THE THRESHOLD OF DARKNESS
Memory is not a recollection. It is a punishment cell for the mind, and sometimes the door swings open violently.
A fraction of a second, that’s how long the trip lasted. One moment he was in the salon of the Marquis de Valois with its false laughter, the scent of perfume and fine liquor, and suddenly time rolled backward.
The room filled with the aroma of melted wax and dust from forgotten parchments. The light from the chandeliers contracted until it was a small, trembling flame dancing over the face of the very mold of hatred: his father, the Count of Brissac.
—Clumsy? No, my son —his voice was a harsh whisper, an icy caress—. You are an affront, a stain. To look at you is to remember that she left to leave you here, only for you to dishonor our legacy.
His mother... She was his favorite weapon when he wanted to remind him that pain could have a proper name.
Roselin, just a nine-year-old boy back then, was trapped in that nightmare, cornered against a heavy oak desk, not knowing where to escape. His small, trembling hands rose as a shield against the inevitable, and his blue eyes fixed on his father’s with terror. He had spilled ink: a childish mistake that, in his world, was a capital sin.
The man’s gaze dropped to the silver handle of his walking cane. A sinister smile spread across his face.
There was no warning, no shouts, only the sinister whistle of wood cutting the air in a perfect, descending arc.
The impact was a dull, wet jolt that went through his shoulder and resonated in his teeth. The pain was so sharp it tore a gasp from him, trapped in a world that had suddenly become fire and pressure. A hot, red, wet stain began to spread across the sleeve of his child’s suit.
But the true horror, the wound that would never heal, came afterward.
The nobleman leaned in, his breath of brandy and rancor filling the space between them. He gripped his chin brutally, forcing him to face his empty eyes.
—You don’t cry —he observed with interest—. Well, tears aren’t for monsters, after all.
The silver sphere, now stained red, rested just below his left eye.
—Perhaps... if you cannot see the books you stain... you won’t be so useless.
Roselin’s world shrank to that point of cold pressure. The movement of the cane rising again was the last clear image he would have, before his world became small and dark.
Ji, ji, ji!
A shrill, false laugh, like a lead coin, shattered like broken glass in his ears. The library faded, torn apart by the fingers of reality.
Roselin François de Brissac, now sixteen, blinked slowly, disoriented. The pressure did not come from his father’s cane, but from the weight of his own fingers resting against his cheekbone. It had been a touch so precise it had dragged him into the past against his will.
The festive, elegant surroundings enveloped him again in their oppressive brilliance. But the echo of the blow, the crack of bone, still resonated in his memory. It was a tenebrous beat drowned by the frivolous melody of the orchestra and the artificial laughter.
He moved his hand away from his face, fearing its tremor would betray the storm inside. He took a deep breath and, with that gulp of air, he put his mask of falsehood back on.
He straightened up and elegance became instantaneous. A practiced, faint, melancholic smile erected his glass wall. Beneath the powdered wig and the blue velvet coat, there was not a boy, but the heir of Brissac, too perfect, too broken for this world.
—Monsieur de Brissac —a male voice called him—. I understand your new lands border mine, to the south.
The aristocrat made a brief, deliberate pause.
—I have heard certain… rumors about your administration —he added with poisonous softness—. It must not be simple to take charge of such a domain, being the sole heir… so young, and without a father to support you or advisors to surround you.
As he spoke, his gaze swept over him shamelessly, slowly and like a judge, following his silhouette, lingering where it shouldn’t. His smile curved slightly, satisfied.—In such… particular circumstances —he continued, leaning in just enough, without touching, but making his presence felt— it’s wise not to walk alone. France is not kind to those who lack a firm hand to guide them. Perhaps I could take you under my protection.
Roselin turned to him with slowness. He had to force a blink against the light assaulting his precarious sight. His blue eyes, weary of an always blurry world, barely recognized the man.
—Compassion is appreciated, Monsieur —he replied, with a vibrant, melodious chime; the smile polite, almost amiable, carefully maintained—. But it is not necessary. The dead do not manage lands, and rumors, as far as I know, do not pay the King’s taxes.
He took a measured pause, long enough for the insinuation—that he was a well-dressed gossip—to float between them.
—My books, unlike rumors, are based on figures. And mine show that productivity has increased by eighteen percent since I have managed the estate alone.
