beautiful in every way as Camilla Claremont, and then you became Ingrid Maslen and now, look at you…”

His words stung. All these years, I looked down on the person that I was. To be told that he found that person beautiful was daunting to me. How on earth could he have seen her as beautiful?

“What do you want from me, Aiden?” I asked him, hoping to end the confrontation as soon as possible. “I’m human now. Shouldn’t I be released from this prison by now? Or do you torment and brainwash humans too?”

Aiden shook his head slowly. “What do I want from you? I just wanted you to know that what you wanted—Sofia ultimately belonging to your beloved lord, Borys…it’s not going to happen. We’re about to turn Derek Novak into a human being—just like you—and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

I was surprised by the effect those words had on me. I was made livid by the idea, reinforcing that a part of Ingrid Maslen still remained with me. “She belongs with Borys Maslen!” I screamed at him.