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The first time Aramis saw her, she was sitting alone beneath the cathedral ruins, moonlight tangled in her hair. She looked human—too human for a place where no one living dared to wander after dark. Yet she didn’t flinch when the cold wind passed through like a ghost. She didn’t shiver. She didn’t pray.
She just stared at the moon as if she missed it.
Aramis stepped from the shadows, boots silent on the stone.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, voice low, ancient. “Night isn’t safe for mortals.”
She looked up at him with eyes so startlingly calm he felt something shift inside his chest—something old and forgotten.
“Good,” she whispered. “The day hasn’t been safe for me either.”
Her name was Mariana Vale, and she was not afraid of him.
She should’ve been.
Aramis was one of the oldest vampires left in the city—powerful, disciplined, feared by his own kind. But when Mariana spoke, every instinct he’d honed over centuries felt strangely quiet. She told him she came to the ruins to escape life—no, not life… mortality.
She had been diagnosed with a failing heart. Every day hurt more. Every breath felt borrowed.
She had come to the ruins because she wanted the end to be beautiful.
“I thought you were here to kill me,” she said softly, brushing dust off a cracked stone.
Aramis exhaled, a breath he hadn’t taken in years. “And if I was?”
She smiled. “Then it’s the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in months.”
Something in him broke.
He spent the night talking with her—about art, the stars, old places he remembered, people she wished she could become. And when dawn crept close, painting the horizon gold, Aramis felt a fear he hadn’t felt in centuries:
The fear of losing something precious.
He vanished before the sun touched the ruins.
But he came back the next night.
And the next.
Mariana teased him for being dramatic, for always appearing from the shadows like a guilty ghost. But she also watched him like she’d been waiting for him her entire life.
One night she asked:
“Do vampires fall in love?”
Aramis froze. “We don’t… fall.”
Mariana stepped closer. “What do you do then?”
He met her gaze. “We drown.”
Her breath trembled.
And he kissed her.
It was the kind of kiss that felt older than time, deep, cold, hungry, and gentle all at once—like winter and fire colliding. Her arms wrapped around him as if she didn’t care that she was touching a creature who lived on blood and longing.
He didn’t bite her.
Not yet.
But temptation burned through him like wildfire.
Weeks passed. Her health worsened. Her breaths got shorter. Her voice weaker.
“You’re dying,” he said one night, unable to hide the despair.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to.”
Mariana touched his cheek, fingers fragile but warm. “If I let you turn me… will I still be me?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “But you’ll change. You’ll feel everything with painful intensity. Hunger. Emotion. Love. Forever.”
“Forever…” she breathed. “And you?”
“I haven’t loved anyone in centuries.”
Mariana leaned her forehead against his. “So drown with me.”
He hesitated—only once.
Then Aramis sank his fangs into her neck, gently, reverently, like a vow carved in flesh. She gasped, clutching him tighter. He tasted her life, her fear, her hope. And in the same breath, he gave her his immortal curse.
Her heartbeat faltered.
Stopped.
Then thundered back to life—stronger, faster, unfamiliar.
Her eyes opened—a deep crimson glow beneath moonlight.
“Aramis…” she whispered, voice coated in hunger and wonder. “I can feel you.”
“You’re one of us now,” he said softly.
She smiled slowly, her new fangs glinting. “No… I’m yours.”
They became legend.
The vampire who loved no one.
And the dying girl who chose eternity.
They wandered cities, hunting together, holding each other through centuries of shifting shadows. Some nights they danced on rooftops. Some nights they fed beneath neon signs. Sometimes the hunger drove them mad, wild, feral. But they always returned to each other like gravity.
And every time Aramis kissed her, she whispered the same words:
“Drown with me.”
And he always did.
