"Remus Shade," Luna stood as she spat his name, no less hostile even with the man a few yards away leaned against the adjoined living room wall. The house was pretty open layout, so there were few walls to hide behind, not that they would do any good.

"Darius demanded the perpetrator pay for their crimes." Rush all but ignored Luna's spite, remaining arms crossed and his chin lifted to leer down his nose at her. "The only reason we agreed on an exchange of sacrifices was because the Aurions offered us their direct lineage. Without Darc Aurion's heir, his line will be extinguished."

Extinguished? Was that what she was? Some flame on a candle to be suffocated until it died.

Rush must have picked up on her fear, because he flicked his eyes over to hers in that eerie way vampires did. An emotion she hadn't seen before rolled across them, but it wasn't like the heated ire toward her aunt. Something just as dangerous lingered in his darkened green eyes, possessiveness and a hunger to devour the last remnant of the great mage that had harmed his family.

"You are also in no position to speak of cruelty," Rush shifted his deadly eyes back to Luna as she walked around the counter to stand by Mer's stool she still sat on. Mer was afraid to move, to learn that she was just a passing bit of fun for a house of vampires before they crushed her. "No Shade would offer a helpless child in their place to pay for their transgressions."

"I'd have given myself if you would have accepted," Luna hissed back, narrowing Rush's eyes as his lips stretched higher above his fangs in a silent snarl.

"And I would have gladly watered our gardens with your blood, Luna Aurion, but alas, the choice wasn't mine." The truth in the words had Mer paling as she gripped the counter. Thus far, she'd never seen Rush violent. Impatient, surely, but the darkness in his eyes as he bared his fangs at Luna was not at all superficial. If he was given the opportunity, he'd kill Luna without hesitation. "We are returning now," Rush said, shifting his gaze to Mer as if he needed the distraction to keep himself from tearing her aunt apart.

Torin came to Luna's side when she looked like she was going to argue, and Mer saved them both the stress by getting off the stool. Even then, Luna reached for her, but Torin captured her hand and cradled it against his chest as Mer stopped one last time to look at her parents. Who knew if she would live to see them again. After all this talk of how she was just some thing to be erased, she was less confident in seeing tomorrow as she'd been this morning. Perhaps that's why Alaric had called her a corpse, because he'd know what she truly was.

Mer went to Rush with her eyes cast into the carpet, wishing she could drown out her aunt's gasped breaths of despair as she fell on Torin to keep her standing. Mer couldn't even bring herself to say goodbye. It meant acknowledging that this was the end. Again. How many times would she be tortured with glimpses of freedom before it was torn away from her. Luna was right. This wasn't kindness. This was cruelty. Just not the kind her aunt expected.

It took her a few wipes of her eyes with her shirt sleeve to clear enough tears for her to see, and by then fingers were in her vision. Rush had his hand extended out to her, unmoving, patient, waiting, and she lifted her chin. It was a horrible idea. Mer wasn't even sure what she was thinking meeting the man's eyes. Maybe she wanted to look her captor in the face and be angry with him, but that failed miserably.

All the hatred Rush had beamed at Luna had vanished, the spite for mage kind as if it had never existed. No bared fangs. No shadowed eyes. What remained was almost pity, just a hand extended out while Rush bore no expression but the pinched upward tilt of his brow. A silent plea for her to come without issue. Mer didn't want any trouble, just to curl up in whatever corner Rush would allow, alone if possible, until she gathered enough strength to face him again.

Mer lifted her shaky hand for his, ready to be whisked away in an instant back to that frigid hell castle, but something else happened when her fingers touched Rush's cool skin. At first it was a spark, a little zap of magic, and then it exploded.

Something cool and wet splatted against her, and she closed her eyes on reflex. It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of water on her, and she wiped the slick goo from her face as she opened her eyes. Everything within sight was red. Her hand dripped the liquid down her bare forearm onto her bright workout pants that were marred with brown stains, and red droplets speckled the cream carpet like rain. They congregated at Rush's feet, and she followed the streaks up the wall to find Rush with his mouth agape, his fangs shown but bared more in confusion than threat.

