▪︎ Chapter 122 ▪︎ “You didn’t ask one.”

Lavinia felt strange, although strange seemed like a painfully inadequate word after everything she'd just experienced. 

Somehow, learning that an omnipotent being existed—and that said omnipotent being altered reality largely because she found watching it interesting—had made the world feel substantially more chaotic than when the Divergences had simply been inexplicable phenomena.

The Divergences had never obeyed any law of physics humanity understood. 

Millions of people had transformed into creatures that shouldn't exist. 

Earth had doubled in radius without tearing itself apart, while roads, electrical lines and pipes separated by impossible new distances had continued functioning anyway. 

Entire landscapes had appeared from nowhere. Then the Tide had driven an impossible mass of wildlife toward population centers across the world.

None of it had ever made sense, but somehow not knowing had been simpler.

Now Lavinia knew the answer.

Someone had done it.

Not a machine. Not some poorly understood natural phenomenon. 

Not even another supernatural species so advanced that humanity had mistaken its actions for something divine.

God.

Or the closest thing to God that could possibly matter.

And she'd done it because she was interested.

Lavinia remained seated as applause rolled through the ceremony hall around her. 

George's voice carried from the stage, speaking about the defense of Oakridge and everyone who had stood together through the Tide, but Lavinia absorbed almost none of it. 

She had the increasingly ridiculous urge to turn toward Valerie and announce that she'd just met God, God looked like a cute girl made of darkness, and apparently the past few weeks of insanity had happened because humanity by itself had become boring.

She suspected Valerie would have questions.

Unfortunately, the ceremony was still underway.

Lavinia smoothed both hands down the front of her black dress, hesitated for another few seconds, then stood. 

Valerie immediately looked up at her, orange hair shifting across her shoulder as she asked, "Where are you going?"

"I want to check something."

"What?"

"Something."

Lavinia slipped toward the exit before Valerie could press her further. 

The instant the doors closed behind her, she accelerated, the hallway becoming a blur around her as she flew down several flights of stairs and rounded another corridor. 

Rather than bother finding a conventional exit, she pushed through a door leading onto a balcony and jumped over the railing.

Air rushed around her for only an instant before her wings burst from her back. 

Lavinia spread them wide, drove them downward and converted her fall into a violent upward surge.

Oakridge dropped beneath her.

Buildings raced past below, the city still scarred from the Tide. 

Military vehicles occupied intersections, barricades remained where soldiers had hastily established defensive positions, and damaged structures testified to how close parts of Oakridge had come to being overwhelmed. 

Her senses separated the remnants of violence effortlessly: gunpowder and smoke, human and animal blood, burned flesh, oil and churned earth, with the lingering scents of vampires and werewolves threaded through everything else.

Only hours ago, all of it had seemed extraordinary.

Now it felt almost mundane compared with meeting God.

Lavinia crossed beyond the city and entered the Diverged Lands, enormous trees swallowing the landscape beneath her. 

She slowed after several minutes, spotted a suitable tree and descended onto a thick branch nearly sixty feet above the forest floor.

Her wings folded and disappeared before she looked upward through the canopy.

One hand rose almost unconsciously toward the sky.

The sun wasn't visible from this angle, but Lavinia knew it was there. Soon, throughout the Diverged Lands, it would be almost entirely obscured. 

There would be places where vampires could move during the day without immediately fearing destruction.

She had changed that.

Or would change it.

The distinction became rather meaningless when dealing with a being capable of placing her five years into the future and then returning her to the exact moment she'd left.

Lavinia slowly lowered her hand.

The world might never become what she'd seen. 

The Thing in the Darkness had told her there was no fate, no fixed sequence of events waiting for everyone regardless of their choices. 

Perhaps Lavinia would never become the Golden Princess. Perhaps humans would never live in pens beneath her rule. 

Perhaps Gwendolyn's mother would never become Sophia. 

Perhaps the Witch of Thorns would never stand beneath an enormous tree and cheerfully offer Lavinia a hundred thousand human beings in exchange for tying her lifespan to Lavinia's.

Maybe humanity and the supernatural species would find some way to coexist.

Or perhaps everything would become worse.

Lavinia's fingers curled lightly against her palm as she considered the person she'd apparently become in that other future. Was she a monster?

The human answer was obvious.

Yes.

Enslaving people was monstrous. Taking their blood because they couldn't refuse was monstrous. Threatening their families to keep them obedient was monstrous. 

Yet the longer Lavinia considered the question, the more difficult the word itself became.

