It occurs to me now that I should have put a trigger warning for Eirika's little section at the bottom, so this is the trigger warning for both last chapter and this chapter. Also I have a little more solid idea of what I want to do with this, it's just pacing and development that I've got to worry about now.

Also I'm dropping hints about just what happened to the first Seth...


After a week, her presence and the chill in the air around her no longer disturbed him, it was just a reminder of his new housemate. While she rarely spoke unless he asked her something first, she always did respond without hesitation, as if she was waiting for him to speak. Often to admonish him for continuing to address her by her title, not that he had stopped. Regardless of her state of undeath, he still was going to address her with the respect she deserved.

It was another week before he realized that she was sending chills down his spine again, and why. All vampires had a pallor to them from the lack of living blood in their system, but hers was more prominent than it had been before. He had no idea if a vampire could starve to death, but definitely they still grew hungry like any other being.

And he didn't know how to manage it. So far no one knew that he was harboring a vampire in his basement by day, but if he started doing anything unusual such as finding animals for her to feed off of, it wouldn't remain a secret for much longer.

They were out hunting when it first occurred to him. Eirika still wore her old cloak, but he'd managed to convince her into newer clothes and she now wore her rapier openly on her hip, making her appear much more like a novice vampire hunter to any who happened to look out the window while they were patrolling the streets, despite the fact that she had proven herself better than he was at getting them by surprise. "Your highness," he began, shifting his lance to his other hand and tucking it under his arm to protect his fingers from the cold, "you said that it's a vampire's venom that changes a human right,"

Eirika looked at him almost drily, the hood concealing her blood red eyes from everyone else. "I am no princess now," she reminded him wearily, "and yes. Though I don't see the point of asking right now, unless you've been bitten."

He shook his head as her eyes flashed for a second, sending out her senses over the city. Since she'd joined him, the number of vampires had declined dramatically. "No, that wasn't my reason." he said, wondering what had come over him if the idea that had come to mind was really one he'd had on his own. "So the fangs have to be involved?"

Eirika ignored him, looking down the alley. "The city is empty of others...though I can't sense beyond the gates." she told him, one hand balanced on her rapier to draw it at a second's notice. "The last of them must have run just after sunset."

Seth frowned, but he had no reason not to trust her at this point. "So the city is free?"

She nodded, a slightly odd smile on her face that looked even odder without being able to see her eyes. "Yes, of everyone but me. I suppose once I started hunting again, they ran before I chased them down. We should return home if we won't have to fight tonight."

He couldn't find any way to argue with her on that, and they turned at the next corner to return to his house. "You hunted them before?" he asked, choosing to let his initial question lapse. He could ask again when they were behind closed doors.

Eirika nodded and he could see the fine braid of her hair falling out of the hood. "Yes, after I...dealt with the realization that I was always going to be this...I decided to not let others suffer this fate." She smiled darkly, clearly not fond of the memories that came to mind. "Eternity is a long time to mourn the loss of humanity, but I moved on." Her voice grew even darker when she added, "I've made my peace with who I am now."

He took the unvoiced hint to stop asking her about her past just like he had every other time he'd asked. He supposed that if their positions were reversed, he wouldn't want her dredging up painful subjects whenever he said anything that could be taken that way. After two blocks of silence, Eirika said with a forced lightness, "Please explain the lights you talked about being set up in larger cities again."

Seth chuckled as he moved his lance back to his dominant hand, already getting the key to his door ready even though they still had blocks to go. "Humans have discovered how to harness electricity. It is hoped that those streetlamps will be bright enough to act as sunlight to vampires, though if fire hasn't and light magic hasn't, I'm not sure this will either."

Eirika shook her head. "It has to be the sunlight." she told him, confirming something he'd wondered about vampires for a while, "though older, wickeder vampires can no longer go out under moonlight either. It's why Valter..." her voice faltered for a moment before she continued, "Valter no longer goes out unless its clouded over. The moonlight could burn him as quickly as the sun could me."

He didn't ask about Valter, though he wanted to. He knew very well now that she hated him beyond hatred, and that he was responsible for her change. That was all he needed to know for now. "Are you sure that no more will come here?"