The cold, precise number cut through the charged atmosphere before he finished with impeccable calm:
—If your interest is wheat and not drama, my stewards will be delighted to receive yours. But do not try to sell me your protection when what you covet is a piece of pie I do not intend to share.
There was no rudeness in his words, only a glacial logic wrapped in protocol and etiquette.
The man stepped back. The condescending smile vanished, replaced by an expression of genuine bewilderment. He had tried to pin him with a needle of insinuations and had encountered an impeccable armor of memorized arguments.
He muttered an excuse about an urgent engagement and withdrew quickly, defeated by an intelligence he didn’t know how to combat.
At the exact moment the man left, Roselin’s mask cracked. The elegance turned into an exhaustion so profound it weighed on his bones. Each farce tore something from him, like a vampire sucking his soul.
Everything in that place, even the life he led, was a hell of falsehoods, and he was still playing the lead role in his own torment.
✦・━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━・✦
The last gala of the season officially ended when the host, with a smile of self-sufficiency, bid the guests goodnight. Roselin was among the last to cross the great carved oak portal, pretending to adjust his lace cuffs while allowing older or more drunken guests to pass first.
Every second he wasted was a calculated move, one more variable in the plan he had prepared for that night.
As he stepped outside, the night breeze struck him with a freshness that felt like forgiveness, cooling his skin after the stale, hot air inside.
The gardens of the Valois mansion stretched before him, geometric and perfect but withered by winter. From there, on the hill, the distant lights of the coastal town twinkled like trembling golden smudges. But the promise they contained was clearer than anything his eyes could see.
His carriage, a sedan with sober but impeccable lines, awaited him in the row of the few that remained. The Marquis’s footmen held torches whose flames turned into blinding, painful halos he avoided looking at directly.
Roselin walked toward his transport with measured steps, his back straight, a polite expression etched on his face like a wax seal.
Upon reaching it, he stopped with a gesture the servant about to open the door for him.
—I’ll manage —he murmured, opening it himself and slipping into the coach.
Inside the carriage, the world became a familiar, expensive, and silent confinement. The air smelled of varnished leather and old wood, the padded walls were imprecise shapes, and the dull shine of the iron ornaments was barely distinguishable.
He closed the door behind him. The exterior murmur was isolated and, a moment later, the carriage began to move.
Then, with a sudden, almost violent movement, he tore off the suffocating wig. The pins and rice powder scattered around like the ghost of the hypocrisy he had just abandoned. He tossed it onto the opposite seat with disdain, then rubbed his own scalp, feeling an immediate, almost animal relief at freeing his short blond hair.
He leaned forward and with a dull click opened a discreet compartment under the seat, a hiding place he had ordered installed himself. From inside he took out a cloak of thick wool, of a brown so dark it seemed black; it had no embroidery or fine labels, it was the type worn by sailors.
With a handkerchief he wiped off the makeup, then stripped off the bulky velvet coat and wrapped himself in the rough cloak, pulling the hood over his head. He was no longer the Count of Brissac; now he was just an anonymous shadow.
He whistled sharply, the agreed signal for the coachman to stop the horses.
When the movement stopped, he opened the door and noticed his personal valet, an older man with an impassive face, whose gray eyes, weary with age, showed not the slightest surprise at seeing his young master’s transformation. He merely waited to one side and offered his hand to help him down.
— Return to the mansion —ordered Roselin. His voice, now muffled by the wool, sounded flat, final, without the polite tone he always used—. I will walk.
The servant nodded. There were no questions, no look of curiosity or judgment. He climbed agilely onto the driver’s seat beside the coachman and, with a click of the tongue, the horses started off. The last tangible vestige of his former life disappeared along with the sound of the gallop in the night.
Roselin was left alone on the dark road. He adjusted the long cloak, making sure it hid his profile and the light-colored breeches that betrayed his status, and began walking downhill toward the twinkling lights of the port.
Without the artificial lighting of the salon, his visual world simplified and, in a way, became more manageable. The silhouettes were blurry, but now they belonged to the night: the dark profile of the trees, the stones flanking the road, or the irregular curve of the path. He no longer had to strain to decipher faces or intentions hidden behind false smiles.
With each step that took him farther from that mansion, from everything that represented his damnation, his breathing deepened, as if he were shedding a weight.Was he really going to do it?
The question, a sigh of resignation, echoed in his mind to the rhythm of his own heart, a funereal march marking the procession toward his grave.