A vampire could love, lust, laugh, care, sympathize and grieve. 

A vampire could protect someone, sacrifice herself for someone and genuinely desire another person's happiness. 

Yet vampires weren't human anymore, and when something threatened them, even when mercy remained possible, something deep within them preferred crushing the threat until it couldn't oppose them again.

The Witch of Thorns surfaced in Lavinia's thoughts, and Lavinia's lips twitched.

That woman had been fucking insane.

Then again, by the standards of the future Lavinia had witnessed, everyone had been.

The extremes had become ordinary. 

Five years of escalating conflict had worn away the lingering human framework the supernatural species initially carried with them. 

Indifference and cruelty toward outsiders became practical, then familiar, then normal. 

Vampires hadn't become incapable of kindness. They'd simply narrowed the circle of people toward whom that kindness naturally extended.

Lavinia hadn't experienced those five years.

The Lavinia who had lived through them had.

That Lavinia had apparently become a figure capable of terrifying millions of humans. People cursed her name. Humans blamed her for their suffering. 

She ruled an enormous territory and commanded more than eighty thousand vampires while nearly four million humans lived under vampire control.

Knowing that should have horrified Lavinia more than it did.

It didn't.

She was aware of it.

She understood why the human she'd once been would have recoiled from the person she'd apparently become. 

But if becoming that person was necessary to survive, if the alternative was watching everyone she cared about die because she'd refused to do what was necessary?

Lavinia suspected she'd do it.

That realization didn't make her proud. It simply felt true.

She wanted to live. She wanted Valerie alive, and Gwendolyn, Violetta, Rosaline, Celestine, Cordelia, Evelyn, Adelaide, Evangeline and everyone else who had become part of her life. 

She wanted stability, a world where the people she cared about didn't simply vanish because someone else decided they were inconvenient.

For vampires, that desire carried a weight Lavinia was only beginning to understand.

Humans expected loss. Parents aged. Friends aged. Lovers aged. Everyone knew, however distantly, that the people around them were temporary.

Vampires weren't.

They could have forever.

Another vampire wasn't someone Lavinia expected to watch grow old and disappear. 

If Valerie survived tomorrow, there was no natural reason she couldn't still be beside Lavinia in a thousand years. Ten thousand. Longer.

The idea of losing her therefore felt less like the inevitable shape of life and more like something being stolen.

Lavinia crossed her arms and thought again of pale gray eyes that had seemed empty and yet somehow contained everything necessary to define the world around them.

The future wasn't fixed.

Of course it wasn't.

The Thing in the Darkness probably wouldn't tolerate something so boring.

Could Lavinia even call her cruel? Capricious, certainly. Self-interested. Dangerously whimsical. But cruel?

How did one impose morality upon a being that defined the reality in which morality existed? Could someone punish God? Replace her? Make God see the error of her ways?

No.

Put simply, the world was the Thing in the Darkness' canvas. If she wanted to paint over part of it tomorrow, there wasn't anyone who could stop her.

And Lavinia still had one wish.

One wish capable of turning the world upside down with a sentence. She could change her species, change humanity, change the planet. She could probably ask for something far greater than Earth itself and receive it.

The rhythmic beating of wings interrupted her thoughts.

Lavinia turned.

A familiar orange-haired vampire descended through the canopy, wings beating once before she landed beside Lavinia. The branch barely shifted beneath Valerie's weight.

For one disorienting moment, Lavinia saw another forest.

Another branch.

Night instead of day.

A human pen beneath them.

She and Valerie had stood together much like this five years from now, looking down upon people their future selves regarded as resources.

Then it was gone.

Only Valerie remained.

Valerie stepped closer, caught Lavinia by the shoulder and slowly turned her until two pairs of empty red eyes met. 

The usual playfulness had vanished from Valerie's expression, replaced by genuine concern. 

"Are you okay? You have your moments, but you don't usually stand up in the middle of a ceremony, say you're checking 'something,' and then fly away before anyone can ask what that means."

Lavinia stared at her.

They'd known each other for weeks.

That was all.

Weeks.

Yet Valerie had followed her without hesitation.

Lavinia suddenly wondered whether that, too, had been intentional. 

Had the Thing in the Darkness made vampires so intimately connected because she'd imagined eternity otherwise and found it pitiful? 

Living forever sounded wonderful until forever meant being alone. Perhaps she'd considered that. Perhaps she'd simply thought vampires seeking one another out would be interesting.

Valerie's fingers tightened around Lavinia's shoulder. "Lavinia?"

