Saturday morning in Brașov brought no relief. The light struggling through the hotel's heavy curtains seemed gray, filtered by the snow that had begun to fall again. Inside the room, time felt distorted, every second of the 48-hour deadline slipping away like sand through Kara's fingers.
Alice sat motionless in an armchair in the corner, eyes closed. But Kara knew she wasn't sleeping. She was watching. Thinking. Suffering.
Kara sat on the edge of the bed, her phone trembling in her hands. The decision weighed like a mountain on her chest:
Death or Immortality?
Oblivion or Eternity?
She needed an outside voice.
Someone who knew both worlds.
She dialed Natalie's number.
It rang three times before Natalie answered. Her voice was rough, slow, as if she had just woken from a deep, unnatural sleep.
"Kara?"
"Hi, Nat…" Kara swallowed hard. "I'm sorry to call like this. I just… I don't know what to do."
Silence followed, then the sound of a lighter flicking and a long exhale.
"What happened? The Council… did they sentence you?"
"They gave me a choice," Kara said, glancing at Alice, who opened her eyes and watched her with quiet sorrow.
"I can have my memory erased. Forget Alice, forget everything, go back to being a normal human… or I can be transformed. Die and be reborn like them."
Natalie stayed silent for a long moment. Kara could hear her breathing, slow and heavy.
"Nat? What do you think? It's crazy, right? Giving up my life… my parents… the sun?"
"Kara…" Natalie's voice hardened in a way that felt unfamiliar.
"Do you really think your 'normal' life is enough now? After everything you've seen? After feeling what it's like to be close to them?"
"I'm afraid of losing who I am," Kara confessed, tears streaming down her face.
"I'm afraid of becoming a monster."
"Humanity is fragile, Kara," Natalie replied coldly.
"We break easily. We age. We suffer over small things. Alice is offering you something no one else can: permanence. Strength."
"But what about my soul?"
"Your soul is loving her, isn't it?" Natalie sighed, her voice softening for a brief moment, sounding like the friend Kara remembered.
"Look… I'm changing too. Rose has shown me things. And I'll tell you this: the dark isn't so bad when someone is holding your hand. If you forget Alice, you'll spend the rest of your life feeling like something is missing. That's worse than death."
Kara closed her eyes, absorbing every word.
"So you think I should accept it?"
"I think if you truly love her… eternity is a short time," Natalie paused.
"I'll be here. On the other side. We won't let you lose yourself."
"Thank you, Nat."
When the call ended, painful clarity settled in Kara's chest.
Natalie was right.
Forgetting Alice would mean becoming a living ghost.
She stared at her phone again. There was one more call to make.
The hardest one.
She dialed her parents' house in Florida.
Her mother answered on the second ring, her voice bright and full of sunshine.
"Kara! Sweetheart, we were just talking about you! How are your studies going?"
Kara fought back tears with everything she had.
"They're good, Mom. I just… wanted to hear your voice."
"Is everything okay, honey? You sound strange."
"Just missing you," Kara lied.
"Is Dad there?"
They talked for twenty minutes. About the weather. The neighbor's dog. Pie recipes for the holiday. Kara listened to every word like it was sacred, memorizing their voices, their laughter, the unconditional love flowing through the line.
She couldn't say goodbye.
She couldn't say I'm going to die tonight.
So instead, she said:
"I love you so much. Never forget that. You made me who I am."
When the call ended, Kara let the phone fall onto the bed and looked at Alice.
She was saying goodbye to the sun.
To being Jimmy and Maria's daughter.
To become Alice's partner.
Alice stood and wrapped her in a silent embrace. No words were needed.
The choice had been made.
Meanwhile, deep within Brașov's fortress, immortal politics were boiling.
Baroness Elise Crowell stalked through the stone corridors, her heels striking like hammer blows. She found Vlad IV in his private chambers, a stark room lit only by candles, where the supreme leader studied an ancient manuscript.
"You were weak, Vlad," Crowell said sharply, without ceremony.
"Two days? For what? Hope is a disease for the condemned."
