I nodded.
"I really wanted to be with you, but…" Angel shrugged, something he never did. "I learned a few things that would happen if we'd be together."
"Like what?" A few things? Not just one thing? And Fate thought I was lucky?
"Well…" His face was really near, but his eyes were distant, although looking straight into mine. "First of all, my father thinks you're one of us."
"What?" Even though I loved Angel dearly, my reaction was a bit insulting to him. I backed away a little. What did he mean by "one of us"? Angel himself wasn't one of them. "That's nonsense."
"I never got to know why exactly he thinks so, but…" He shrugged again. "If you think of it, some parts make sense."
"What are you saying, Angel?" I said. "You aren't one of them. Neither am I. We choose to be who we are." Then I realized what he was trying to say. "You think I'm a vampire?"
"A half-vampire, maybe," he said. I was shocked. "Or have a susceptibility to turn into one."
"I can't believe my ears."
"Look at it this way. You can't look at mirrors, like us."
"Because of a curse by some nameless witch—"
"That nameless witch can only curse vampires, Carmilla." He looked like he regretted telling me. "I asked around, and everyone confirmed she only had power over vampires—and half-vampires; anyone who has vampire blood in them."
"How can you be sure?" Shocked didn't nearly describe what I felt. "What's her name, the witch?" I remembered the mermaids asking me to meet her.
"No one told me," Angel said. "Remember that I'm an outcast. I rarely lived among vampires. I don't know the lore or the history. Not accurately or detailed. And there is the blood, milk, and chocolate thing."
"What about it?" I didn't need to recite the incidents in the vampires' dungeon to remember it.
"I have no idea what the significance is, or why they submerged you in it," he said. "But it should hurt any non-vampire. It should drive them insane, which didn't happen to you. Anyway, I tried to keep away, because whatever susceptibility to turning into a vampire you had, I didn't want to be the one to trigger it. I had been resisting becoming a vampire myself, and you don't know what it does to me. You don't know how many times I want to bite you, to have your blood, and hold myself back. If I hadn't just fed from the sea, I wouldn't be able to hold myself from you."
I was too lost and confused to say anything.
"But I came back for you, two years later, because I couldn't live without you, Carmilla." He leaned in to kiss me. I pulled away.
"This doesn't make sense, Angel," I said. "You're holding back something else. The mermaids told me you held some big secret from me."
"The mermaids?" Angel seemed offended.
"I feel it," I said. "My love for you, my bond to you, and all this we're going through. Captain Ahab knowing who I am, and asking me to leave his ship. Fate dying to make me sell my soul to him. Why am I so important? The fact that I brought apples with me into the world. Your father wanting you to 'have me'? All of this intensified when I met you. What are you keeping from me, Angel?" My voice echoed inside the hollow whale, so loudly I thought it shook a little—maybe it thought of my voice as some undesirable gas or something. "Who am I?"
"You're my True Love." Angel grabbed my arm, his eyes moistened and almost teary. Tears that were meant to conceal the truth from me.
I felt furious all of a sudden. This moment held echoes of my childhood anger when I'd asked my mother to call me "the beauty of them all." I wasn't myself. That unexplained darkness in me rose again. I pulled my hands away from Angel and crawled on all fours to the edge of the raft.
"Carmilla," he called after me.
I didn't turn back, and he didn't stop me. I was going to see my reflection in the water. I didn't care anymore—I know I have said that a thousand times—not after all I had been through and after all that'd been kept away from me, even by my dearest ones.
Here it was. I bowed over the edge, about to break all the rules that chained me. It didn't matter if my land—or my parents—burned in hell.
I knew it would take some time to find a good spot to see my reflection clearly in the water. I tried to be near a tribe of fireflies, and used their golden light to help see my reflection. I scanned the water for the calmest spot with most light. Angel tried to grip my feet, pulling me back, but I slid away. I wasn't going to be kept a prisoner in the name of True Love anymore.
My eyes widened, as the water wasn't reflecting anything back. That damn water and that damn light conspiring against me. I bowed closer, my heart racing, afraid I'd fall into the water and die—who died from a fear of water? What was this kind of life?
Finally, the water began to form a face. I steadied my hands, kicking Angel away with my legs. I knew he wasn't going to force me—he could easily have held me back with his strong hands.
The face in the water seemed to come closer, come to light, to clarity.