All this red was his blood.

Rush's entire right arm that he'd offered was somehow a peeled banana. Shreds of shriveled flesh rolled up and stuck out on every side, and blood dripped in rivulets onto the carpet. It was as if Mer had set a small charge of C4 in the center of his bicep and blown it. Any human would have passed out in shock, but Rush was able to curl the raw flesh and damaged muscle into his chest with a low growl. As he processed the injury, his lips rolled back and his fangs clenched together like a beast biting into a steak. Rush twisted his neck like he was controlling himself and failing, and Mer's blood ran colder than his castle.

All she'd done was touch his hand, and she'd done that? He was going to kill her.

Mer didn't hear her aunt move, but she must have, because Rush lifted his good arm and blew Luna back with a burst of dark magic. The only woman who'd ever cared for Mer slammed against the wall, and Torin ran to help her aunt back to her feet. Luna didn't even look phased as she spit a glob of blood on the ground and positioned her lunar mage staff at the ready for an offensive.

"Stop." Mer's voice came to quiet to stop anything.

Rush flooded the room with a blanket of dark magic that dragged Luna and Torin to the ground with such immense pressure that her aunt's staff fell from her hand. Both of her parents trembled on the ground, and when Torin reached his hand for Luna's, she could barely grasp it. Rush took a step towards them, and Mer forced herself into Rush's path to protect her family. Very little was left of the man she'd met the day before, his forest eyes rabid as they glowed with vampire allure, a power they possessed to command any human to do their bidding with just the connection of their eyes.

"Please, it was an accident," Mer pleaded as she struggled to stay upright in his path. "Kill me if you must, but Please don't harm my family." Tears streamed down her face that mixed with blood and probably made her look like a lagoon monster.

"They attacked me first." Rush's voice rolled in a sickly mix between a tiger and a feral wolf, echoing with power yet reduced to snarls at the words ends.

Rush reached for her, and she jumped in place as darkness pooled in his hand, stretching and solidifying to form a familiar pair of chained shackles. They were back to where they'd started, and though Mer tried to take the shackles from him, he dropped them on the floor to avoid contact.

Mer trembled as she sat on her knees and tried to put them on. Blood-slicked her fingers and they slipped on the metal more than once. They were too heavy to lift again, and she settled for placing her hands into the metal before snapping them over her wrists.

A single moment of stillness was all she got before Rush grabbed and tossed her through a spell back to his castle. The momentum sent her stumbling back onto his bed, and her scream fell to a choked gasp as Rush fell after her and sank his fangs into her throat. Heat seared down her neck, and Rush's jaw clamped so tightly that she could barely breathe.

With nowhere else to put her hands, she gripped Rush's shirt with her shackled hands, and her sight flashed white as his lips pulled on her throat and blood poured out into his mouth. His hand clamped on the back of her head so firmly that she couldn't so much as cringe, and this was markedly worse than she'd imagined. Whatever Rush had offered her in the gardens, with his mouth caressing her skin and his body so close yet so far from hers, this wasn't it.

Pain spiked as Rush bit harder and his fangs sliced deeper into her flesh. Cold replaced the earlier heat, sweeping over her with each wave of blood that flooded out of her, and she struggled on each new breath as the waves sank her deeper into an abyss of ice. It was like dying in slow motion. Everything grew light and the ground seemed to disappear out from under her.

This was how it was then.

Well, at least he hadn't done anything cruel prior to killing her.

This had been eventual, anyway, right?

In her delirium, Rush's light smile flashed in her mind, and his off-taste sense of humor rang in her ears. It quickly spiraled to his eyes flaring in rage and his fangs bared at her, but then things warped into god only knew what. The sun set in front of her eyes, fire on the horizon of darkness, though it wasn't as if she could really see it. Man, was she losing it from blood loss right now. Just as the fire delved below the point of finality, light burst in a mix of sunlight and creeping darkness, something visible for only a moment each morning and each evening. Those small white and black lights spun together, but this time the sun climbed up from the grave to give light to the world, illuminating trees, rivers, and the blue of the sky.

