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The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep. – Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic
Caroline fell asleep in his arms.
She did it without thinking, without resisting, like it was the most natural thing in the world: her head easing back against his chest, her body slowly relaxing. Her eyes closed, and she didn’t even fight to keep them open. In the stillness of the house around them, the only sound was their breathing, the drum of their hearts. The countless other noises that filled the world outside were hushed somehow. Distant. Unimportant.
She hadn’t intended to sleep there, with him. If someone had told her that morning that she would spend the night curled against Klaus Mikaelson, his arms circling her, his hand resting against her hair, she’d have laughed in their face.
Not even if he compelled me, she’d have said.
And yet here she was.
She had known she should move. As soon as he’d cured her, as soon as she’d felt the poison leave her body and her strength return, she should have gone. She should have swung her legs over the side of the couch and risen to her feet, slipping out of his grasp and out of the house. If she’d been thinking clearly, she would have run, as far and as fast as she knew how. He couldn’t chase her. He was trapped there, and she would have been safe. Free.
There was Tyler to consider, too. Tyler, who had set her on the floor at Klaus’s feet and then retreated out into the night, trusting—or simply hoping?—that his plan would work. That whatever Klaus felt for her was stronger than the fury he channeled. That he would not watch her die. She had lain there before him like an offering. Her life to his mercy, if he had it. Or his love, if he’d show it.
Caroline knew she should call Tyler. That was what was right, and Caroline always did what was right. She should go to Tyler, and let him know she still lived. She should comfort him and let him comfort her.
But Caroline was not thinking clearly. And it wasn’t his comfort she wanted.
Later, that was the only excuse she could summon, the only way she could justify this to herself. A deep drowsiness settled over her, weighting her limbs—but that wasn’t why she stayed. She didn’t lack the energy to leave. Only the will. It was pleasant there in Klaus’s arms. Warm. And familiar somehow, like some strange, half-forgotten memory, hovering just on the edge of her consciousness.
It wasn’t right, of course. Not in this universe.
But—
He stroked her hair, spoke her name, hesitantly almost. Maybe he thought she was already sleeping. Maybe she already was. All her thoughts were running together, bleeding into one another. Behind her eyes, she saw the look on Klaus’s face when she’d told him she knew he loved her. And other, earlier images: she saw him follow her out into the street, saw him smiling at her, teasing her; she saw him angry and vengeful; she saw him turning away.
Tastes lingered in her mouth. The salt of his skin, the tang of his blood. It wasn’t like human blood, it didn’t quite quench that ever-present thirst that lived in her, but when he’d held his arm to her she hadn’t wanted to stop. She’d wanted to sink her teeth into him and drink her fill.
Fever, she told herself.
Hallucination; that was what Klaus himself had suggested. It was simply the after-effects of the werewolf venom that had sped through her veins.
When she opened her eyes again and found herself outside, beneath a hot blaze of sun, she thought that was what it was—another hallucination. Her mind was wandering. She couldn’t think of any other reason she should be standing there in an open field with nothing but rolling grass and clean sunshine wherever she looked. Warmth beat down upon her, and a thin breeze rustled against her. The blue sky above was seared with light. All around, the world was big and empty.
But not entirely empty, she saw.
Klaus stood beside her, blinking against the brilliance. The wind tugged at his hair. A frown creased his brow. “Well now, I can’t say this was expected.”
His voice jarred her into something like alertness. She shook herself, then turned, looking about. They weren’t so alone, after all. A path cut through the grass to the east, and in the distance, she could make out the shapes of what might have been houses—just not any sort of houses she’d ever seen.
“Where are we?” she asked. For a hallucination, this was awfully real. Sharp scents came to her: the grass underfoot, the gritty smell of soil. Blood, dried and drying; the faint hint of decay, like some dying animal had chosen this stretch of ground as its final resting place. A few feet from her, a mound of earth had been overturned and hastily covered, a gray slab of rock marking the space. This was all too vivid, too detailed—the breeze on her skin, the sun on her face. And she was still wearing the ruined, bloody shirt where a thin patch of her healed skin showed through.
That thought annoyed her, reminding her of the origin of the wound—and its cause. She set a hand on her hip and turned toward Klaus. “Hello? What is this place?”