He looked into the distance, at the cauldron of low, scattered lights where the land surrendered to the sea, where shadows of iron and wood peeked through the mist. There the effort would end; he wouldn’t have to strain his sight, nor act, nor endure memories that weighed too much. Yes, between the black water and the night, he would find the peace his past denied him.
The gravel road gave way to streets of packed earth and humble buildings, whose silhouettes crowded like crooked teeth against the night sky. The air also changed, with an intense smell of salt, rotting fish, and the woody smoke of poor hearths. It was the aroma of real life, raw and unadorned, contrary to the artificial perfume of his world of tea parties and decorated salons.
The lanterns here were scarce and widely spaced, their yellowish, flickering light barely fought the dense gloom, creating more confusion than clarity. Roselin moved slowly, relying more on the feel of his shoes on the uneven ground and on his hearing, sharpened by tension, than on his treacherous sight.
He ventured into the labyrinth of alleys where the eaves of the buildings almost touched. Around him, coarse laughter and the clamorous sound of taverns rumbled in a reality that felt alien and strange.
Suddenly, a shadow stirred before him.
Roselin startled and his heart leaped against his ribs. He only registered a fleeting movement before a meow confirmed the truth: it was just a cat.
He let out a sigh and brought a hand to his chest, trying to calm himself. He felt ridiculous for losing his composure over something so simple, but the self-criticism vanished as quickly as it had come, drowned by a more urgent reality.
The dull, stabbing pain.
Part of the lace was stained a dark, damp red around his wrist. The fright and sudden movement had caused a careless tug that reopened the wound. Those bandages, applied with haste and clumsiness, betrayed their origin: they were self-inflicted. A silent reminder of his last failed attempt to end it all and of the cowardice that had prevented him from finishing it.
He pressed his hand against his chest in a gesture of frustration and self-loathing, and resumed his walk with renewed determination.
There would be no failures tonight. The sea would not give him a second chance to regret.
✦・━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━・✦
Roselin finally reached the port, leaving the small fishing village behind, moving silently toward its dark belly. The increasingly dense sea mist worsened his already deficient vision, blurring the outlines of everything around him. The sound of the waves grew louder and with it the smell of salt, announcing he was near his objective: the pier.
Among the fishermen’s houses and warehouses, he glimpsed a huge wooden gate, half-open, devoured by darkness. There, leaning against the lintel, was a male silhouette. To his eyes it was merely a denser black smudge than the rest, an immobile column. He did not distinguish its features, only perceived its stillness, too absolute for such a miserable place.
Roselin passed by that shadow, and as he did, the stranger stood up in a fluid, silent, and precise movement. Something in the way he changed posture without effort made his skin crawl.
It was only after putting some distance between them that he noticed what was truly disturbing.
The silence.
There was no sound. The crickets were mute, the cats and dogs of the area had vanished. All life, all nocturnal whisper, had withdrawn, as if the world itself held its breath before that presence.
Fear arrived like an electric shock. He didn’t think; instinct screamed at him to flee.
He quickened his pace and plunged into the darkness of the next alley, his heart accelerating to a rhythm of pure panic. He did not look back, did not dare.
He did not see the black eyes fixed on him, studying his figure, his height, measuring the clumsiness of his steps, cataloguing the possibilities.
It was in that desperate flight, in the last instant before disappearing, that the wind snatched his secret and delivered it to the air: the scent of blood on his wrist. The metallic sweetness of the wound mixed with a deeper note: exposed vulnerability.
That being slid after him, moving through the mist as if nature itself yielded the way.
The decision was made. Out of all the prey in the port, the predator had chosen one.
✦・━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━・✦
Finally, the labyrinth of muddy alleys opened up. Roselin reached the main pier and the world exploded with sound again.
The wind hit him head-on, tearing off his hood and splattering his face with saltwater. He let the gale cool his sweaty skin and dishevel his blond mane further, as if his body needed those sensations to stay present.
He walked along the structure of worn wood extending into the waters. On both sides, fishing boats swayed moored, their hulls knocking against the pilings.
Before him, the sea stretched like a black, untamable mass, a liquid chaos adorned by the silver flash of the moon. It was a vastness offering only silence and confidentiality.
He stopped at the end of the walkway, until the tips of his shoes dangerously brushed the edge. Below, the icy water churned dark and restless, promising a quick, anesthetic end.