Now was a shitty time, magic.

Mer was too busy dying to care what her damn calling was. Stop flashing images of a life that she was never going to have. How rude was that? Like, thanks, magic she'd ignored her entire life. So what? Her calling was what? Dawn? Dusk? Some mix of light and darkness she couldn't fully understand? What in the hell did that matter anymore?

Right now, she wasn't even sure she was conscious.

Shackles floated in front of her, and she had two keys split between her hands, one shrouded in darkness and the other in light. The key hole to the shackles hummed with darkness, so she slid the dark key into them. They snapped open, fell away, and she rubbed her wrists. Then she remembered there was still a monster attached to her neck, and it appeared in her delusion, gripping her throat and her skull very uncomfortably.

This was Rush though. What had she done to him? When her skin had touched his, a spark of magic had passed between them and torn his arm to shreds. It had surged through Rush with power that she had not intended to release. Why had it done that? Before, she'd been standing in light that had made her feel sick, and the release of energy had felt good, like throwing up a stomach overfull of poison, but she'd emptied all that magic out into Rush.

Two hands floated before her, her own she realized, and just like the keys, one shone with the bright light that had hurt Rush, while the other emanated darkness like what Rush was made up of in this hallucination. If she touched the beast with the light, would it hurt him again? Would it save her? Or would it just poke the already vicious bear?

This delusion was dumb. Couldn't she just see some nice scenery and feel the wind against her skin? Maybe a whole basket of kittens would be nice, but no, she had darkness and light running up her arms, now clawing at her to decide what to do with them. Touching Rush had released the energy before, so it stood to reason that whichever hand she chose, would decide his and her fate. If she chose light the beast would explode, but the beast was Rush. Did she want him to disappear? Well, he was killing her. But he had also been kind to her when it had not been necessary.

So, no on the light magic, but her arms were so heavy, like if she didn't release the energy it would crush her. Maybe she could dilute the light with the dark? Like when the sun set and it mixed with the darkness. Thanks magic vision. Touching her hands together spiraled the light with the darkness to run it up and down her arms in a joining that for once wasn't painful.

It felt good.

This was a nice acid trip. Mer had done something once at some weird party, and she had no idea what it had been, but the trip had been nothing compared to this. Mer had stumbled through the dorms walking on clouds and laughing hysterically until one of her better friends had collected her. Now she had no friends. Only light, darkness, and the beast killing her.

Mer didn't want to kill Rush, but she needed this to stop. It would when she was dead, and this was just some messed up delusion so, really, what did it matter? The ghostly form hovered above her, the light from her body leaching into the dark cloud it was made of. It looked painful, but maybe she could fix it.

With her intertwined light and darkness, she thrust her hand over the energy that was eating the beast alive. Mer's darkness cut through the harmful light until it hissed away, and the light from her hands mixed with the darkness to spiral down the beast's arm. A crisscrossed pattern like a plaid sweater sleeve of darkness and light covered Rush's arm from his shoulder to his fingertips, and Mer giggled in hysteria at how ridiculous it looked.

Pain increased in her neck near a hundred-fold, and the delusion shattered as her mind sank into darkness. This was it. It had been a fun acid trip before she died, and at least her arms weren't shackled anymore. With them, she did the only thing she really could and slid them around the shadow and held it.

"Forgive me." There was not much else she could say as her consciousness, unconscious or not, began to fade.

Forgive her for the things she could not control that had hurt all those around her. Sorry to her aunt and uncle who were probably in some hospital barely alive. Sorry to her parents who she'd never bothered to learn anything about. Who were they? Darc and Ruby Aurion. Those weren't even their names. Those were their mage names. What were her parent's real names? Hell, she didn't even know them. Well, sorry to whatever her mage name would have been. Maybe they could name her Shackles–she ended up in them more often than not.

Where was she again?

Apologizing.

Wasn't there someone left she needed to apologize to...

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Word Count: 2676