There Is No Me Beyond You

~15~

When Lucas left me alone, saying that he would send someone to find Radu and making me wonder just how many poor Guards were standing in the corridor, I reached for my book.

Andrei's knife was still there, parting its pages in two halves. I let it slip out and fall on my bed, followed by the photographs of Aurora which I had brought for Vlad.

With a dark, cold feeling rising from the pit of my stomach and spreading through my whole body I ran one of my fingers along the knife's cool blade, then let it stroll over the blue gemstones set in its hilt.

Just how many times did he make you suffer with this blade? My subconscious whispered, making the small hair on the back of my neck stand on ends as my eyes dropped to the thin, silvery lines, criss-crossing my right wrist.

It was... hatred, that horrid, alien sensation getting stronger by the minute as I recalled the pain he had caused me with this knife, and his teeth, and not only that... My subconscious mind did not spare me from the recollection of the awful feeling of... helplessness and humiliation I suffered whenever he laid his hands on my body. No one ever dared to touch me like that, not without my consent.

I hated Andrei from the bottom of my heart. If I ever meet him again, I'll...

I wiped the tears which suddenly flooded my eyes away quickly with my sleeve, at hearing someone knocking on the half opened door. Lucas peeked in.

"Moral support," he said, winking at me, as he ushered Shadow, Mist and three fluffy wolf cubs towards the fireplace. "Lord Radu will be here in a few moments," he added, disappearing again.

Mist came to bestow a 'welcome back' lick to one of my hands before she joined the rest of her family on the large blanket spread on the stone floor by the fire. It looks like Vlad decided to adopt the whole lot of them, I thought, smiling.

I collected the pictures again and pushed them back inside the book together with the knife, then hid all of it under my pillow, even as Lucas knocked again, announcing Radu's arrival.

Radu bowed politely from the door, then, eyeing my wolves a little uneasily, made his way towards my bed where he sat on the stool placed by the table after he kissed my hand in greeting.

"Samara, I'm so glad that you are well again," he said, his bright blue eyes full of genuine relief and happiness.

The change in him was stunning, the volatile, blood-thirsty vampire I remembered from before was completely gone. He looked like Vlad and Junior now and I knew that it wasn't because I was changed and my blood did not tempt or affect him any longer. I had noticed the difference in him even before, in Poenari.

"Thank you for... saving me." I said. Even though it was Vlad who brought me over here and changed me, it had been Radu who got me out of Andrei's grasp.

Radu shook his head. "No, it's me who must thank you. You saved my life that night when... with Alina... " his voice broke and he ran his hand through his black hair, so similar to Vlad's. "My brother... he could have killed me, he had all the right to end my life then. If it wasn't for you... You stopped him, even though you knew what I had done to you before..." He shook his head, then buried his face in the large, white palms of his hands.

"It wasn't your fault. Andrei told me..." I said, trying to make him feel better.

What he had done to me, and Vlad, was... terrible. But if someone had suffered more than enough for a past sin, it was Radu. No one deserved to suffer forever.

"Samara... It might have been his idea, but I went along with it too happily. I wanted to change you, hoping that then you would become mine, trusting myself to stop in time to..."