He wasn’t looking at her; his eyes were on the rock. He nudged it gently with his foot before answering her. “Mystic Falls. Give or take a millennium.”
A sigh escaped her. “Seriously? Even in my head, I don’t get to go anywhere. I couldn’t hallucinate myself somewhere interesting?”
He turned toward her then, chuckling. “You’re not hallucinating, love.”
“Really? Then why am I here? Wait. Better question. Why are you here?”
His lips tilted upward. “Don’t ask me. This isn’t my dream. Although I suppose it is my memory. Not the most exciting of locales, is it? It’s seen better centuries.”
“You would know.”
He smiled at that, but didn’t respond.
She narrowed her gaze. “And what did you mean, this isn’t your dream? Whose dream is it? If you are messing with my mind, you should know I don’t appreciate it.” She knew that could happen, though she hadn’t experienced it—but something told her that wasn’t the answer here. Klaus had done any number of terrible things, more than she even wanted to consider, but he had never tried to compel her.
Now he was simply watching her. His smile widened. “And I should hate to do something you don’t appreciate.”
“Do not flirt with me. Just give me an answer, would you?”
“I would guess that we’re dreaming together.”
“Right. Great. And this is happening because… why?”
He shrugged. “I shared your blood. You shared mine. That creates rather an intimate situation, don’t you think?”
Caroline swallowed, hard. He’d taken a step toward her, and his expression had turned serious. His gaze was focused, intent. With all this wide space around them, his nearness was unsettling. But she didn’t look away. It was a sort of game between them, unspoken, but there were rules all the same, and she wouldn’t be the first to give ground. No matter how uncomfortable he made her.
And if she were being honest with herself, he did make her uncomfortable. She was aware of him, always. In some way, without her realizing or knowing just when it had occurred, she had become attuned to his very presence. She was sensitive to the sound of his voice, to the way he moved. When he entered a room, she felt it. Not just with her senses—that heightened vampire hearing, or how she sometimes caught a glimpse of him at the edge of her vision—but physically. Like a charge of electricity that ran through her body. When he looked at her, when her back was turned—she felt that, too, as though his gaze had a weight to it, something that attached itself to her from across the room. She would feel it graze her shoulders, the curve of her neck. She would turn, and he would be there. Their eyes would meet. And for the space of a second, there would be that sharp, sudden jolt—connection, awareness; a short circuit somewhere under her skin. Intimacy. Whatever she wanted to call it.
It was there now, that spark. That burn. A faint but steady sizzle, like the air between them might ignite at any moment if she didn’t damp it down. The spark was there, and she didn’t want it. It was dangerous, living half a breath from combustion. And it wasn’t right.
So she really didn’t need them getting any more intimate.
“First of all, you didn’t share my blood,” she said now, finding her rage and giving him the best glare she could muster. “Sharing implies that I offered, which I did not. Are we forgetting that this all started because you bit me?”
He watched her a moment, and then slowly, deliberately, licked his lips.
He actually licked his lips.
She wanted to hit him—even if her pulse did speed up at the motion, and for a second too long her gaze couldn’t seem to leave his mouth. She chose to ignore him instead. “Ugh, if we’re dreaming together, then how do I wake up?”
Just in case, she pinched herself. When that didn’t have any effect, she tried hitting the heel of her hand against her forehead. Then she closed her eyes, covered her face with both hands, and counted to ten.
“What are you doing, love?” he asked, his voice warm with amusement.
She lowered her hands in order to glare at him again. “Trying to get out of this freaky double dreamland and back to the real world.”
“Is my company really that undesirable?”
“What do you think? I didn’t even want to deal with you when I was awake.”
“A moment ago you didn’t find my attention so unwelcome.”
“Yeah, well, I was dying.”
“You’re not even curious as to where we are?”
She hesitated. “You said it was Mystic Falls.”
“Here, I meant. This particular spot.” He’d turned toward the rock again. It looked ordinary to her—a plain, blue-gray, worn a bit by weather and age, no larger than the space made by her cupped hands—but there was that stretch of scarred earth beneath it. Clumps of grass lay scattered nearby, torn up by the root.
She guessed it the second before he spoke.
