"Oh, no, that isn't true," said Katherine. "Stefan would never wish to see you hurt."
Damon's lip quirked, and he threw Stefan a wry glance as he moved to Katherine's side. "Perhaps not," he said to her, his voice softening slightly. "But my brother is right about one thing at least. The days grow shorter, and soon your father will be leaving Florence. And he will take you with him-unless you have a reason to stay."
Unless you have a husband to stay with . The words were unspoken, but they all heard them. The baron was too fond of his daughter to force her to marry against her will. In the end it would have to be Katherine's decision. Katherine's choice.
Now that the subject was broached, Stefan could not keep silent. "Katherine knows she must leave her father sometime soon-" he began, flaunting his secret knowledge, but his brother interrupted.
"Ah, yes, before the old man grows suspicious," Damon said casually. "Even the most doting of fathers must start to wonder when his daughter comes forth only at night."
Anger and hurt swept through Stefan. It was true, then; Damon knew. Katherine had shared her secret with his brother.
"Why did you tell him, Katherine? Why? What can you see in him: a man who cares for nothing but his own pleasure? How can he make you happy when he thinks only of himself?"
"And how can this boy make you happy when he knows nothing of the world?" Damon interposed, his voice razor-sharp with contempt. "How will he protect you when he has never faced reality? He has spent his life among books and paintings; let him stay there."
Katherine was shaking her head in distress, her jewel-blue eyes misted with tears.
"Neither of you understand," she said. "You are thinking that I can marry and settle here like any other lady of Florence. But I cannot be like other ladies. How could I keep a household of servants who will watch my every move? How could I live in one place where the people will see that the years do not touch me? There will never be a normal life for me."
She drew a deep breath and looked at them each in turn. "Who chooses to be my husband must give up the life of sunlight," she whispered. "He must choose to live under the moon and in the hours of darkness."
"Then you must choose someone who is not afraid of shadows," Damon said, and Stefan was surprised by the intensity of his voice. He had never heard Damon speak so earnestly or with so little affectation. "Katherine, look at my brother: will he be able to renounce the sunlight? He is too attached to ordinary things: his friends, his family, his duty to Florence. The darkness would destroy him."
"Liar!" cried Stefan. He was seething now. "I am as strong as you are,brother , and I fear nothing in the shadows or the sunlight either. And I love Katherine more than friends or family-"
"-or your duty? Do you love her enough to give that up as well?"
"Yes," Stefan said defiantly. "Enough to give up everything."
Damon gave one of his sudden, disturbing smiles. Then he turned back to Katherine. "It would seem," he said, "that the choice is yours alone. You have two suitors for your hand; will you take one of us or neither?"
Katherine slowly bowed her golden head. Then she lifted wet blue eyes to both of them.
"Give me until Sunday to think. And in the meantime, do not press me with questions."
Stefan nodded reluctantly. Damon said, "And on Sunday?"
"Sunday evening at twilight I will make my choice."
Twilight... the violet deep darkness of twilight...
The velvet hues faded around Stefan, and he came to himself. It was not dusk, but dawn, that stained the sky around him. Lost in his thoughts, he had driven up to the edge of the woods.
To the northwest he could see Wickery Bridge and the graveyard. New memory set his pulse pounding.
He had told Damon he was willing to give up everything for Katherine. And that was just what he had done. He had renounced all claim to the sunlight, and had become a creature of darkness for her. A hunter doomed to be forever hunted himself, a thief who had to steal life to fill his own veins.
And perhaps a murderer. No, they had said the girl Vickie would not die. But his next victim might. The worst thing about this last attack was that he remembered nothing of it. He remembered the weakness, the overpowering need, and he remembered staggering through the church door, but nothing after. He'd come to his senses outside with Elena's scream echoing in his ears-and he had raced to her without stopping to think about what might have happened.
Elena... For a moment he felt a rush of pure joy and awe, forgetting everything else. Elena, warm as sunlight, soft as morning, but with a core of steel that could not be broken. She was like fire burning in ice, like the keen edge of a silver dagger.
But did he have the right to love her? His very feeling for her put her in danger. What if the next time the need took him Elena was the nearest living human, the nearest vessel filled with warm, renewing blood?
I will die before touching her, he thought, making a vow of it. Before I broach her veins, I will die of thirst. And I swear she will never know ray secret. She will never have to give up the sunlight because of me.
Behind him, the sky was lightening. But before he left, he sent out one probing thought, with all the force of his pain behind it, seeking for some other Power that might be near. Searching for some other solution to what had happened in the church.
But there was nothing, no hint of an answer. The graveyard mocked him with silence.