Chapter 28: XXVIII:

Forty-eight hours into the transformation and Estella could finally speak. She was sitting up by herself and drinking, though not eating. The lining of her mouth was still too raw.

Oliver thought she seemed dejected by her experience, slightly curved in on herself even as she tried to brush off his concern. No one really asked her to talk right now, afraid it would be too difficult for her, but Estella was happy to listen to their stories. Oliver told her about his first failed attempt at college in the 50s and how when they met Annette she had been hiding in a corner at a sock hop.

But fear kept pressing on the edges of his mind. She felt like she was slipping away, disappearing out of reach. Something had been wrong before the events of two days ago and it only felt like things were escalating. He didn’t understand what she wouldn’t tell him but he had to know at least if another medical event was going to happen again and if it would, why.

She didn’t answer him for a long time. Just sat staring blankly at a bed poster for so long that he thought she would just ignore him.

It surprised him when she started to get off the bed.

“Oh! Whoa. Nevermind. Forget I asked. Please stay in bed.” He begged.

Estella still didn’t acknowledge that he spoke. Instead, she gripped his forearms and gingerly lifted herself off the bed.

“Estella, please.”

“The library. Let’s go.” She said in a small voice.

Hesitating, he gently held her. He considered pushing her back onto the bed, she wasn’t strong enough to resist him right now. But she was clearly intent on going, her feet shuffling across the floor. Besides, the idea of forcing her to do something made his stomach roll uneasily. Maybe a compromise would work.

“Let me carry you.”

Letting out a slow breath, Estella agreed. “Yeah. Okay.”

Gently, tenderly, Oliver hooked one arm around her knees and the other under her arms to lift her up. Momentarily, he was overwhelmed by the feel of her in his arms. So familiar, so right when she rested her head on his shoulder as he carried her.

___

In the library, through its mahogany double doors he sat her down on the forest green velvet sofa facing the fireplace. Above it hung a full portrait painting of a large family.

She asked for her cell phone, and a brooch that Theodora had given her beside her bed, which Oliver retrieved for her. The cell phone was barely charged after two days of no use. No notifications either. She turned it over in her hands in silence, feeling the weight of it before setting it on the arm of the couch and pulling her legs to her chest.

With a wave of her hand, Estella lit the fireplace across from her. It wasn’t much to start a fire, but it was more casual magic than she’s done since Oliver arrived at her door.

“Oh,” gasped Oliver beside her, his hands raised towards her like he might pull Estella back from the sudden fire. He caught her watching his reaction and lowered his hands, “Sorry. I haven’t seen you do that.”

She gave a wane smile in return.

Clearing his throat, he asked, “How are you feeling?”

How was she? Her body felt wrung out and yet still water logged at the same time. She didn’t know where her family was but knew she wouldn’t see them again for a very long time. It was coming to an end. She felt it in her bones, in her head like the low beating of tempo. Finally, the last control on her life was coming to pull its strings. “I am…tired.” Yes, that summed it up.

He stood as if to bring her back to bed.

“No. Sit. I have something to say.” Oliver sat but Estella did not continue. She turned instead to the portrait on the wall.

“Estella?” His voice was soft and gentle, like a caress. He always spoke her name like that, as if too harsh of a tone might shatter her, as if he were afraid that she wasn’t really here. Perhaps he could destroy her, perhaps she isn’t really here.

“Do you see that woman up there? The one with a serene smile and light in the corner of her eyes? She’s wearing a red dress.” Oliver followed her eyes to the painting. He had seen them every day since he started seeking her out during his breaks from the Archives.

If he gave them any thought, he never gave them a voice. The woman in question looked so different from Estella, with her blond hair, blue eyes, and thin eyebrows. Everything about Estella’s appearance was bold: her hair, her eyes, her brows, even the pink of her cheeks drew a noticeable contrast from the paleness of her skin. The woman’s hands rested on a girl’s shoulders sitting beneath her in the painting. To her side was a table stacked with books, besides them sat a mortar and pestle. In the background were drying plants hanging from a line.

“Theodora gave this portrait to Matthieu as a gift. She’d paid an artist to paint them from drawings she did.”

“It’s beautiful work. Who are they?”

Who are they? That’s always the question, wasn’t it? The more time passed, the more the dead fall into obscurity.

“That’s Mattieau’s wife, Estelle,” she said, nodding to the woman in red, “And those are his children.”

“Oh, I didn’t—”

“Do you ever think about how much of your path you have control over?”

Oliver pulled back, surprised by her question. Surely it wasn’t a wholly surprising thought, not many vampires choose their lives. Was it shocking that she also didn’t choose this life of hers?

“Back at the start of…” He waved at himself, “...all of this I did. But I tried to make the best of it. Eventually.” He hesitated, his Adam's apple bobbing, “But first I tried to make the worst of it.”

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Estella nodded, remembering the black parts she saw when she looked at him too closely. His answer hung thick between them.

She knew she shouldn’t ask what she was going to but she was so tired. In the hours left to her, why not know the young man beside her better?

“Is that when you left them?”

His face, which had been staring dejectedly at the painting, snapped back to look at her. “Who told you about that?”

Estella knew that if she was well, she would be blushing. As it was, Estella’s embarrassment was shown only in her attempt to hide her face in her hair. “No one,” she said, “I saw it.”

“You saw it?” He asked flatly.

Nodding, she explained, “When I looked at you. A few weeks ago in the kitchen. I hadn’t meant to. I—you all did the dishes. I was overwhelmed and you stepped over to me and—”

“And what?”

