Amanda didn't sleep the night after she saw Nora. She sat in the kitchen, lights off, the smell of old coffee filling the silence. When morning came, she changed her shirt, tied her hair back, and waited on the porch.
She didn't know if Nora would return, but something in her gut said she would.
When the woman finally appeared, she didn't sneak or hesitate. She walked down the street like she belonged there.
Amanda watched her approach.
Eyes steady. Hands loose. A predator with manners.
"Morning," Amanda said quietly.
Nora stopped at the bottom step, gaze sharp but unreadable.
"You knew I was watching."
"Hard not to. You don't exactly blend in."
Nora smiled, just slightly. "You're not what I expected."
Amanda gestured to the porch rail.
"Come judge closer, then."
Nora took the offer. She sat with a perfect posture, legs crossed, eyes scanning. She wasn't looking for danger. She was looking for context.
Amanda didn't pretend to understand it all. But she saw the weight behind Nora's stare.
"You know Lucan," Amanda said.
Nora nodded. "He's my maker's brother."
Amanda exhaled. "Godric."
Nora tilted her head. "He told you about him?"
"Yes," Amanda said.
That surprised her. Nora didn't show it, but her blink was just a little too slow.
Amanda shrugged. "Well, a little. He doesn't say much, but I can tell it still hurts."
Nora's voice dropped lower. "He wanted to meet me."
Amanda paused.
"What?"
Nora looked out over the street, voice softer now. "He knew I existed. Godric told me that. Said Lucan asked about me when he found out. But he never came."
Amanda frowned. "Why?"
Nora smiled faintly.
"Pride. Guilt. Maybe both."
Silence stretched between them. Comfortable for one. Heavy for the other.
Amanda broke it. "So why are you here now?"
Nora looked at her fully, finally.
"Because he's still here. That means you matter. And I need to know why."
Amanda blinked. She wasn't offended, but she felt the weight of it.
"I don't know yet," she said.
Nora smiled again.
"But you will."
From the woods beyond Amanda's backyard, Lucan stood in stillness. Unmoving. Unseen. Watching the two women in his shadow speak with quiet tension.
He had seen Nora many times across the centuries. From rooftops. From forests. From the edge of cities, but never this close.
And never with permission.
He didn't speak. But part of him wanted to, just this once.
To tell her: I'm sorry I wasn't brave enough to meet you when it would've mattered more.
-----
The child was maybe ten years old when he was turned. A mistake, or a punishment. No one in the vampire world spoke of child-turning lightly. It was taboo. An offense punishable by slow death.
But Caelis didn't care about rules anymore. He cared about symbolism.
And pain.
They stood in a stone room lined with bone dust and salt. The child sat on a stone bench, eyes vacant, face slack. Whatever personality he'd once had had long since faded.
He wasn't undead.
He was emptied.
Held together by the force of something else. The entity that followed Caelis. The thing that breathed behind his spine, whispered through his fingers, and coiled beneath the foundation of this forgotten place.
"You remember his eyes?" Caelis asked softly.
The child blinked once.
Caelis smiled, stepping forward. "And you remember the word I taught you?"
The child's lips curled slightly.
"Amanda."
The circle drawn on the floor was shallow. Fresh blood. Not the child's.
Theirs.
A dozen hearts had been drained for this. Witches. A vampire coven. A seer who had dared call Lucan by name in a ritual Caelis hadn't authorized. Now all of it pointed to one purpose.
Open the threshold.
Let the thing inside the dead speak again.
The child stood, walked to the center of the circle, and dropped to his knees.
Caelis didn't chant. Didn't pray. He simply reached out and placed both hands on the child's skull.
"Take him," he said.
"Speak through him."
The air changed. The child convulsed. Not violently, but mechanically. Like a puppet tightening. A scream escaped from his throat, but it wasn't high or young.
It was deep.
And wrong.
The stone beneath them cracked slightly and a single word echoed out across the arcane tether, not to Amanda this time.
To Lucan.
"Brother."
Miles away, Lucan froze. He was standing in the living room of Amanda's house and suddenly, he was being watched back.
Not by eyes. By intent.
Amanda stumbled as it passed through her too, indirect and colder than the other times. More distant. Like a signal from a dead station.
She looked to Lucan, chest heaving.
"What was that?"
Lucan's jaw clenched.
"Caelis is opening doors," he said.
"Doors to what?"
Lucan didn't answer. Because he didn't know.
Not yet.
-----
The woods were quiet.
Nora walked slowly, hands tucked into the sleeves of her coat, boots crunching soft underbrush. She wasn't hiding her scent. She knew he would come if he wanted to.
And he did.
"You waited longer than I thought," Lucan said.
His voice came from behind her, calm and steady.
Nora didn't turn right away.
"Godric always said you never liked to make the first move."
Lucan stepped beside her, eyes grey in the dark, unreadable.
"I made the first move with him once," he said. "It didn't end well."
They walked in silence for a few steps.
Then Nora stopped and turned toward him fully.
"You watched me."
Lucan met her eyes.
"I did."
"How many times?"
Lucan's face didn't shift. "Enough to know what Godric gave you."
Nora's jaw tightened. "And still, you never came."
Lucan looked up through the canopy.
"The last time I saw him, we argued."
Nora didn't move.
"What about?"
Lucan's voice was low now. "About what kind of man makes a child to fix something in himself."
That landed harder than he meant it to.
But Nora didn't break.
"I wasn't a replacement."
"No," Lucan said. "You were better. That's why I stayed away."
Nora crossed her arms, trying to cage the heat rising behind her ribs.
"Then why are you here now? Why stay for her?"
Lucan didn't answer right away. But his gaze didn't leave hers.
"She's something I didn't make. Something I can't control. And that makes her worth knowing."
Nora scoffed. "And I wasn't?"
Lucan shook his head once. "You were always worth knowing. I just… couldn't face what that would mean."
The wind moved between them like a sigh.
Nora lowered her voice. "He loved you, you know. Until the end."
Lucan looked away.
"I know."
They stood in silence again. The kind that held space for things unsaid. When Nora finally turned to leave, she paused at his side.
"You abandoned him."
Lucan didn't argue.
"I did."
"And you think staying here, with her, makes it right?"
Lucan's reply came without hesitation.
"No. But it's something."
Nora left the woods without a word.
And Lucan stayed long after the trees stopped moving.