"I didn't say that," she answered, stepping aside so that he could go up the stairs to his door first. "I said they all left. Sometimes they come back, most of the time they wait till I move on. To those Valter changes, I am as bad as hunters."

Seth struggled with balancing the lance and the key and the stiff lock till Eirika took the lance from him. He still hadn't figured out a way that she could touch the door or pass the threshold without his permission, but he didn't stop to wonder why as he stepped inside. "I give you permission to enter, and to cross." He said almost by rote, the words holding a kind of power to him. The air shivered as she entered again and dropped her hood as he shut the door. In the wavering candlelight, her eyes shone as bright as the last drop of heart's blood and he thought he could see her fangs in prominence. Without the moonlight to pale everything, she was noticeably more pallid now.

Eirika put his lance on the hooks by the door and shed her cloak. It had taken her a week to be comfortable enough with him that she would take it off, but now she set it on the coat rack next to the door and took off her sword, leaning it against the wall in the sheath. "With this town...I suspect that they won't return for a while," she said, returning to their previous conversation. "Usually they only prey on small towns till either enough hunters or a single good one kills enough to make it not worth it. The bigger cities are worse. There's always someone to either feed off of or toy with."

Seth hung up his cloak as well and went to stir the fire in the wood stove. It had burned down to flickering embers in the time since they'd left, but a few sticks revived it and logs fed it to a comfortable heat. Eirika came to stand by it, soaking in the heat like she was drinking it. The air still was colder around her, but not so deathly so. "I'd forgotten how nice a good fire is," she said, almost musing. Her eyes were far away and he chose not to interrupt.

Leaving her to the heat and her thoughts, he decided to check on the condition of his lance, taking it back down and sitting on the couch. Sometimes the wood in the shaft cracked when the weather changed for the colder, and it was better to discover before the snows hit. Eirika looked over at him only for a second before reaching her slim hands to the fire, the light giving them a rosy glow.

He ran the pads of his fingers over the wood, feeling for the smallest flaws in the grain that would signal a crack to come, knowing that the silver itself only needed polishing and that he could do by daylight. This shaft had held up better than some, he couldn't feel any fracturing in the wood yet, though he suspected that he would need to replace it still before winter.

He looked over at the vampire enjoying the fire, a very small pure smile on her lips, and he felt like he'd seen it before again. At this point, those flashes of deja vu weren't as shocking as they once had been, since they only seemed to connect with Eirika doing or saying a certain thing. Almost like he was remembering her from long ago. The light glowing on her face almost took away the pallor that made her look more and more like a corpse with each passing day.

That reminded him of his truly foolish thought, a gamble that he was more and more inclined to take despite what instinct and wisdom said about it. He'd heard of one hunter who'd used her blood before to draw in vampires by pretending weakness and injury before striking while they were feeding, but she had been the only one it had worked for, possessed with a supernatural sense of just when to strike and enough strength to shove the knife she'd used through their hearts. They'd called her the maiden of the dawn or something like that.

But the idea he had was too mad to work. Sure, the hunter had never been changed, she was one of the few to retire and die at a very old age, but it was rumored that her heritage was not entirely human and that was why she was immune to the venom. He was almost painfully human.

And yet a part of him did not want to imagine her starving, or worse, resorting to leaving just so that she wouldn't. It was the same part that was always facing tinges of remembrance, telling him things he shouldn't have known. A part that had always been very fond of Princess Eirika.

He looked up at her again, steeling himself to do the first truly stupid thing he had done since he'd allowed a vampire into his home, and saw the way that her lips curved as she drank in the fire, her eyes as gentle as he'd ever seen them, the peace on her face.

He was about to wreck it on a gamble and he could only regret it so much. Steeling his will, he cupped the long sharp point of the lance and looked at his reflection in the tarnished metal before gouging his finger on the point.

Blood welled up almost immediately and he heard her gasp quite loudly for her usual level of sound. Her eyes flashed up to his face and he could read the horror and the hunger in them unusually easily. Just as easily could he read the way that her lips parted and she breathed in and out not with the need for air, but with the sense of an animal smelling wounded prey and closing in for the kill. "Seth..." she breathed out, nostrils flaring. "What are you doing?" she asked him with noticeable difficulty in her voice. "Why?"