“And I looked. Right to the heart of you, I looked. I hadn’t meant to. That’s how it is with magic when you’re young. Sometimes you do things unintentionally, things you didn’t even know you could do. But you were so close to me right then. Like for a moment, the lines of you and I overlapped.”

His fists balled in his lap. She sat waiting for his anger, for his indignation. No one likes the deepest parts of themselves exposed, even if it was an accident.

“And what did you see?” His voice was quiet, even with her advanced hearing.

She swallowed convulsively. Whatever she said now mattered deeply. If she thought she had a future left in this world she might have tried to flatter him or lie to soften the blow. If she had a future and if she wanted Oliver to be a part of it, she would have.

But Estella knew the truth about herself and there was no reason to dress up Oliver’s own heart. He wore it on his sleeve enough to not need her lies. Besides, a part of her did want him to know that in the short time together (and short it would remain) that she did see him. Did know him.

And, Estella realized, she would like the same.

“I saw a good man,” his hands relaxed a bit, “who is a sad man.”

“Sad?” The question surprised her. Did he not know sadness ran through him to the core, like a river runs to the ocean? That he caressed it like a trinket left by a lost lover? A bit like Matthieu.

But she had to explain it to him somehow. “Oui. Like a piece of you is missing.” Estella explained frowning.

Oliver stood up and paced several feet from her. His back to her but she could see the rigid plane of his back and shoulders.

“There is nothing missing,” He ground out, “but my humanity.”

Estella sighed. She knew of vampires who believed such nonsense. That they lost their humanity or their souls in their transformation. They drove themselves to misery with it.

But the coloring of those beliefs didn’t suit Oliver and it surprised her to hear him voice them. In the past weeks, he’s given no indication that he held such black beliefs. It’s as if in searching to understand his own life he took on someone else’s rationale.

“Do you really believe that Oliver? That to be a vampire is to be devoid of humanity?” He looked away from her, “I thought not.” She murmured.

“What am I supposed to do with this information?” He implored her. Eyes were wide and vulnerable he searched her face, it as if the green of them were made of glass and ready to shatter.

Estella wanted to comfort him, to offer something wise like Matthieu would say but all she could respond was the plaintive, “you asked.”

His shoulders slumped and curled a bit, he shook as if trying to get rid of something off of his skin. The tenuous look in his eyes dissipated and he rejoined her on the couch.

Unsure of what had just passed through him but comforted by his nearness, Estella offered her hand on his shoulder. She was surprised when he reached his arm out and wrapped it around her. Pulling her into him, he tucked her beneath his chin.

She protested weakly, “Oliver, we can’t—”

“Because of the situation and our roles in it. I know.”

Frustration swelled in her chest. Several times in the last few weeks, Oliver’s arms had reached for her. Always almost imperceptible, like he wasn’t even aware he was doing it but craved her touch nonetheless. And always on guard, she had stepped away.

She never accepted the intimacy. I don’t deserve such closeness, she thought, not when I won’t be here to see it through.

His voice was barely a whisper in her ear, “Please, just a moment, Estella,” Just a moment. Against her better judgment, she relaxed into him. He was warm and solid and smelled like pencil shavings and paper.

The moment turned into two, into three, into four, into several more.

“Are you sure you’re okay? From earlier?” He asked quietly.

“Oui, I’m alright.” It was the truth, once the initial danger was over she recovered rather quickly from the transformation episodes.

Oliver was silent again after that, probably processing what he saw.

“You stayed the entire time.” It wasn’t a question but Estella felt that it should be.

“I couldn’t leave you. Not like that.”

She sighed, “You should have.”

“Why were you asking about choices and paths earlier?”

Estella leaned up and away from him, leaving the left side of her body feeling cold. She felt his eyes on her as she gazed once again at the portrait on the wall. Estelle stood nobly among her children, all matching her coloring of light hair and blue eyes.

“Who is she? To you, I mean.”

No one knew who she was. That she was blood of Matthieu’s blood. Because her family didn’t know what the Stranger wanted or what, exactly, the blood of the gods was, they didn’t want to make the connection known, afraid that it could draw more of the wrong kind of attention to Estella.

But she wanted to tell him. She was about to tell him, he would keep the secret to himself, she was sure of it. Turning towards him to do just that, to tell him who the woman was, what she did, what her choices still do but a noise halted her. The terrible pounding of hooves that haunts her nightmares.

She spun around the room, searching for the source but the library was the same as ever.

“Estella?” Oliver tried to catch her attention over the din. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest. He called her name again. Could he not hear it? How can he focus on her with death hunting them down? But still, nothing was happening in the library. The alarm bells beside the door sat undisturbed.

She flew to the window and searched the horizon for that ghastly procession but it wasn’t there. Still the gallop sounded in her head. That’s when she realized: they didn’t need to be there because the riders were already here. How much time?

Oliver caught her before her knees hit the floor.

“Estella! Estella, what is it?” He was trying to look out the window while checking on her. “God, you’re as white as a ghost and cold as the dead.”

That can only be expected, she thought. She had to get him out. Get them all out, she told herself over the beating of hooves in her ears. She tried to keep her voice even, “Water please, Oliver. Water would be nice.”

He was reluctant to leave and offered to call for his family to help but Estella assured him she was well enough, that it was just the shadows chasing her from her recent illness.

He sat her down on the couch and wagged his finger at her to stay still but Estella wasn’t paying attention. She was watching Estelle in the portrait instead. She wondered if Estelle knew what she was doing. Or herself, for that matter. Picking up her cell phone, Estella made a phone call for the last time.