Before Blue Twilight

Elisabeta wept. I felt her pain washing through me and I heard her tears, every one of them, as they spilled to the stone floor, and onto my body. "He cannot be dead," she cried. "He cannot be."

"Stop. Don't act that way. Lord above us, what will the villagers think?"

"I don't care!" she cried. "I don't care!"

God, why did the old fool have to come? She would have rested by my side until I woke at sundown.

She would have been all right. But now -

"Where are you going, girl? What do you think you're about?"

She called back, from somewhere farther away. "If he's gone, then I'm going with him. I don't want to live!"

If the bastard let her fling herself from those cliffs, I vowed in helpless silence and impotent rage, I would kill him when I woke. I would!

I heard his footsteps pounding on the stone, and then I heard no more. And with her absence, the day sleep closed in and claimed the consciousness to which I had clung.

I knew no more until nightfall, when energy and life seeped back into me as it did at sunset every night.

My veins sang, my skin tingled, my lungs filled with their first breath in many hours, and my eyes opened.

She lay across my chest, weeping. "Why? Oh, cruel fate, why? Why did you give me hope only to tear it away from me again? Why did you give me love only to replace it with pain deeper than any I'd felt before. Why?"

My shirt was wet with her tears. I felt their warmth on my skin. And only then did I realize we were no longer in the cave. We were in my so-called father's private chapel.

I lay on a bier surrounded by candles. No coffin. No flowers, not yet. Had the king been told of my condition I'd have no doubt been safe in my own rooms by now, awaiting my nightly resurrection - he'd seen me in a deathlike slumber before, and knew I would return. How he explained it to himself, I know not. I only know he loved me as a son and trusted me.

But since I was here, he must still be away, on the secretive journey he'd undertaken a day earlier.

She was here, though. My beloved Elisabeta. And I couldn't bear to see her cry. I lifted my hand and stroked her hair.

She shot up from where she'd lain upon my chest, gazing down at me with eyes wider than the moon. "

Prin meu? My prince?"

"Do not weep, child. I'm not dead. I was...I was only sleeping."

"You were cold!"

I nodded, gathering my wits about me, sitting up slowly. "Don't be afraid. This...Elisabeta, this is part of the secret I promised to share with you." I lowered my head, cursing myself for a fool. Was I truly about to trust this stranger with my life?

Yes. I was - she was no stranger and I knew it by then. "By day I rest, and in my rest, I seem to all the world like a dead man. But I am not."

"Then...what are you?"

"A man. A lonely man, who will live forever. A prince in need of a princess, Elisabeta. I am immortal. I am..."

"Undead," she whispered.