Updated Dec 29, 2025 • ~9 min read
POV: DORIAN
I’d been putting this off for weeks. Dreading the moment. Knowing it would hurt her and hating that I had to be the one to do it.
But she deserved the truth. All of it.
“Where are we going?” Nova asked as I led her through the fortress corridors.
“Somewhere I should have taken you weeks ago.”
The weapons vault was in the oldest part of the fortress, protected by magic and guards who’d served me for centuries. Only I had access to the innermost chamber.
“This is your personal armory?” Nova looked around at the displayed weapons—each one with a story, a history, a battle.
“Yes. But that’s not why we’re here.”
I moved to the back wall, where a single sword hung in a place of honor. Silver blade, wolf-forged, with a hilt wrapped in leather stained dark with old blood.
Nova went very still beside me.
“That’s—” Her voice broke. “That’s my mother’s sword.”
“Yes.”
“You took it. From the battlefield. After you killed her.”
“Yes.”
She crossed to it slowly, like approaching something holy and profane at once. Her hand reached out, stopped just short of touching.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why keep it?”
“Because some debts can never be repaid. But I could start here. By preserving something of hers. Something she would have wanted you to have.”
Nova’s fingers finally touched the hilt. She lifted the sword off its mount—it was perfectly balanced, beautifully made, clearly crafted by a master smith.
“I watched her use this,” she said quietly. “She was training me. I was only five, too young for real weapons, but she’d let me hold it sometimes. Said one day, when I was old enough, it would be mine.”
Tears streamed down her face. Through the bond, I felt her grief—fresh as the day her mother died, amplified by holding the weapon that should have been her inheritance.
“I took everything from you,” I said. “Your mother, your home, your childhood. I can’t give those back. But this—” I gestured to the sword. “This was always meant to be yours.”
She turned to me, amber eyes blazing through tears. “You killed her. You killed my mother. And you expect me to forgive you because you kept her sword?”
“No. I don’t expect forgiveness. I don’t deserve it.” I held her gaze. “I expect you to hate me. To carry that sword and remember everything I took from you. And I’ll accept it. Every day. For the rest of our immortal lives if necessary.”
“Why? Why torture yourself like this? Why not just—” She made a frustrated sound. “Why not defend yourself? Tell me it wasn’t your fault, that you were following orders, that you had no choice?”
“Because that would be a lie. I had a choice. Kill hundreds to save thousands, or refuse and watch everyone die. I chose. I’m responsible.” I stepped closer. “Your mother begged me to spare you. Her last words were asking me to let her daughter live. And I killed her anyway because the king ordered no survivors.”
Nova’s breathing hitched. “You remember her last words?”
“I remember everything. Her face. Her voice. The way she shielded the cellar door with her body even knowing she couldn’t win. Her courage in the face of death.” I couldn’t stop now. She needed to hear this. “I remember the moment I killed her. Quick and clean because it was the only mercy I could offer. And I remember the sound of a child crying in the cellar below. You.”
She was sobbing now, full-body shaking. The sword trembled in her grip.
“I left you alive,” I continued. “Disobeyed the king’s order because I couldn’t kill a child. Burned the house hoping you’d escape in the chaos. And I’ve spent twenty years having nightmares about whether you survived. Whether I saved one life while destroying hundreds.”
“You didn’t save me. You orphaned me.”
“I know. Nothing I did was noble. But I need you to understand—I didn’t do this casually. Every death haunts me. Your mother especially.”
Nova looked down at the sword in her hands. “She was fierce. Strong. The best warrior in our pack. And you cut her down like she was nothing.”
“She was everything. A mother protecting her child. A warrior fighting impossible odds. She deserved better than me.”
“She deserved to live.” Nova’s voice broke. “To raise me. To teach me to use this sword properly. To see me grow up.”
“Yes. She did.”
We stood in silence broken only by Nova’s crying. Through the bond, I felt her rage and grief warring with something else—understanding, maybe. Not forgiveness. Never that. But recognition that the world was more complex than she’d believed.
“I hate you,” she said finally.
“I know.”
“I hate that you remember her last words. That you carry guilt. That you tried to save me even while murdering my family.”
“I know.”
“I hate that you kept this sword for twenty years. That you waited for me to claim it. That you’re trying so hard to make amends for something unforgivable.”
