Darkness reached me the moment I succumbed to sleep. The usual awareness of someone watching me made the little hairs on my neck rise. This time felt different, their presence didn't drift off after a few seconds, on contrary, it was as if they didn't simply watch from a distance, but tried to reach for me. A heavy warmth drifted around me, like smoke or fog would. Yet everything around me stayed pitch black. Where were the images, the memories, the dreams?

"I thought you were a failure," an echoing voice filled the void. It sounded so unnatural, yet too soft to truly fear it. "They were wrong about you." It came from the other side now. "Do you know what you are?" They sounded pleased.

It stayed quiet. I waited. The presence drifted around me in the dark, observing me. My skin heated up under their gaze. Not in the good kind. My heart thudded so hard in my chest that it was audible in my ears. Something I didn't like at all, giving information like that could be deadly. It could be used. If they were in my head, they could probably sense my emotions.

Unease made me want to struggle against the dreamscape. My eyelids pressed together and I kicked around in the dark void. With my arms I pushed against nothing, which made me probably look like a difficult toddler. But I needed to wake up.

An electric current shot from my spine towards every nerve ending in my body. My body spasmed. My muscles tensed into rock-hard cords. Fear followed.

No! I don't want to kill again.

As if in response, I felt the warm smoke wrap around my body and hold me back from returning to the waking world. It wasn't pleasant, being torn apart in two different directions.

A hand with long, slender fingers reached for me from inside the smoke. I should've reached for it, it could've kept me away from that nightmarish hunger in the waking world. Yet, my instinct kept kicking and struggling against the confines of this dream. Right before the hand could touch me, the darkness evaporated.

Hunger hit me hard.

My eyes weren't even open or I was already standing. My head turned to the left, and my gaze went to its now familiar focussed tunnel vision.

Two. There were two.

Within the time I had felt their presence, I was already halfway there. In seven seconds, I had knocked the first one unconscious and pinned the second one under my body.

He was better trained. Much better trained. Even with his legs unmoving, his hands were hitting me hard enough to make me fall into a defensive mode. His left hand grabbed my upper arm and squeezed a little too hard.

I hissed. My arm throbbed, making my right hand feel slow and hot. It gave him time to punch me right in the jaw. I fell back, in a bit of a daze. With my left hand, the one that wasn't throbbing like the injury had just occurred, I rubbed along my jaw. An annoyed growl bubbled up in my throat.

Enough! I was done with this animal.

With aggressive hands, I reached for his hair and smashed his head on the ground. I repeated the movement until he finally stayed still.

The unease of an electrical current buzzing through me stayed, making my skin crawl. Not enough. I groaned. The hunger was getting impatient.

My eyes switched from left to right, eventually ending on a small girl with auburn hair. She didn't look pleased. Nor truly angry. Maybe disappointed?

Who cares! My mind screamed. The nice pointy dagger on her hip is much more interesting. It would be perfect to kill these monsters.

Kate's small hand covered the dagger, making me growl in annoyance.

"Don't even think about it."

"Wait your turn, vampire!" I hissed back, before launching for her belt.

We clashed. Physically, it felt like running with full force against a wall. It was painful and a bit disorientating. Emotionally, I was cheering both myself and the princess on, which was in its own way very disorientating.

I stumbled back, regained my footing, shook my head awake and attacked once more.

She was a very defensive fighter. I had noticed before, when she was fighting Diodes. Now it was even more clear. She constantly pushed my arms to the side, twirling out of the way, and taking a step closer or a step back. Every time we touched, it was because I launched first and she diverted my attack.

She was going to drive me insane like this.

"Give me that dagger, I need to finish it." I scowled.

Kate parried my next punch by grabbing hold of my left wrist. With a forceful tug, she pulled me against her. Our bodies collided. Any other time, I would've been intensely aware of the intimacy of our current position. Now, my attention was on the dagger's tip pressed against my back, between my fourth and fifth rib. A deadly place.

"No, you don't. Snap out of it."

"They need to die," I growled. "You don't understand. I can't stop it." The steadiness of my voice wavered for only a second.

She sighed. "Trust me, I understand. That's why this is the only way."

"Wh-"

The swiftness of the blade was as graceful as every other move the princess made. It sliced through my skin, like a knife through butter. My mouth opened in surprise. I gasped.

"I'm sorry, I just can't let you kill them."