Lavinia smiled, slipped both arms around Valerie's slender shoulders, and pulled her closer.

Valerie had just enough time for confusion to cross her face before Lavinia tilted her head and pressed their lips together.

Valerie went completely still.

Lavinia could feel the surprise in the way her lips parted without immediately answering the kiss, and for perhaps a second Valerie seemed genuinely incapable of deciding what to do. 

Her empty red eyes widened, darting once toward Lavinia's face as though she needed visual confirmation that this was actually happening.

Lavinia didn't give her much time to recover.

She shifted closer on the branch, one hand sliding behind Valerie's neck as she kissed her again, slower this time, deliberately lingering. 

Valerie's lips were cool against her own, soft despite the sharp teeth hidden immediately behind them, and Lavinia felt the slightest brush of a fang before Valerie instinctively adjusted.

That was apparently enough to convince her.

Valerie's arms snapped around Lavinia's waist and pulled her flush against her. 

The startled stiffness disappeared all at once, replaced by an enthusiasm Lavinia probably should have expected after weeks of Valerie making her feelings anything but subtle. 

Valerie tilted into the kiss, lips moving eagerly against Lavinia's, one hand sliding upward along her back while the other held firmly around her waist as though Lavinia might suddenly reconsider and escape.

She didn't.

Tangerines and honey flooded Lavinia's senses at this distance, so concentrated that the forest nearly disappeared beneath Valerie's scent. 

Lavinia had kissed people before becoming a vampire. This wasn't some bewildering new physical experience, yet the familiarity only made the differences more noticeable.

Valerie was cool against her.

There was no pulse racing beneath her skin when Lavinia's fingers settled along the side of her neck. 

Neither of them needed to break away for breath. There was no growing ache in Lavinia's lungs forcing the intimacy to pause, no physical requirement that they separate at all.

They could continue until they wanted to stop.

Lavinia discovered she didn't particularly want to.

She let her fingers drift higher into Valerie's orange hair and kissed her again. 

Valerie made a soft, pleased sound against her mouth and pulled her closer still, their bodies pressed together while the branch and forest seemed increasingly irrelevant. 

Lavinia felt the curve of Valerie's smile against her lips once the initial shock finally gave way to obvious delight.

That made Lavinia smile too.

Valerie responded by kissing her harder.

Lavinia caught Valerie's lower lip lightly between her own, careful of the sharp teeth behind it, then released it only for Valerie to immediately reclaim the distance. 

A fang grazed Lavinia's lip this time without quite breaking it, and Valerie's fingers tightened against her back.

By the time Lavinia finally eased away, Valerie followed her another inch before apparently realizing the kiss had, in fact, ended.

Their faces remained close enough that the tips of their noses nearly touched.

Valerie stared at her.

Lavinia smiled.

"What?"

"What?" Valerie repeated incredulously, arms still locked around Lavinia's waist. 

"You do not get to kiss me like that after spending weeks pretending you don't notice me throwing myself at you and then ask what."

"I noticed."

"That's worse!"

Lavinia laughed.

Valerie narrowed her eyes. "You knew?"

"Valerie, you aren't subtle."

"I can be subtle."

"No."

"I absolutely can."

"You climbed into bed with me."

"We're vampires."

"You bite me constantly."

"We're vampires."

"You flirt with me constantly."

Valerie paused. "We're—"

"Don't."

Valerie's mouth twitched before she broke into a grin. "Fine. But you knew how I felt."

"I did."

"And you've spent weeks keeping me right here." Valerie finally released one arm from Lavinia's waist solely so she could hold two fingers narrowly apart between them. 

"Not rejecting me, but not letting me get any closer either. Then you fly out of a ceremony, I chase you into the woods, and suddenly you're kissing me like you've been waiting longer than I have."

Lavinia leaned closer, brushing her lips over Valerie's cheek. Her tongue slipped briefly between them and lightly grazed Valerie's skin before retreating, leaving tangerines and honey on her tongue.

Valerie stared at her suspiciously. "You're avoiding the question."

"You didn't ask one."

"You know what I mean."

Lavinia smiled and rested her forehead against Valerie's.

For a few moments, neither spoke.

Then Lavinia murmured, "No matter what happens, I'm going to protect the people I cherish. Even if I become a monster doing it."

Valerie's amusement softened, though the second sentence left a slight crease between her brows. "That's a concerning thing to say immediately after finally kissing me."

Lavinia laughed quietly.

Valerie took her hand and threaded their fingers together.

Lavinia looked toward the sky again.

