TWENTY-FOUR

"What are you doing here?"

His brow furrowed. "Here in Lviv, or here in the cemetery?"

Hermione's shoulders drooped and she rolled her eyes. She should've realized that wasn't clear without any upir sass. "Both, in that same order."

He shrugged, leaning back against the mausoleum and inadvertently pulling her to recline against him. "I was born here, seemed like a perfectly wonderful notion to return here after the war."

"You mean to hide out here after the war, don't you?"

Antonin winced, but he supposed he deserved that—and far worse, but one tragically annoying misstep at a time. "Yes. And to answer a question you've not asked yet before we get to the cemetery, it was returning here that cursed me. Wizarding Lviv doesn't treat murder kindly. I'd thought the old stories about such things only stories—as children do. I'm in the cemetery because what better place to hide from the living?"

"That … actually makes sense," she admitted grudgingly. "Okay, well … I don't understand how this works. Do you just slink out of a grave every night and find some local to bleed?" She could imagine that if he took as little from other victims as he had from her then it was possible that was why his presence had gone unnoticed.

He only stared at her a moment. "What? As in claw my way out of a casket when the sun goes down?"

She scowled at his tone. "I'm not liking what I'm hearing," she said in sing-song, waving her wand in reminder.

The upir couldn't help but snicker. "Someone's a bit dark. All right. I sleep in one of the mausoleums. And … no, that's not how the rest of it works, either. I have been—had been—asleep for sometime. Years, maybe? I can't tell anymore, it's all sort of blended together. How long has it been since War's End?"

Her eyelids moved in a series of rapid blinks as she attempted to process his blatant confusion. "Five years."

"Five years," he echoed in a whisper. "Then I was asleep for … two? Three? I had a remedy, but it was limited. I ran out. When I got so thirsty I couldn't bear it, I forced myself to sleep. It was the only relief."

None of this was what she expected to hear, but then she was painfully, reluctantly certain he was being truthful. "I don't understand. If you had this remedy, and then you were sleeping, when did you drink blood? Haven't you needed it?"

"I have, but I was able to ignore it." When she didn't immediately follow that with a response or another inquiry, Antonin met her gaze. "Was. And then last night happened."

Hermione dreaded where this might lead, but she needed the clarification; she needed to ask. She didn't intend for how the question slipped out in a breathy murmur as she said, "What happened last night?" Maybe it was something else that had woken him, some other incident that had nothing to do with—

"You," he answered simply, his expression carefully blank and his eyes still locked on hers as he gave a minute shake of his head. "Thousands of people have entered this place since I arrived, and I resisted all along. But then, you walked through those gates and somehow that alone stirred me from slumber."

Impossibly she felt her cheeks warm and a giddiness zip through the pit of her stomach. Her eyes widening, a quick, clipped, "Oh," was all she could manage in reply.