He leaned slightly forward and sought his reflection. What he found was a pale, undone form, a blurry ghost of himself without a trace of the beauty others always admired. He barely distinguished the blond of his hair and the shape of the cloak enveloping him.
“Yes…” he thought bitterly. This was the appearance of a condemned man.
His heart pounded his chest with anticipation. Finally, everything would end.
His pathetic existence condensed into sensations: the accumulated weariness, the unceasing pain, the loneliness drowning him, and the sin on his hands like a guilt impossible to wash away.
He inhaled deeply, gathering courage to take the next step. It was time to jump.
And it was at that precise moment that fate played its last and cruelest trick on him.
Something moved in the water… or so he believed. An almost imperceptible tremor distorted the moon’s reflection. Roselin held his breath, alert.
He looked around, but there was no one.
A cold breath brushed his cheek.
He turned sharply. Again, nothing.
The irrational certainty that he was not alone ran down his back like a shock. His pulse throbbed in his ears while his gaze tracked the broken angles of the darkness.
He was about to attribute it to his nerves when something wrenched him from the ground. The force was brutal; it separated him from the edge of the pier with a violent motion that tore a shriek from him.
The world spun in a vertigo of shadows and silvery lights.
When he regained his bearings, he was suspended with his eyelids clenched shut from fear, wrapped in large arms that were firm as an iron prison, but strangely... careful.
When he opened his eyes, the image presented before him engraved itself on his mind with the clarity of divine illumination.
The man holding him had an elegance and beauty worthy of a dream. He had skin white as porcelain, sculpted cheekbones, a firm jaw, and eyes dark as the abyss of a starless night, and his hair, jet-black, fell in a long mane tied in a low ponytail. His presence was overwhelming and emanated a silent authority that saturated the atmosphere around him. He was so tall that, even suspended in his grip, Roselin had to look up to find his face. At first he felt astonishment, but now he looked at him out of an indomitable necessity.
The blue-eyed one, raised among the made-up faces and practiced smiles of other nobles, had never seen anything like it. For a brief moment of hope, he believed that subject was an angel, an envoy from God who appeared to save him from himself and his torments. A faint smile escaped him; the mere idea was liberating. His lips parted slightly, trying to utter a gratitude that failed to emerge from the treacherous impression enveloping him.
But nothing could prepare him for the harsh reality about to strike him; this was not a divine messenger, but a herald of death, and this was his modus operandi: to let the mortal see him, to let his supernatural aura distract him and be his last conscious image before the attack. A final act of elegant cruelty.In a slow, deliberate, almost intimate movement, the dark-haired one inclined his head and closed the distance between their faces. An intense blush ignited the boy’s cheeks. At that proximity, he could distinguish each dark eyelash, each rebellious strand of hair framing that face, and perceive the faint scent of sandalwood emanating from him.
He was close. Too close.
Roselin couldn’t help but swallow. A new thought betrayed him:
Was he going to kiss him?
That made no sense at all, and yet, the dangerous mix of his features and his inhuman aura accelerated his heart in an expectant rhythm. His entire body seemed to hold the anticipation of the inevitable. For an instant, his social prejudices vanished. He was immersed in an enchantment, waiting for their lips to meet.
It was at that moment of fascinating, almost seductive proximity that the man’s thin, pale lips parted, revealing what had been hidden. On each side of the perfect mouth, descending from the upper gums, were two long, sharp fangs, of a pearly white that gleamed in the darkness.
Desire fled Roselin’s eyes, making way for an astonishment that chilled him completely, and the blush in his cheeks paled. He understood, in a flash of pure, primitive instinct, that what was before him was not an angel, it was...
He had no time to finish the thought. Only the pain arrived.
It was as if someone had set fire under his skin. A sharp burning ran along the side of his neck and spread throughout his body. He felt the warm wetness of his blood soaking his shirt, the metallic aroma filling his nostrils, mixing with the sandalwood perfume.
Panic shot through him like lightning, electric and instantaneous. His hands, which a moment before hung inert from astonishment, now clenched in a spasm of survival. His palms pressed against the stranger’s chest and pushed with all the strength he had. He struggled, writhing in that embrace, kicking. But every movement was a useless expenditure of energy, every push crashed against an absolute wall. The creature didn’t even flinch; it continued drinking his blood at a deep, steady rhythm.
