a truly beautiful man, regardless of his sins and my relationship with him. No one deserved to have that taken away from them.
“Let me see,” I said.
He hesitated for a moment, but then he lowered his hand. He didn’t turn to face me, so I walked around and crouched to see him, gasping as his face came into view. His red eyes were now completely white, and his flawless marble complexion was unrecognizable. It was like a knife had slashed at a pristine silk sheet.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“It looks painful, but it might heal,” I said, though I knew the words were a lie. This kind of scarring, it would be with him for the rest of his life.
“You are a bad liar.”
“Do you want a mirror?”
“No point. The attack has completely blinded me. Normally I would heal, but I need to wash away the water. I need your help.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“There is a small room at the back of this library. In it you will find a carafe of blood and one of water. Bring them both to me. Quickly. If we don’t act fast the damage will be permanent.”
I nodded and ran the length of the long room, skipping over the shattered remains of bookshelves and books sent flying during the fight. I found the room, retrieved the two glass containers and brought them back to Vincent, kneeling before him as I set them on the floor.
“Water first,” he said, holding out his hand. I pulled the stopper from the glass container and handed it to him. Vincent lifted it up and poured it over his face, emptying the carafe entirely. Water flowed down his body and splashed onto the stone tiles, making a large puddle on the floor around us.
“Blood?” I asked as he set the empty container down. He nodded and took the next one from me. He lifted this too, but this time he held it to his lips. Vincent tipped it back and drank it all down without spilling a drop. Once he was done, he set the second container down gently. I watched as the change came over him.
His face started to blur, the skin looking like it was moving under a high-speed camera. The scars left behind from the attack quickly undid themselves. Skin threaded itself back together and the burns shrank away like evaporating pools. The last thing to change were his eyes. The milky white orbs slowly cleared, and two crisp circles of crimson appeared under the surface. Shining black pupils were the last thing to form, reopening the windows to his soul. It was a miracle. The healing stopped, he blinked and looked at me.
“Now there’s a sight for sore eyes. Thank you, Rachel.”
I nodded, though I didn’t say anything else. I watched as Vincent squinted at the low light and examined the dim library. New eyes were seeing the world for the first time, I imagined they probably felt a little sensitive.
“Without your help I think I would have been in some serious trouble there,” he said. “I think you are slowly beginning to earn my trust.”
“But…” I began.
“But what about your escape attempt,” he said, the hint of a smile forming on his new face. “Well I can’t say I didn’t expect that entirely. Nothing about what happened here was an accident.”
“I beg your pardon?” I asked.
“You saw the fight that just happened here Miss Chase. That was very real. You have seen now the capacity of my strength and speed. A human could not sneak up on me or surprise me.”
“But I hit you.”
He just laughed and shook his head. “No. I let you think you hit me. The torch exploded after I summoned a sphere of air around myself. The sudden increase in oxygen made the flames swell. I had already apparated before the torch could hit me.”
“Apparate?” I said, wondering what the word meant. I then remembered how he had disappeared in a cloud of smoke. “The smoke…”
He disappeared briefly then, as if to demonstrate the skill. One moment he was a man, the next he was a churning cloud of black smoke. The cloud soared up into the air and spiraled back down to land behind me. I turned just as I saw it materialize back into the form of Vincent.
“I followed you through the castle, staying close as you tried to escape.”
“The shadows,” I said, recalling the strange figures I had seen on the walls. “That was you.