Vlad raised his eyes, centuries weighing on his gaze.
"Haste is the enemy of perfection, Elise. A forced decision creates rebels. A chosen decision creates loyal subjects."
"Loyal?" Crowell scoffed.
"A human turned by love will always be a human wearing vampire skin. She will bring weakness to the bloodline. She will make Alice hesitate when killing becomes necessary."
"Do not underestimate the human heart, Baroness," Vlad said, closing the book.
"What exists between them may bring more than risk. It may bring balance. We have become stagnant, Elise. Cold. Perhaps we need something to remind us why we fight to survive."
Crowell clenched her fists, the leather of her gloves stretching tight. Her eyes glowed with ancient, golden hatred.
"Balance? Love between human and vampire has never brought balance. Only exposure. Tragedy. Chaos."
She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his desk.
"Humans are treacherous, Vlad. Cruel. Selfish. Destructive. They don't deserve mercy. They deserve to be ruled… or consumed. You know this. You've seen what they do to each other."
Vlad sighed, tired of this eternal argument.
"And you, Elise? Do you still carry Paris on your shoulders?"
The mention cracked Crowell's mask.
"I carry the truth."
Without waiting for dismissal, she turned and stormed out, her red cloak whipping behind her.
She walked to the fortress balcony, staring down at Brașov below. Snow fell softly, white and pure — but in her mind, the landscape changed.
White turned to gray.
Snow turned to ash.
Paris, 1793. The Reign of Terror.
The air smelled not of bread or perfume, but of stagnant blood and gunpowder. The cobblestone streets were slick. The guillotine worked tirelessly in the square.
Élise de Montmartre was sixteen.
She ran through the side streets, her silk dress torn and muddy, bare feet bleeding. Behind her echoed heavy boots and drunken shouts of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."
They had invaded her home.
Ordinary men. Bakers. Blacksmiths. Neighbors.
People her family had fed.
They dragged her parents into the courtyard and slaughtered them like pigs, laughing, drunk on the power of destruction.
Élise was cornered in an alley.
Three men.
The stench of cheap wine and sweat.
They didn't just want to kill her.
They wanted to break her.
"Please…" she begged, hands raised.
"I'm just a girl."
"You're a parasite!" one shouted, striking her face with a musket butt.
Pain exploded white.
She fell into the filthy street.
They kicked her. Tore her clothes. Laughed at her screams.
There were no supernatural monsters there.
Only men.
They left her bleeding in the gutter, ribs broken, dignity destroyed, as rain mixed with blood in the sewer.
As life faded from her eyes, a shadow loomed.
Not death.
Something darker.
Vlad Tepes looked down at the broken girl in the mud. He didn't see a victim.
He saw hatred burning in her eyes.
"Men are beasts, ma chérie," Vlad said, his voice like velvet over gravel.
"They fear what is superior. They destroy what they cannot possess."
Élise tried to speak, but only blood spilled from her mouth.
"Death has already taken your hand," Vlad said, kneeling in the filth of Paris.
"But I can offer you another choice. Power. So no one will ever touch you again. So you will be the wolf… and they the sheep."
Élise didn't fear the vampire.
She felt gratitude.
With trembling, blood-stained fingers, she reached for him.
"I… want… to see them burn."
Vlad smiled.
"Then drink."
PRESENT DAY
Baroness Crowell gripped the stone balcony so hard that cracks formed beneath her gloved fingers.
The taste of Vlad's blood mixed with Parisian rain still haunted her.
That night, Élise died.
Crowell was born.
And with immortality came certainty:
Humanity was a disease.
Alice's love for a human wasn't just rule-breaking to Crowell.
It was a personal insult.
It was inviting the monsters who murdered her family back into the house.
It was embracing the weakness she had spent centuries erasing.
"Mercy for humans… never again," Crowell whispered to the frozen Transylvanian wind.
If Vlad was too old and sentimental to do what was necessary, she would.
She turned back into the shadows.
She had allies.
She had James Butcher.
And she had a plan.
Alice and Kara would not leave Brașov.
Not human.
Not vampire.
Only dead.