“This was where I made my first kill,” he said.
It was simple instinct that made her search his face, to catch that look in his eyes that showed her things she didn’t want to see—the regret that was there, deeply buried, tucked away where it couldn’t touch him. And something else, sharp and painful, that made him shy away from her gaze. Something like shame.
Maybe it’s because I’m pure evil, he’d told her; she heard the echo of those words, and wondered if he actually believed them.
She hesitated a heartbeat too long, and spoke quickly to cover it. “Wow, thrilling. I bet you bring all your dates here.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched, but instead of answering her words, he answered the question lurking within her.
“She was a friend of mine,” he said, crouching low in the grass so that he could brush his fingers across the bare soil that marked her grave. “I remember… we were talking, and I couldn’t stop looking at her throat. That little pulse beat was mesmerizing. Seductive. And then all I could hear was the rhythm of her heart. I buried her here. After.”
Caroline knew what that felt like. She’d almost killed Matt right after she’d turned. She had even wanted to, in that moment—needed to, almost. At first it had been only a sip, a taste. Her lips on his skin, her teeth against the throb of his vein. And then the craving had been too intense to control. Everything inside her had been on overdrive, and she’d wanted to simply consume him. She’d wanted to drink and keep drinking until she’d felt that last flicker of his life flow into her, until she heard his final gasp. If Stefan hadn’t stopped her, she might have found herself burying Matt. The thought of it sickened her. Her stomach twisted; she clenched her fists.
So she understood what Klaus had felt—and didn’t want to understand.
“Yeah, I’ve heard this story. You triggered your werewolf side, your evil witch of a mother put a curse on you, and then you shoved your hand in her chest and ripped out her heart, proving yourself Son of the Millennium. Then you spent the next thousand years spreading misery wherever you went.”
He glanced up, his expression hard. She turned away, but he was faster. He stood before her, his eyes searching hers. His voice was barely louder than a whisper.
“Did you mean it, then? Or did you just want me to think you did?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied.
“You said that I could be saved. You said—”
He didn’t finish, but the words were there, a memory hanging between them. Thoughts given voice that she couldn’t take back. An echo that burned in the air.
She had said that she wished she could forget the things he’d done. Who he’d been.
She’d said he could be saved.
But it had been easier, then. She’d been dying. She’d known it. She had felt the poison in her blood and the fever in her blood, her strength draining away—and somehow she hadn’t been afraid. Not of Klaus, or even her response to him. Time had seemed to slow. Details had come into sharp focus: the feel of cloth against her skin; the material of the couch; the pain that streaked through her veins. The stubble on Klaus’s jaw. The way his eyes watched her. She had been honest with him because, in that moment, it hadn’t mattered. Facing death had stripped everything else away. She had nothing to fear from the truth. She would never have to face up to what it might mean. About him—or about her.
“I know what I said,” she told him now. As much admission as she would give him.
“Well, then. I hope you didn’t intend to leave the task to someone else.”
She looked at him. Their gazes held a long moment, locked there. He was standing more than a step from her, too close for comfort. She wanted to draw back, but somehow couldn’t. She stood as though compelled, unable to turn away.
That game they played. Only it wasn’t a game. Maybe it never had been.
You said I could be saved.
The invitation was there, in his eyes.
He’d made her other invitations. Other offers. He would take her anywhere she wanted to go, he’d said. Show her anything she desired. Delight her. Cities and sights, her yearnings called up out of dream and into reality. All the world—hers, for the taking, if she willed it. If she would only say yes, give herself over to him. Let herself be his.
This was different.
This offer was himself. A plea, and a promise. To be hers.
He wanted her to be the one who saved him.
She felt as though she were standing on the edge of a precipice, with no idea what lay below, or how far the fall might be. The only way to find out was to jump.
And part of her wanted to. To just close her eyes and step.
Then she spoke her name, and the spell was broken.
“Caroline.”
The edge receded. The ground beneath her was solid, dream or not. She shook herself. She inched backward, folding her arms across her chest. “You can’t—you can’t just say save me and expect that to change everything. You can’t put that on me. You have to save yourself.”
“Save myself,” he repeated, his voice soft.