Being good mattered.

She believed that.

She'd tried to be a good person throughout her human life. She'd never wanted to hurt people. She didn't enjoy suffering. She didn't want humans terrified of her.

But good and evil became disturbingly subjective when something precious was placed on the other side of the scale.

If someone forced Lavinia to choose between a stranger and Valerie, she'd choose Valerie.

Ten strangers wouldn't change the answer.

Neither would a hundred.

What about thousands?

Millions?

Lavinia looked at the orange-haired vampire holding her hand.

The answer still came far too easily.

Valerie.

That realization should have been horrifying. Instead, it explained something Lavinia had been struggling to understand since she'd awakened five years ahead.

She laughed softly.

Valerie's pointed ear twitched. "What's funny?"

"I think I finally understand something."

"You're being extremely mysterious today."

"I know."

The future had horrified Lavinia because she'd understood what those vampires were doing. That was the problem.

She hadn't looked at her future self and found some incomprehensible monster wearing her face. She'd seen the end of a road whose beginning she could recognize.

Every compromise could have made sense when it happened. Every escalation could have been justified by the one before it. 

Humans attacked vampires, vampires retaliated, humans killed vampires, vampires took humans, humans organized, vampires tightened control.

Perhaps someone Lavinia cherished had died.

The value she placed upon the people responsible diminished.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Until millions of humans became exactly what they'd appeared to be in that future: nameless faces.

Not because Lavinia couldn't understand their suffering. Not because she'd somehow forgotten what morality meant.

Because the people she loved mattered more.

The knowledge of her cruelty hadn't disappeared. It had simply stopped outweighing everything else.

Lavinia lifted Valerie's hand and pressed it briefly against her cheek. "I saw something."

Valerie's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"I don't know how to explain it yet."

That was true enough.

"But I'm going to do everything I can to make things work."

"Between who?"

"Everyone."

Valerie gave her a skeptical look.

"Humans. Vampires. Wolves." Lavinia hesitated, thinking of Witches, Dryads, Sirens, Elves, Giants and Fae that hadn't even appeared yet. "And whoever else comes along."

Valerie's brow furrowed. "Whoever else—"

Lavinia kissed her cheek before she could seize upon the wording, then let her lips drift toward Valerie's pointed ear.

She nipped it lightly.

Her fangs broke the skin, producing a tiny trace of dark blood. Lavinia caught it with her tongue before the wound began closing.

Valerie shivered. "Cheater."

Lavinia smiled against her ear before drawing back. "I'll do everything in my power to make it work. But if it doesn't... if everything falls apart anyway, then what we become afterward might simply be what the situation makes necessary."

Valerie studied her for several seconds before sighing. "You've definitely been thinking too much."

"Probably."

"Should I be worried?"

Lavinia considered the question seriously enough that Valerie's expression became increasingly suspicious.

"No."

Valerie raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe a little."

"Wonderful."

Lavinia laughed and slipped her arms around Valerie again, though this time she simply held her.

Above them, leaves shifted gently in the wind. Oakridge lay beyond the forest, battered but alive. 

Humans, vampires and werewolves were gathered there at that very moment to celebrate having survived together.

Maybe that mattered.

Maybe it was enough of a beginning.

Lavinia hoped so, but hope wasn't certainty.

She knew what she was capable of choosing now. She knew what Valerie was worth to her, what Gwendolyn was worth, what all of them were worth.

If peace remained possible, Lavinia would reach for it.

If coexistence could survive, she'd protect it.

But if one day the choice truly became them or everyone else, Lavinia no longer believed she'd hesitate simply because choosing them would make her a monster in someone else's eyes.

She rested her cheek against Valerie's hair and wondered if somewhere beyond anything she could perceive, pale gray eyes were watching.

The thought no longer frightened her as much as it probably should have.

If anything, Lavinia suspected that uncertainty was precisely what the Thing in the Darkness enjoyed. Not knowing whether Lavinia would remain kind. 

Not knowing whether humans would accept vampires. Not knowing whether vampires would continue caring about humans. 

Watching every decision accumulate until nobody could remember exactly when everything had changed.

And if everything did fall apart, if humans and vampires eventually looked across some battlefield and could no longer remember why they'd ever believed coexistence possible, Lavinia suspected the Thing would watch that too.

Perhaps she'd smile.

Perhaps she'd find it sad.

Perhaps both.

Lavinia tightened her embrace around Valerie, feeling Valerie comfortably settle against her in return.

God had made the pieces.

What they became afterward was still theirs to decide.