“I know.”
She raised the sword, pointing it at my chest. For a moment, I thought she might drive it through my heart. Part of me wished she would.
“This changes nothing,” she said. “You’re still my family’s murderer. Still the monster from my nightmares. This sword doesn’t erase that.”
“I don’t expect it to.”
“But—” She lowered the blade, fresh tears falling. “Thank you. For keeping it safe. For waiting for me. For remembering her.”
“I’ll remember her until final death. I owe her that much.”
Nova held the sword close, like embracing her mother’s ghost. Through the bond, I felt the complexity of her emotions—grief and gratitude and hatred and something almost like peace.
“Can I keep it?” she asked. “Is it truly mine?”
“It was always yours. From the moment your mother died defending you.”
She nodded, not trusting her voice. Then: “Tell me about her. About that night. Everything.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve spent twenty years with fragments and nightmares. I need the whole truth.”
So I told her. Every detail I remembered from that terrible night. Her mother’s fierce fighting, the way she’d almost escaped multiple times, her final stand at the cellar door. The words we’d exchanged. The way she’d asked me to promise her daughter would live.
And I told Nova what I’d never told anyone: “I made that promise. Swore to your mother I’d make sure you survived. That’s why I left you alive, why I’ve tracked your pack’s movements for twenty years, why I volunteered for this marriage. I promised I’d protect her daughter. And I’m trying to keep that promise, even if it’s twenty years too late.”
Nova was crying again, harder now. “She made you promise?”
“In her final moments. She could have cursed me, begged for her own life. She used her last breath to protect you.”
“That sounds like her.” Nova laughed through tears. “Stubborn and fierce and always putting me first.”
“You’re very much her daughter.”
She looked at me then—really looked, seeing past the monster to the man who’d carried guilt for two decades, who’d kept a promise made to a dying woman, who’d preserved her mother’s sword like a sacred relic.
“This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” she said.
“I know.”
“But…” She hesitated. “Maybe I understand better now. Why you did it. What you’ve carried. It doesn’t make it right. But it makes it less simple.”
“The world is rarely simple.”
“I’ve noticed.”
We stood in the vault surrounded by weapons and history, two people bound by fate and tragedy, trying to find a way forward through impossible grief.
“I’m going to learn to use this properly,” Nova said, hefting her mother’s sword. “Honor her memory. Become the warrior she wanted me to be.”
“I’ll help. If you’ll let me.”
“You’ll train me to fight with the weapon you took from my mother?”
“I’ll train you to be so fierce that no one—vampire, wolf, or otherwise—will ever be able to take anything from you again.”
Something shifted in her expression. “Why? Why help me become strong enough to potentially kill you?”
“Because you deserve to be strong. To have choices. To never be powerless again.” I met her eyes. “And because if the day comes when you decide I deserve death, I want you to be skilled enough to make it clean. Like I tried to do for your mother.”
She was silent for a long moment. Then: “You’re either incredibly honorable or completely insane.”
“Probably both.”
A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “Yeah. Probably.”
As we left the vault, Nova carrying her mother’s sword like the treasure it was, I felt the bond between us shift. Not stronger—not forgiveness or love or anything so simple.
But understanding. Recognition that we were both trying to survive impossible circumstances. That maybe—maybe—we could build something from the ashes of what I’d destroyed.
It wasn’t much.
But it was more than I deserved.
And for now, that was enough.
Nova held her mother’s sword the entire way back to our chambers, occasionally touching the blade like confirming it was real. Through the bond, I felt her cycling through grief and gratitude and fierce determination.
“Dorian,” she said as we reached our door. “Thank you. For this. For remembering her. For trying.”
“You’re welcome.”
“But if you ever lie to me again—if you keep things from me because you think I can’t handle the truth—I’ll use this sword exactly as my mother would have wanted.”
“Noted. Full honesty from now on.”
“Full honesty,” she agreed.
She disappeared into the bedroom with her mother’s sword, and I heard her crying—soft, broken sounds of grief finally finding voice.
I let her have privacy. Let her mourn properly for the first time in twenty years.
And I hoped—futilely, desperately—that someday she might see me as something more than her mother’s killer.
Not forgiveness.
But maybe, eventually, peace.
It was all I could ask for.
All I dared to hope.
Reader Reactions