She glanced away. She couldn’t look at him right now. She didn’t want to remember that sometimes, when he appeared the way he did now, she didn’t see a killer; she didn’t see a monster, or evil, or whatever he might call himself. She didn’t even really see a man—but a boy. He was a thousand years her senior, and somehow, she still felt older. She saw a child, wounded and alone, wanting desperately to be touched.
She fought against the thought, and conjured up other faces before her: Carol Lockwood and Jenna Sommers. Their eyes accused her. Their expressions were solemn, sad. They were bodies long since buried, cold in the ground. A flicker of anger grew within her: she kindled it, letting it sustain her.
“Yes,” she told Klaus. “Save yourself.”
“As easy as that, is it? That’s your problem, Caroline.”
She hugged her arms tighter. “The only problem I have right now is you.”
“Do you recall what I said to you, the night of my mother’s ball?”
“It’s time for you to leave sticks out vividly.”
“I said you were full of light.”
Her pulse jumped at that. It was the way he said those words. The way they slid from his throat, the tone he used. For just a second, she was back in that moment, remembering what it had felt like to have someone look at her, see her, see such things in her. That secret thrill of pleasure she’d tried so hard to hide. She didn’t answer him.
“You’re full of light,” he continued, “but there’s darkness in you, too. You’ve never tried being bad. You might find you have a taste for it.”
“What, so I can be like you? Just kill without caring?”
“You’ve killed before.”
“Yes, and I hated it,” she said, too quickly.
“But you didn’t, did you?” He was in front of her again, watching her, not letting her escape his gaze. “Doesn’t it get tiring, Caroline? Always being the good girl?”
There was a note of truth in his words, but she didn’t want to hear it. Her temper flared, and she let it. “No, I’m not actually tired of not murdering someone every time I get my feelings hurt. You know why? Because I care about people other than myself. Yes, I killed someone. And yes, I liked it. And I live with that every day. I regret it. I will always regret it. That’s called being a decent person, which is something so beyond your realm of understanding I don’t even know why I’m bothering to explain it.”
She saw an answering anger in his eyes, but she didn’t back down.
“Have you ever asked yourself why? Why you’re in love with me?”
He recoiled just slightly. It was little more than a flicker in his eyes, an intake of breath, but she saw it, felt it, that split-second of vulnerability. She’d spoken these words earlier—but not like this. Baldly, openly, where they would both have to face it and hear it. His feelings laid bare.
“Maybe you’re tired of being bad,” she said.
They stood staring at one another, neither one speaking. There was half a step between them, maybe less—but Caroline felt that gap, a space that was infinite, widened by the passage of a thousand years.
Klaus seemed to sense her thoughts. “There would hardly be any point in that, would there? I’ve lived a thousand years of darkness. A thousand years of blood. Where do we meet, is what I’ve wondered. That is what I ask myself.”
She wanted to dismiss his words, but she was curious despite herself. “And? Where do we meet?”
His smile was wry. “Somewhere in the middle, I imagine.”
She looked down. Only a step, after all. Easily crossed. If one of them would cross it.
But it wouldn’t be her. It couldn’t.
“Well, I wouldn’t hold your breath,” she said. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
“We do have an eternity to cross it.”
“If I were you, I’d bet on never.”
She expected anger again. She’d wanted anger. Half a step, half a million—either way, he was too close.
But instead, all he said was, “There’s something you learn when you live to be a thousand, Caroline.” He stepped forward, closing the gap between them. His hands caught her shoulders.
It was the contact that woke her. For a split second, she felt the touch of his fingers against her with all the heat that blazed between them. It flamed through her, in muscle and sinew, blood and bone. Every cell, every molecule.
Then she opened her eyes, and the dream melted away—the rolling green field, the blinding sun, the rock and the grave and that intimacy between them. She was in Elena’s house again, cradled in Klaus’s arms. And this time she knew she had to do what was right. She had to leave. She vaulted from the couch and toward the door, away from him, away from whatever he was about to tell her.
But she didn’t leave. She was tethered there still, tied to him whether she willed it or not—caught between the need to flee and the desire to stay.
He waited until she faced him once more to speak. He stood at the edge of the barrier, watching her. The smile he gave her was faint.
His words were a promise between them.
“Never is shorter than you think.”