Chapter 75: The Blood Of Eudora

Beatris

Alexander did not stop near the desk or the couch. He walked past them. Straight toward the center of the room. Toward the couch I had moved. Toward the trapdoor.

My feet stopped before my mind caught up.

"No." The word came out before I could stop it. "Alexander, I can't…”

"I'm not going to lock you in."

His voice was quiet. Steady. The same voice he had used when he held me in the doorway.

"I want to show you what's down there."

My chest tightened so hard I could not breathe. I already knew what was down there. The tunnel. The wine bottles. The chamber. The stone slab. The ring. The hair. And Clara.

"I've already seen it," I whispered.

His jaw tightened.

"I know you have."

He reached down and lifted the trapdoor with one hand. The hinges groaned through the room and my whole body went rigid. Stale air rose from below.

He looked at me.

"I need you to see it again," he said. "With me this time."

"I don't want to."

"I know."

He held out his hand.

I took it. Because refusing him was no longer something I could afford to do.

The stone steps were narrow and cold beneath my slippers. Alexander went first, one hand braced against the wall, the other holding a candle he had lifted from the nearest holder. I followed close behind him, my ivory skirts catching against the rough stone.

The tunnel stretched before us. Dark. Narrow. The air pressing in from both sides. I looked for the crates where Clara had been. They were gone.

The space where her body had been was empty. The floor had been cleaned. The dust disturbed. As though she had never been there at all.

He had moved her.

We walked past the wine bottles without a word. The tunnel opened into the larger chamber, and Alexander stopped.

I stopped beside him. The stone slab stood at the center of the room. On it rested the ring and the lock of red hair, exactly where I had left them.

"You've been here before," he said.

It was not a question.

"Yes."

"How much did you touch?"

My throat tightened.

"The ring."

His eyes moved to it. The gold caught the candlelight, the red stone burning like a small, living eye.

"What did you see?"

I did not answer. He turned to face me fully.

"What did you see, Beatris?"

My mouth opened. Closed.

"A red moon," I whispered. "Eudora screaming. Blood coming from her eyes."

He went very still.

"You saw her."

"I don't know which I saw," I said. "Her or myself."

Alexander looked at me for a long moment. Something moved through his face, Something rawer. Something that looked almost like hunger.

He turned toward the stone slab. His hand rested on its surface, fingers tracing the carved circles the way someone traces the lines of a familiar face.

"She was killed by people who feared what I was," he said. "What she had become. They cut her throat in front of me."

My chest ached.

"I tried to save her." His fingers stopped on the empty circle, the third one. The one that had nothing in it. "I bit her. Over and over. I thought if I could turn her fast enough, if I could give her enough of my blood, she would heal."

He paused.

"It worked."

The words landed strangely.

"But it didn't last," he continued, his voice dropping. "Her soul was weak. She kept dying and dying but she never fully died."

Something shifted in his face.

"I made her suffer. It was my fault. I had to end it all."

The words came out so quietly I almost missed them. Then he stopped.

His jaw clenched. His hand lifted from the stone slab and he stepped back, and for the first time since we had entered the chamber, he looked like a man who had said too much.

"Alexander." My voice came out thin. "What do you mean you had to end it all?"

He did not answer. He stared at the slab as though he could no longer see it. As though something behind his eyes had pulled him somewhere I could not follow.

I wanted to push. Wanted to demand. Wanted to grab his arm and force the words out of him.

But the look on his face stopped me. It was guilt. Deep, old, worn into him so thoroughly it had become part of his posture.

I did not ask again. The silence in the chamber felt enormous. I did not realize I was crying until I felt the tears reach my chin.

"I have waited for her since that day," he said at last. His voice had changed, lower now, heavier, carrying the weight of something spoken aloud for the first time. "Not years. Not decades. Longer than you can imagine. I knew destiny would bring you back. I was told it would. So I waited."

He looked at me.

"Here you are."

The words came out with certainty and hurt in equal measure.

"If only you would just let her in," he continued. "You would get back to your past life. Our life, Eudora."

My name was not the one he used. He stepped closer.

"The Crimson Moon is coming."

The words landed like stone.

"It comes once in a lifetime," he continued. "And when it comes, the veil between what was and what is, grows thin enough for a soul to cross."

My breath stopped.

"I have spent lifetimes preparing for that night," he said.

He held my gaze.

"But you have to be by my side or it won't work."

The room seemed to tilt around me. I stepped back.

My shoulder struck the wall. The cold stone pressed against my back through the ivory dress.

"I'm not her!" My voice cracked against the stone. "I'm Beatris. I'm just a girl. I'm not Eudora. I'm not…"

"You saw yourself in the ring."

"You saw the red moon. You saw the blood. You saw her death." His voice had not risen. It had not sharpened. It stayed low, certain, immovable. "Those are not visions, Beatris. Those are memories."

I shook my head wildly.

"They're not mine."

"They are."

"They're not mine!"

He did not flinch. He did not argue. He only looked at me with an expression that held no anger, no cruelty, nothing I could fight against.

Only certainty. Only years and years of waiting compressed into a single, terrible patience.

"I'm not asking you to believe me tonight," he said quietly.

"Then what are you asking?"

He stepped closer. Close enough that I could feel the cold radiating from him.

"I'm asking you to stop running from what you already know."

I opened my mouth to argue, but he spoke first.

"I have something that can help you remember bit by bit faster."

His voice had shifted. Softer now. Almost gentle.

"Trust me."

Trust him. The words sat between us like a joke neither of us had meant to tell.

Where had trusting him gotten me?

Locked in a coffin. Dragged through corridors. Dressed like a dead woman. Standing in a chamber beneath his house where he had hidden the bodies of girls who had trusted him before me.

He moved toward the wine bottles lined against the wall. His hand selected one without hesitation, as though he already knew which one he needed.

He pulled the cork free. Then he reached for a small cup resting on a narrow shelf beside the bottles and poured.

The liquid was dark. Too dark for wine. Too thick. Too red.

It filled the cup slowly, catching the candlelight the way the stone in the ring did deep, living, almost glowing.

My chest tightened.

"What is that, Alexander?"

He turned to face me.

"Drink it."

The command came flat. Quiet. I stared at the cup in his hand.

"no."

His eyes met mine.

"It’s the blood of Eudora."

My stomach lurched so violently I nearly gagged.

"You want me to drink Eudora's blood."

The words came out flat. Disbelieving. As though saying them aloud might make them sound less monstrous than they were.

Alexander's expression did not change.

"I know it's hard," he said quietly. "But it will help you. It will bring the memories back faster. Pieces of her life. Pieces of who you were."

I stared at the cup in his hand. The thick red liquid caught the candlelight.

"I can't."

"You can."

"Alexander…"

"Close your eyes." His voice dropped. Softer now. Almost broken. "Just close your eyes and take it. That's all."

I shook my head. He stepped closer.

"Please."

The word hit me harder than any command he had ever given.

"Please, Beatris."

I stared at him. At the cup. At the dark, living red inside it.

What if he was right? What if I was Eudora?

What if the visions and the ring and the red moon were not hauntings but pieces of a life I had already lived?

And what if this could truly help me remember?

My eyes dropped to the cup. It was not as though Alexander was going to let me leave this chamber without drinking it.

My hand lifted before I could stop it. My fingers closed around the cup. The warmth of it spread through my palm.

I looked at him one last time. He only watched as I closed my eyes. And I drank.