The candle between them flickered, but didn't go out. It danced—delicate and pale—its flame like breath suspended in hesitation.
Luca sat across from Esmé in the vast library of the Palazzo Rosso, his hands resting on the carved arms of the chair, fingers stilled only by will. The fire in the hearth hissed as logs shifted.
She had asked him to speak.
Not about what he was.
But who he had been.
The question had silenced even the shadows.
Luca leaned back slightly, the light brushing against the sharp lines of his face, softening nothing.
"I was born beneath the snows," he said quietly, "in a place where the sun rose late and died quickly. A monastery stood there once, buried in stone and superstition. It's gone now. Lost before Florence ever dreamt of domes."
Esmé sat still, watching him. Not afraid. Just… listening.
"They called me Lucianus. I was the youngest son of a scribe and a woman whose name I no longer remember. She died when I was born. My father died before I turned ten. I was raised by monks. Taught to read, to transcribe, to copy lives that were never mine."
He paused, staring into the fire.
"I copied a manuscript once. Thick vellum, gilded edges. A book of saints and martyrs. On the final page, there was a warning written in a language I didn't know—but when I touched it, I understood."
"What did it say?" Esmé asked softly.
He looked at her.
"To see what is hidden is to be marked by it."
He said it in the old tongue, and it echoed faintly in the corners of the room.
"That was the night everything changed. That was when I began to dream in other people's voices. And that was when he came."
Esmé leaned forward. "Who?"
Luca hesitated. "The one who turned me."
The words settled between them like dust.
"I don't remember his face," he continued, "only his eyes. They were empty. Not cruel—not even angry. Just… hollow. He said he needed a witness. That the world was forgetting what it was. That someone had to remember."
"So he made you remember," Esmé said.
Luca nodded. "He gave me his blood, and with it… his memories. His hunger. His curse."
Silence.
Outside, wind brushed against the stained-glass windows.
"I left the monastery. I wandered. Centuries passed. I saw cities rise and fall. I tasted the blood of emperors and orphans. I learned to survive—not by feeding, but by hiding. By making myself into myth."
"And the Council?" she asked. "The other vampires?"
"I joined them when I realized solitude would destroy me faster than sunlight ever could. We called ourselves the Veiled Blood. Guardians of the old pact. Silent observers. But we were never saints."
His voice had grown quieter.
"Every few decades, I considered ending it. Letting time devour me. But then something would pull me back. A voice. A face. A flicker of beauty in a world that had forgotten its own reflection."
He looked at her now.
Not with sorrow.
But with recognition.
"And now you've pulled me back again."
Esmé said nothing.
She simply stared at him, as though the words had reached someplace deeper than she expected.
"But why me?" she asked at last. "Why not someone else? Someone already part of your world?"
Luca shook his head. "Because you're not part of it. Not yet. And that makes your truth… purer."
He stood, slowly, the candlelight catching in his dark eyes.
"I don't expect your trust, Esmé. But I offer mine."
She rose as well, slowly.
"You said once that words make things real," she murmured.
He nodded.
"Then what does it mean that you've spoken all this to me?"
Luca's gaze dropped to her mouth, then her eyes.
"It means," he said, "I'm already real to you."
And then he turned, cloak trailing behind him, and vanished into the corridors of the palazzo—leaving Esmé standing alone beneath a candle that no longer flickered.