Page 73 of Tainted Souls
Max looks up, his red eyes holding mine with unexpected intensity. “I’ve had doubts, Seraph. About our compatibility.” He chooses his next words carefully. “Not about loving you—I do, deeply. But about whether love is enough when our worlds are so different.”
My throat tightens, the solarium suddenly feeling too bright and exposed. “You never said anything.”
“How could I?” His voice cracks ever so slightly. “You were so certain about us, so confident. And I wanted to be sure before I voiced my concerns. That’s why I thought that getting away, seeing a place that’s important to your heritage, might help me understand you and your world better.”
I sit perfectly still, processing his words. All this time, while I’d been imagining our future together, he’d been questioning if we even have one. I don’t even bother to correct him on the fact that Mythcrest isn’t a part of my heritage. At least not one I want to acknowledge.
“The irony,” he says with a hollow laugh, “is that now I understand your world all too well. I’m part of it, whether I wanted to be or not.”
“And does that change your doubts?” I ask, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Max’s gaze drifts to the filtered sunlight stretching across the floor. “I’m not sure yet. Everything is different now. I’m different.” He looks back at me. “But I think we need to be honest with each other about what we want and expect. No more assumptions.”
I nod slowly, feeling strangely numb. “I can do that.”
Max used to say that my unpredictability made him feel alive in ways he couldn’t explain, and I saw it in his eyes whenever that spark caught—a rush of wonder as he brushed against something beyond the edges of his neatly ordered routine.
After all, it’s what drew so many humans to Penn City in the first place: a place teetering between the impossible and the real, the idea of coexistence feeling almost mythic. Even when Max recoiled from the darker truths of what I was, he couldn’t help reaching for the parts that shimmered. Vampire enough to stir his blood, human enough to calm it. That was the paradox Ithink he loved most—the one he never quite understood. No one did, not even myself.
But lately, that same curiosity has been giving way to exhaustion. Maybe it was just the season of his life. When we met, he was still a student, teetering on the cusp of becoming. It’s when humans ache to taste the unknown, to feel something that shakes their foundations.
I should’ve known that anything burning that bright couldn’t last.
“Good.” He gives me a reassuring smile, but it doesn’t reach me.
We change the conversation to his treatments and some of the other patients, until it gradually shifts to lighter topics: the books he’s reading during rehabilitation, the latest gossip around town, the progress of his legal cases now handled by colleagues, and funny stories from my night out with friends. He laughs at the right moments, and for the first time since his turning, I see glimpses of the Max I fell in love with—warm, spirited, alive beneath the surface, as if the darkness hasn’t fully claimed him yet. It feels almost normal, though the setting and his appearance serve as constant reminders that nothing will ever be normal again.
When a nurse appears to inform us that Max has a therapy session scheduled, I rise to leave.
“Will you be back tomorrow?” he asks, a vulnerability in his voice that makes my chest ache.
“I can’t,” I say, pouting. “Meeting with Redmoore.”
He frowns. “Redmoore? You’re working with them again?”
“Temporarily. Special task force to investigate the sire bonds.” I lean in to whisper in his ear. “Next time I’ll smuggle in some plasma snacks. The stuff they serve here looks mediocre at best.”
He grimaces, then laughs, the sound warming me on the inside. “I’d like that.”
After a brief hesitation, I pull out the pendant. “I want you to have this.”
“What is it?”
“A protection charm,” I explain, feeling slightly foolish. “A woman at the market gave it to me. She said it was for someone caught between worlds.”
Our encounter last night doesn’t leave my lips, still uneasy about the fact she claimed to know my father and that this pendant could’ve possibly been his. It almost feels like an intrusion.
Max takes it into his hands, turning the dark stone over in his palm. “Looks mystical.” Without hesitation, he slips the cord over his head, letting the pendant rest against his chest.
For a moment so brief I almost miss it, the stone seems to pulse with an inner light. Max touches it curiously, but the glow has already faded.
“How do I look?” he asks, attempting lightness.
“It suits you.”
“Thank you,” he says, then frowns slightly. “But I think you should keep it.”
“What? Why?”