He gritted his teeth as the first drop fell on the floor, staining the wood. "You shouldn't waste this," he said, struggling to keep his voice even. Despite knowing her, and his years of hunting, instinct overrode everything else and told him to get the fuck away from the hungry vampire before he died, but he forced himself to sit there. "Your highness," he said, gritting his teeth.

Eirika licked her lips, looking very very torn. "Oh Seth..." she whispered, sounding unexpectedly hurt, like it was something she'd faced before and failed. "you shouldn't have..." And yet her hunger was overwhelming her like he thought it would, her eyes blazing for a second before dying down. She took one staggering step forwards before stopping herself again. "Don't you dare ever do this again," she told him sharply before walking forwards again and kneeling on the floor next to his seat. Staring at his finger with a mix of revulsion and desire, she whispered "I won't forgive you if you do..."

Then she took his hand very gingerly, the bitter cold of her skin sending a shock through his body, and placed the very tip of his finger, right where the blood was still welling up, in her mouth. He could feel the curve of one fang against the edge of his finger as she shut her eyes and let out another breath like she was sighing with something other than the release of hunger. Seth had to keep himself from moving away as every muscle in his body tensed up, but she did not hold onto his hand tightly or bite down. Instead she licked the blood from his finger with her tongue, slowly and soothingly like a cat groomed itself.

There had to be something in vampire saliva that made wounds bleed more, he could feel the pressure as blood rushed to the cut on his finger only for her to lick it away almost reverently. The sensations in his body shifted slightly, while the horror was still there, there was another sensation disturbing for an entirely different reason. Eirika sucked the blood from his fingertip almost lovingly, never biting down or putting any pressure on him, but still with an aura of command that made him unable to back away.

It was just when his head was starting to spin that she pulled away suddenly, dropping his hand like a hot coal. Several drops of blood hit the floor before she blurred into the kitchen to throw his dish rag at his head. "Wrap your finger before..." she didn't finish the sentence and instead just motioned wildly at him. Seth obeyed after a second, now that she was no longer feeding, the wound had started to throb painfully and steadily with his racing pulse. Eirika looked more shaken than he'd seen her before, but more lifelike as well. He couldn't tell if it was the fire or the fresh blood that had flushed her cheeks, but he was pleased in the parts of him that weren't tingling with fear or desire that his gamble had somehow worked.

After a few moments, the throbbing subsided some and he let up the pressure on his finger. Eirika still stood by the fire, looking anywhere but at him. Though it was only just after midnight, she said "I think I'll return to the basement now," her voice shaking and cold at the same time. "I will see you tomorrow night." And she stalked off, her movements stiff and angry.

Seth watched her go, and the door slam behind her before the whole room went silent, then laid back his head against the top of the couch. "Well, Seth," he said to himself, staring at the ceiling, "you just may be a fool."

The ceiling had no answer for him.

The change had been the second worst thing she'd ever experienced in her life, barring that which she would not think of. Every part of her body had burned before turning to ice before sending her back into throes of agony, and had seemed to last forever. She had no idea between when the bite had taken effect and when it finished, but it felt like eons, a dragon lifespan at least.

Valter had been there when she opened her eyes, strangely visible even without light in the cave. "Ah, she awakens." he said with satisfaction coloring his tone. "I thought you might not."

She shook as she tried to crawl away from him, but nothing would respond. She felt so cold now...as cold as death. "Stay away," she choked out, panic filling her at the sight of him. "Don't come close."

He didn't listen to her, instead she felt his fingers, now the same temperature as her body grab her chin and force her to look at him till she squeezed her eyes shut. "Yes, the change is done," he said even more dangerously, his other hand going over where he'd left the bite. "You're like I am now."

Tears would have sprung to her eyes had she had any, but they felt dry. That didn't stop the emotions that came with terror and the need to escape him at any cost. She couldn't move, couldn't speak. Again, she was helpless as he pressed an icy kiss to her unresponding lips, prepared to destroy her again.

'Seth,' she thought hopelessly, 'save me.'