Then everything faded into black. A similar darkness from before encompassed me, only lonelier and quieter. There wasn't anyone here, nor would there be images. Just a cold void. I let myself drift, too tired to fight it.

***

Cold, gentle hands trailed along the skin of my upper arm. Goosebumps followed in their wake. I hummed. The fingers let go, leaving a little breeze to take over their place. A shiver caught up with the line of goosebumps, jump-starting my body.

A yawn escaped my mouth, before I lazily stretched my sore back. The painful stretch made me regret the decision rather quickly. With a deep and low groan, I managed to roll onto my side and rub the sleep from my eyes.

Bright rays of sunlight hit my face, making me blink repeatedly. Once my vision had recovered, I lifted my head from my soft pillow.

Wait! Since when did I have a pillow?

My eyes automatically turned towards my supposed pillow. Strong, muscled legs hidden under the dark fabric of elegant pants came into view. Immediately my face turned hot and I pushed myself from them. I had been sleeping on someone's legs. More specifically, the legs of the vampire princess.

Awkwardly, I stumbled back along the ground and sat a good distance away from her.

Kate was leaning very comfortably against a large boulder that seemed to have grown out of the ground. Her brow raised, but her lips remained a fine straight line..

"You okay?" Her slightly raspy voice drifted through the thinly spread forest.

Sunlight caught her eyes, giving them a magical glow that made it annoyingly difficult to keep my attention away from them. They shouldn't be this compelling, the unnaturalness of them should be constant warning bells. Yet, somehow they weren't.

"What happened?"

"Ow, yeah." She put the red leather book she had been holding on top of a small bag. "What do you remember?"

With both my palms, I rubbed my face, trying to remember what had happened.

"I remember going to sleep after I saved you from Diodes."

"Correction, I saved you." Her lips remained neutral, but I was certain I heard a bit of teasing in her voice.

"Are we going to start that discussion again?" I snickered, already feeling a lot more relaxed at the easy banter.

"Go on," she motioned with her hand. She didn't snicker or laugh or even smile. Her now familiar nervousness made her foot tick the ground multiple times a second. Up and down, up and down. Like a clock, ticking off time.

"I went to sleep. On my bag," I clarified. "Not your legs."

Kate nodded, but didn't seem embarrassed by it. My cheeks on the other hand were still glowing hotly, very aware of how intimate that gesture had been. At least for me.

"Do you remember what happened afterwards?" She asked carefully.

The ghost of the warm mist drifted around my ankles again. In reflex, I pulled them under me and held them. The touch made the memory fade once more.

"There was -," I stayed quiet. Were we close enough already to talk about our nightmares? I decided we weren't. Kate still didn't want me around, her visible tension made that clear, and I just didn't feel comfortable enough talking about what I saw and felt. Instead I asked: "What happened?"

Kate sighed, but it didn't sound annoyed, more sympathetic. "A thirst came over you."

"Oh," I fell silent. My hands gripped my ankles, making my skin turn white underneath.

The memories of the fight returned, making me feel cold.

"I didn't-," my words got lost in my throat.

Kate sat in front of me, her hands still and tense in her lap. Her lips pressed together in a line that didn't tell me much about what she was thinking.

"Are they alright?" I asked eventually.

That made the princess relax. The fine line of her lips turned to their natural curve, making them look fuller. She nodded. "They're fine."

Breath that I didn't realize I was holding escaped my lungs in relief.

It took me a moment to process, until another memory reached me.

"Did you try to kill me?" My forehead pressed together in realization. "You stabbed me in the back, literally."

Her hand lifted up in defense. "Know that I was very aware of your quickened healing and that it was a calculated choice to let you bleed into subconsciousness."

"Seriously? There wasn't anything less risky you could've done to stop me?" I called her out.

"Like what? You're not very reasonable when you're thirsty." Kate countered.

"You could've hit me on the head and knocked me out."

"And risk that pretty face of yours?" She grinned.

The comment took me by complete surprise. So much so, that I had no reply.

She could joke. My heart skipped at the sight. She looked so young and careless for a split second. If only she could be like that at all times. So relaxed. Again, it made me wonder why she was always so nervous and serious. Where did this side of Kate hide? And why?

"I made sure the wound was clean." The grin had disappeared again, but she looked a bit more at ease now. "It's already becoming quite the scar."

