The Dark Moment

The Blood-Glass Atrium was located at the very center of the estate. It was a sprawling, indoor greenhouse that had been left to beautiful decay. The massive glass dome above was constructed of magically stained crimson glass, casting the entire space in a perpetual, bloody, romantic glow. The air was thick and humid, smelling of damp earth and the heavy, intoxicating perfume of rare, night-blooming jasmine and black orchids.

The guards laid Bastian on a bed of soft, overgrown moss in the center of the atrium and retreated, sealing the heavy iron doors behind them.

Maeve dropped her cane. She sank to her knees beside him in the damp earth.

Bastian was dying. His breathing was spaced agonizingly far apart. The black veins had reached his temples. His eyes fluttered open, the brilliant violet clouded and unfocused.

"Maeve..." he rasped, his voice a broken, hollow sound. "You must... leave me. The venom... it will make me feral before the end. I might... hurt you."

"I am not leaving you," Maeve sobbed, tears cutting hot, clean tracks through the dust on her face.

She unfastened the high collar of her emerald gown, pulling the fabric down to expose the pale, vulnerable skin of her neck, right next to the jagged edge of her burn scars. She leaned over him, pressing her hands against his burning chest.

"Bastian, listen to me," she pleaded, her voice breaking. "You have to drink. You have to take my blood."

Bastian’s clouded eyes struggled to focus on her exposed throat. The instinctual, vampiric hunger flared briefly in his expression, his fangs lengthening slightly, but he immediately grimaced in pain, turning his head away.

"No," he groaned, clenching his fists in the moss. "No... I will not..."

"It’s the only cure!" Maeve cried, pressing herself closer, offering her pulse to his lips. "It requires unconditional love to neutralize the poison. I know what I am, Bastian. I know it. But my blood... my blood will work. Please. Just bite me."

Bastian squeezed his eyes shut. With a sudden, violent surge of desperate strength, he shoved her.

He didn't hit her, but he pushed her shoulder hard enough to send her tumbling backward into the dirt.

"I said NO!" Bastian roared, the sound tearing his ruined throat. He rolled onto his side, coughing up a spatter of black blood, turning his back to her entirely. "Get away from me! Do not offer yourself to me! Never you!"

Maeve lay in the dirt, her dress ruined, her chest heaving as the absolute, crushing weight of the Dark Moment descended upon her.

All hope evaporated.

He was dying, and he was refusing her. In Maeve’s deeply scarred, insecure mind, there was only one logical, devastating reason why a starving, dying predator would refuse a willing human throat.

She was too repulsive.

She was too ugly, too broken, too grotesque for him to stomach touching, even to save his own life. The cruel words of Lord Valerius echoed deafeningly in her ears. *A crippled, half-melted human. A grotesque little pet.*

The dam broke. The years of silent, agonizing shame, the pain of her unrequited yearning, exploded out of her in a wave of hysterical, broken sobs.

"I know!" Maeve wept, burying her scarred face in her dirt-stained hands. "I know I am ugly, Bastian! I know it is repulsive to look at me, let alone touch me! I know I am a broken, ruined beast!"

Bastian flinched, his body freezing despite the convulsions of the poison.

Maeve couldn't stop. The confession tore out of her, bleeding into the damp earth of the atrium. "I know I am not worthy of standing beside you. I know you only brought me tonight out of pity. But please, please don't die because you are disgusted by me! I love you! I have loved you in silence for years! It is pathetic, and I am so sorry for daring to feel it, but it is real! My blood is real! Just close your eyes so you don't have to look at my scars, and drink!"

Silence descended over the atrium, save for the sound of Maeve’s ragged, heartbroken sobbing.