Vivienne Von Vexx's Arc

Chapter 17 of 21

The next night, Vivienne crossed the bridge again. The bonfire on the far bank shone bright across the black water, throwing sparks into the dark trees like small stars. She saw the hunter waiting in his tent, journal open on his knee, pressed leaves laid out in tidy rows. A small bat circled once above her shoulder and flew back toward the castle. She walked into the firelight and sat down across from him. He set the journal aside. He asked her, quietly, about her eyes. He said he wanted to hear it from her mouth. No one had ever asked her to say it. She had carried the words inside her for two hundred years without letting them out. Vivienne looked into the fire. She told him she drank blood. She told him the sun would kill her. She told him her eyes were red because of what she was, and that she had never spoken any of it aloud before, not once, not to anyone. Her voice shook. She made herself finish. Then she looked up and waited for him to stand, to step back, to reach for something sharp. He did not move. He reached across the space between them and took her hand. He said her name. He said he had heard her, and he was still here. Vivienne pressed her free hand to her pocket out of habit and found it empty. She did not need the face inside it anymore. The face was sitting in front of her, holding on.