Perhaps it was only in death that either would ever find peace. Both had for too long avoided death’s caress. But though the cold touch lived still upon their flesh, they walked about daily, nightly, as though they were one of the living. Though Asya had never sought it out, knowing peace would not find her in death. There would be none for one with so black a heart, no peace ever for one such as she.
But Diarmad’s path was different from her own, or should have been, though Asya stole his own away. Even now she could not offer him the death she had taken. Selfish and yet not. She wanted him to live. Just as he wanted her to live.
Was that what it meant to love?
She wanted him to live even without her.
His strong arm wrapped about her and Asya sighed and accepted the comfort. A moment later, almost without her own knowledge, the vampiress shifted, and now she did a thing she had never before done. She wrapped her arms around him, offering comfort to him as he did her, not even stopping to think of the impropriety or that he might not wish it… she did anyway… because it was as her heart wished her to do. She wrapped arms around him and held him as he had done her, though she was so tiny and he so large within her arms. Still, it felt right… for all it’s strangeness.