A/N: Probably a better fit in the Saga of Larten Crepsley section, but who's going to read it over there?
They do not love as humans love – it is not in their nature. And yet, she loves him all the same, At least, she supposes she does. She's never been in love before, so she can't be certain that this is more than a meaningless fascination. (Though, considering the decades that it's lingered, it has to be more than that.)
He whimpers in his sleep, and grimaces, fingers picking at the stitches in his belly. (She put those stitches there, when he was half out of mind with pain and blood loss and the ever-present grief that he carries with him, which shines through most after defeating another vampaneze who is not Randel Chayne.) She grasps his fingers now to still them, so that they don't undo her careful work.
She's always been excellent at stitching.
Perhaps, if she'd been with him at the time, she would have stitched his cheek together and he wouldn't have that scar. (He's never her told how he got it. There's so much that he hasn't told her.) She traces her fingers over that scar, learning it. When their contract ends, she wants to remember it. She's gotten to like the character that it gives to his face, the comical leer in certain lights. (She's kissed the look off his face enough times to be familiar with it by now, and the memory makes her stomach flutter. She really needs to reign in these emotions. They are unbecoming of a General.)
A shiver runs through his thin body, eyes flickering open for a moment and roving blindly around the crypt where she's brought him before slipping closed. She frowns, and pulls him a little tighter. He's been shivering a lot the last few hours. If he's getting an infection . . .
Well, if he is, then there's not much that she can do about it. The most she could do is cut the infected tissue out of him, and hope that that would be enough. Even that would be in the hands of the gods. In all likelihood he'd die here in this crypt, no matter how she looked after him, sneaking out for blood and bathing his head.
If he dies, she'll kill him. Or at the very least never forgive him. She's known from the start that his is likely a suicide mission, at least partially. No matter how much he seems to care for her, he'll always love that human more.
And that is why they won't last past the terms of the contract. (If he lives. And if so, she won't make allowances for him, won't let him realise how worried she's been these last few days, secretly.) He'll always love that woman – Alicia – more than he loves her. For a human, perhaps this would be enough, playing second-best to a dead woman. But for Arra Sails, vampire General, such human frailties have long-since been left behind.
(No matter how much she loves him behind it all.)