A gentle breeze grazed along the bare skin on my back, making me very aware of the few clothes I was wearing. Only the two simple pieces of fabric that I wore as underwear were draped around my hips and breasts. Now I was certain my head looked like the dying sun.

"Where are my clothes?" I squealed.

Kate frowned before she laughed. A genuine, non-restricted laugh.

"You only realize that now?"

Embarrassment was becoming a continuous state around her.

"They're drying in the sun." She pointed at another boulder behind me.

And just like my clothes, I only now realized we were in a completely different part of the Green Lands. There were fewer trees, instead there were long strokes of pastures, both filled with grass and other low growing flora. The dooming mountain was nearly as close as it was in Holt, making the terrain a lot rockier than anywhere else in the Lands. The temperature felt a lot heavier and almost scorched on my fair skin. I wasn't a fan.

"How long was I out?" I gasped.

"Only a day," Kate moved towards me. "I travel fast." She said, but then pointed at a cart on the side. "Put you on that though."

"Where the hell did you find that thing?" I asked in horror. The cart only had one decent wheel, the other had a very interesting curve in it. The wooden planks that formed the cart itself seemed as if they had been rotting in the rain for the past few months and were not nearly strong enough to carry an adult person.

Kate shrugged. "It's not like I had a lot of choice in transportation."

I laughed once again. "Thank you."

When I looked over my shoulder, Kate was sitting a lot closer than I had expected. Her breath hit my face, leaving a sweet scent behind. Her eyes seemed much lighter in the sun, almost golden instead of the brown-red it usually was.

"You're welcome." Did she sound just as out of breath as I was feeling? Or was I imagining things?

Kate looked away first. Towards the rock behind me.

"They should be dry by now."

I didn't look away. My eyes went from her soft jawline, to her red lips, to the strong line of muscles in her neck. I swallowed.

"Sky," her voice sounded hoarse.

"Yes." I looked up, back into her eyes.

"You should put your clothes back on." She licked her lips and clenched her jaw. She stood up and walked back to the barely held-together cart.

Suddenly I felt cold and alone. "Right." Clear disappointment coated my words.

"We still have a long way to travel." She said it neutrally, which made me only hope she had been affected by our moment just as much as I had been.

With a sore back and my right arm still not entirely recovered, I managed to get up - even though it was with more difficulty than I dared to admit. My clothes hung high on top of the boulder, causing me to stretch quite a bit to get to them. How did Kate get them up there? She was not nearly as tall as me.

"Why did you take my clothes off anyway?"

I could hear Kate pace.

"There was a lot of blood. I thought you would appreciate clean clothes once you woke up. Today was sunny enough to prevent hypothermia." She breathed in and out in long breathes. "And I did give you a nasty cut, so it seemed only fair that I cleaned it."

She went back to whatever she was doing. Meanwhile, I focused on putting my clothes on. The pants weren't a problem, they went on easy. The problem was with my shirt. My back stretched uncomfortably which made my breath hitch, and my right arm really wasn't doing me any favors today.

"Kate?" My voice sounded small, which I didn't like. "Could you help me, please?"

I felt her presence next to me, before she hummed her arrival.

"My arm is stuck, and I can't seem to get it through my shirt. It stretches my back."

Her fingers trailed along the skin of my arm.

"Relax." It was a gentle statement that made me do exactly that. My body turned to pudding at her soft voice.

She pulled the shirt down, and helped it over the rest of my torso. Her fingers rested on the hem. Her eyes were fixed on the burn mark of my right arm, the one that was still throbbing like it had its own heartbeat.

"You have a lot of scars."

Her finger trailed along the line of the wound. It didn't hurt, or at least not more than it already did, yet goosebumps rose along the length of my arm.

"Scars tell stories," she said pensively. With a shake of her head, she went on: "My apologies if I was too invasive when I looked at them. I understand that they are personal. I simply wondered about the tattoo on your side. Were my books wrong about Hunter tattoos being black?"

I frowned. My left hand unconsciously went to my right flank, the place where my Hunter tattoo was situated. It was a simple version of the arrow and knife cross that was carved into my daggers. Our tattoos were an external manifestation of the magic running through our veins, and the way Hunters were found across the Lands of Mikill.

"No, they were right. Hunter tattoos are more a birthmark than an actual tattoo, but they are always pitch black. "

Kate took a step backwards. Her hand trailed through her long locks of hair. A nervous gesture. It made my heart skip for what was to come.

"Yours isn't black."