Light faded.
Lucien lay still. Eyes closed. No breath.
Élise cradled his body. Rain hammered the clock tower. Gears ground like broken bones.
Then— A gasp. Lucien's eyes flew open. Human. The black veins vanished. Fangs retracted.
"You… cured me?" He touched his unmarked neck.
"Burned the vampire out," Élise whispered. "With your own memories." Her hair—already white—now fell out in clumps. Wrinkles seamed her eyes. The cost.
Clémence moaned. They rushed to her. She blinked. "Élise? Why… am I wet?" She remembered nothing. Not the Court. Not the tank.
The antidote erased her trauma, Élise realized. A mercy.
They buried Václav in the clock tower's gears. "Let time grind him to dust," Lucien said grimly.
Three months later. Paris.
Élise opened a tiny perfumery: WhiteRose. No memory magic. Just real flowers. Lucien worked at a free clinic next door. His surgeon's hands healed humans now.
Clémence tended window boxes of scarlet geraniums. "They're louder than jazz," she'd say, smiling.
But Élise felt hollow. Her magic was gone. Her youth was gone. Only scars remained.
One rainy twilight, Lucien found her weeping over dried roses. "You mourn your power?" "I mourn me," she said. "The girl who bled for strangers. Stupid. Reckless."
He lifted her scarred hand. Kissed each ridge. "That girl saved me. Saved thousands." He placed a velvet box in her palm. Inside: a ring of braided silver and iron. "Marry me," he said. "Be reckless with me forever."
Élise slid the ring on. "Yes."
They closed the shop. Walked home beneath shared umbrella. At her doorstep, Lucien froze. "Do you smell that?"
Black roses. Overpowering. Suffocating.
On the step: a music box. It played a lullaby Élise's mother used to sing. Beneath it: a postcard of a crumbling CrimsonAbbey deep in Transylvanian woods. In blood-red ink: "An invitation. Come die where your mother was born. - V"
Élise crushed the postcard. "We just want peace."
Lucien took her shaking hand. "Then we end this. Together." His eyes held no fear. Only fury.
Inside the music box, nestled in black velvet: a tiny vial of liquidsunlight. The last weapon against whatever waited in the abbey.
Élise pocketed it. Tomorrow, they'd hunt. Tonight, she held her fiancé in the scent of rain… …and pretended dawn wouldn't come.