198

198
Lester pov

They speak about him like he isn’t real anymore, like Arvin is just a ghost, a ripple of something they almost remember but can’t quite place, as if he’s been reduced to myth before I’ve even stopped tasting the salt of his skin in memory.

They speak in quiet voices when they think I’m not listening, and they don’t use his name much now. They refer to him in fragments, phrases that mean nothing on their own - “the boy,” “the vessel,” “the thing that passed through.”

A scout says he’s changed and the trail went cold, then strange, then something worse. He claims that whatever followed the path they found, it didn’t leave the right kind of traces - no footsteps, no real scent, just heat, pressure, and the sound of trees groaning.

I tell myself I should be grateful they found anything at all, but gratitude is a coward’s emotion when it comes to him.

The words don’t even finish falling out of his mouth before my blade lands in the tree behind him. I don’t do it to threaten, I do it because I need something to bleed and I’m trying, trying so fucking hard not to make it him.

He flinches, but it’s not enough. I take a step closer, I want to rip the breath from his throat just to hear if the sound it makes can mimic the one that left Arvin’s lips the last time I touched him.

“Say it again,” I tell him, my voice low and deathly in my throat as I keep nearing him, barely holding back the rage that’s setting my skin on fire worse than any fire ever could. “Say he’s not mine, and I’ll tear out the part of you that thought it was safe to speak.”

He doesn’t answer, it’s smart but also proves that he’s a coward.

I look around at the rest of them, all the men who would follow me into fire if I asked, all the bastards with blades and bows and blind loyalty, and none of them dare to meet my gaze.

Because they know, they remember and even if they don’t understand it, even if they never saw the bond with their own eyes, they know what I became when I lost him the first time.

And they can feel it now, but this time I’m worse. Whatever broke in me didn’t grow back cleaner, it grew back sharp and loud, reminding me of every time I got Arvin back just to watch the next moment how he slips between my fingers again.

I send the scout away with orders to search again. I don’t think he will find anything as he goes deeper into a reach, but I don’t want to have to look at him and pretend I don’t want to bury my rage somewhere it can be useful.

The others disperse, they never stay long when I’m quiet. My men have learned that silence is where I start planning how to kill things.

Night bleeds in, and I don’t light a fire. The camp glows somewhere behind me, voices dimmed by distance and fear, and I sit just far enough that they forget I’m close, just far enough that they think the dark will dull my hearing.

But I hear everything - every whisper, every “what if,” and every little fear that maybe the boy I held in my arms isn’t a boy anymore.

And the funny thing is that they say it like that would matter to me. He could be fire and shadow and ruin, and I’d still follow him because that’s what love is when you cut it down to the bones.

Not kindness, not peace - it’s pain and simple choice, obsession and stubborn refusal.

I love him in a way that doesn’t ask what he is, only what he needs.

His name won’t leave me alone. Arvin. It plays over and over behind my eyes, not in his voice, in mine.

I remember the way I said it when he first trembled, how I said it when he told me not to let go and how I said it when I left him because I thought he’d be safer anywhere but next to me. The worst mistakes are always the ones you make with your heart wide open.

I take out the knife again, not the long one I use to scare men but the small one, the one I keep for truth.
I pull the fabric back from my arm, roll the sleeve up past the bloodline I swore I’d never mar, and press the tip into skin that still bears the weight of every vow I’ve made and broken.

Then I carve his name into my skin like a silent promise to both of us. Arvin.

I don’t rush the process, I don’t work in a messy way and I don’t cut deep enough to do any real harm, just enough to feel something else than a desperation and enough to hurt.

Pain is all I have left to still remember and if I must, I’ll use as much of it as I can reach. I need to remember, I need to always see his face flash before my eyes before I forget how beautifully he used to smile at me.

The skin splits and the blood comes right after, but I’m too focused on the image of his face from when I last saw him to care about any pain, and it matters more than any kingdom I’ve ever ruled.

This is for him because I have nothing else left to give him and if I can’t hold him, I’ll hold the pain.

“If I bleed for him,” I whisper to the dark, to the dirt, to whatever god watches from behind the trees, “then the world will too.” I promise darkly, refusing to accept I might be going crazy from missing him too much.

I don’t ask for anyone’s permission, I never have, especially not when it comes to him, so I just keep going, digging the knife deeper into my skin, watching with morbid fascination as I brand myself with his name.

Once I’m done, I wrap my arm before anyone sees, but the blood soaks through anyway and they notice that, yet at least they don’t question me or dare to point it out.

They know better.

I know every man following me thinks I’m unraveling and they’re not wrong. However, what they don’t understand really is that unraveling doesn’t mean I’ll fall apart. It means I’ll reshape into whatever I need to be to get him back.

Even if that thing isn’t a vampire anymore and it never truly was.

As the hours drag by, the scouts start to send fewer updates and the men in the camp start avoiding me.

I don’t chase them, I chase him, I couldn’t give two shits about a camp full of men acting like moody teenagers.  In my head, in the pull under my ribs, in every strange silence that folds itself around the forest like it knows something I don’t care about anyone but Arvin and Arvin alone.

“Come back,” I whisper the plea into the nothingless. “Let me find you. Let me keep you. I promise won’t ask questions, I won’t flinch at what you’ve become, I’ll just kneel. And if that isn’t love, I don’t care because it is love for me. And my love means everything or nothing but never in between.”