Life was escaping through his neck. Not as a trickle, but as a violent drain. He felt strength abandoning his limbs, first as a tingling, then as a leaden weight. Balance vanished and the world began to spin. A nauseating dizziness appeared, promising the oblivion of fainting.
He kept fighting for moments that felt eternal, scratching and beating against the impossible.
And then, in the center of his own agony, a silent truth managed to break through. It was an absolute certainty, the voice of his own accumulated weariness over sixteen years of useless survival, finally rising from within:
What for?
Why resist?
He had walked to that pier in search of an end. And he had found it, even if it had taken the form of a nightmare monster.
This was merely another way to die.
A trembling sigh, more of relief than defeat, escaped his lips, and his body, a taut bow, gave way abruptly. All his muscles relaxed; the dead weight of his limbs surrendered completely. All that remained was a silent acceptance and a peace so enormous it was painful.
The predator, sensing the change, stopped.
The fangs withdrew with a wet sound and he pulled away from the bloody neck. His mind was surprised by his prey’s sudden calm. He expected more terror, struggle, despair… and instead found surrender, a capitulation so absolute it was illogical.
He raised his gaze, bewildered, and for an instant time stopped.
The moon illuminated with both cruelty and generosity, bathing the mortal’s face. And in that light, the attacker felt the world tear apart and recompose around him, as if every particle had surrendered to the vision before him.
The blond boy was incredibly beautiful, a delicate balance that seemed not to belong to this world. Every line of his face was perfect, harmonious, and fragile, as if it could shatter in an instant. The pale skin, splattered with the red of his own blood, created a violent and almost sublime contrast that took his breath away. His lips, full and barely parted, drew a curve too innocent to be real, too vulnerable not to tempt. But then he saw what finally captivated him:
The eyes.
Large and deep, of a lapis lazuli blue as intense as the winter sky after twilight; a color that seemed to contain all the sadness and vastness of the world. Now they were glassy, unfocused, as if looking beyond him, toward a void only they knew. The long, dark, abundant lashes rested on those dilated pupils like butterfly wings on a grave: beautiful and irremediably mortal.
The predator’s heart turned over.
Those eyes were the most beautiful thing he had ever beheld. They spoke to him of melancholy and suffering, awakening in him something more than a simple protective impulse: the fierce, instinctive need to guard him… and make him his own.
A silent recognition of perfection settled in his soul, firm and unbreakable, like a dogma: that youth possessed a beauty so absolute that destroying it would be the gravest sin imaginable.
“No”
The thought shook every fiber of his being.
“I cannot destroy this. It must be mine”
Before reason could intercede or hunger protest, his arm adjusted with a tenderness he did not know he possessed. He cradled the back of the youth’s neck, sheltering that head where those angelic eyes resided, as if the entire world rested within it.
—Damn it —he whispered with an astonishment of surrender to the inevitable, a silent acknowledgment that this being had captured his wonder irremediably.
He observed with clarity the gravity of the injury. He was bleeding too much. The truth struck him unfiltered: the boy was dying on him. He needed hands, he needed help, a mind that wouldn’t be clouded by the cloying stench of death and could react with precision.
Joshua.
The name emerged as the only piece that fit in this broken puzzle. His brother. He had to take the mortal to him.
Without hesitation, he lifted him in his arms with a firm, decisive movement, pressing the small body against his chest, and urgency propelled him to run. There was no time for hesitation; every second, every weak sigh was a reminder that time was running out.
The world became a trail of shadows and muffled sounds. The port’s lanterns blurred into golden lines and the wind became a constant whistle in his ears. Each stride was one less heartbeat in the chest he carried against his own, a chance for salvation fading with the speed of his own race.
And while the vampire cut through the night like a dark arrow, Roselin, in the limbo of unconsciousness, perceived only fragments:
The rhythmic, hypnotic swaying.
The pressure of unyielding arms.
The cold air lashing his face.
Among the shadows closing over his consciousness, there was a persistent image: the monster’s face, with his eyes now red like embers in the darkness and his black hair waving like a flag in the night; etching itself into his dying memory like the last gasp of astonishment of a soul about to be extinguished.
Then… nothing. His consciousness finally faded.
On the pier, only the distant echo of the waves remained and, on the worn wood, a dark, still-fresh stain of blood that glistened in the moonlight. The only proof that, in that place, a young man had crossed, forever, the threshold of darkness.
