Chapter 34: Ingrid
My daughter was a relentless plague I couldn’t seem to get rid of. Her words cut like a knife and kept cutting even as they circled my mind over and over and over again.
You might be surprised at how powerful a force love is, Mother.
Mother. She called me mother. She told me she loved me. Na?ve young woman. I scoffed even as I sat on that wretched cot inside that wretched hunter dungeon, lamenting my humanity. However, as much as I hated to admit it, I could call her na?ve and innocent as much as I wanted, but deep inside, I knew the truth. She was stronger in spirit and more powerful in her love and kindness than I could ever be. Sofia was everything I was not, everything I wished I could be. Perhaps that was why I loathed her so much.
I couldn’t understand how she could be so strong and powerful even clothed in her frail humanity. When I realized what Aiden had done, that he had exacted the ultimate punishment upon me by turning me back into a human being, it tore me apart. It felt like losing everything that had made me who I was. I lashed out. When Sofia visited me, she came as a wave of calm in the storm I was brewing up. I took one look at her—beautiful and brave—and knew that there was something deeply wrong with me for envying her instead of being proud of her.
I was still musing over her words when Aiden showed up, messing with my conflicted emotions even more.
“How could you do this to me?” I glared at him.
He just stared as he stepped in. The bars behind him shut closed and we were left alone.
I tried to hold my glare at him as he stared right back. I knew, however, that it was a battle of wills I couldn’t win. I shuddered as I looked into his green eyes, butterflies fluttering in my stomach—a sensation I hadn’t felt since I turned into a vampire. I couldn’t help but break the stare as I bowed my head, my eyes downcast. “What do you want from me, Aiden?”
“Can you never be Camilla again?”
“Isn’t that what you’ve turned me into? Am I not once again human? Weak and vulnerable to your every advance? Pining for you? Unworthy of you?”
“Is that what you felt all those years we were together, Camilla? That you were unworthy? That you were weak?”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t believe my ears. How could he not know the answers to the questions he was spouting out? How could he not know that that was exactly how I had felt? More than that, I couldn’t believe that he had actually called me by that name again. Camilla. I couldn’t understand it, but my heart leaped at the sound of him saying that name again.
“I never saw you that way. You were vibrant and strong-willed and adventurous. You were sweet and kind. You were beautiful in every way as Camilla Claremont, and then you became Ingrid Maslen and now, look at you…”
His words stung. All these years, I looked down on the person that I was. To be told that he found that person beautiful was daunting to me. How on earth could he have seen her as beautiful?
“What do you want from me, Aiden?” I asked him, hoping to end the confrontation as soon as possible. “I’m human now. Shouldn’t I be released from this prison by now? Or do you torment and brainwash humans too?”
Aiden shook his head slowly. “What do I want from you? I just wanted you to know that what you wanted—Sofia ultimately belonging to your beloved lord, Borys…it’s not going to happen. We’re about to turn Derek Novak into a human being—just like you—and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
I was surprised by the effect those words had on me. I was made livid by the idea, reinforcing that a part of Ingrid Maslen still remained with me. “She belongs with Borys Maslen!” I screamed at him.
Sadness unlike anything I had ever seen before filled his eyes. “I wish you wouldn’t say that. I guess human or not, you will always be Ingrid Maslen. Goodbye.”
Left to myself, I felt the hopelessness of my defeat. It felt like Sofia had won over me. She took everything from me. I had nothing left. Nothing. Sofia, on the other hand, was about to get everything she had ever wanted. It didn’t seem fair, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Why live to see her celebrating her triumph over me?
Desperate, I took a shard of glass from the ground, left over from a glass of water I’d thrown against the wall. I tried to recall the last time I had felt pain as a human. Horrible memories I had long buried flashed through my mind, reminding me how cruel humans can be, how coldhearted and merciless they were. I don’t want to be among them. I slashed the glass over my wrist, wincing at the pain.
I waited, as I watched the blood gush out of my wrist. I was expecting to immediately sense the call of death upon me, but nothing happened. The blood just kept gushing out and trickling onto the ground until to my shock, the gash on my wrist slowly began to close.
I stared at my wrist in horror. What’s going on? I slashed the knife through my skin again—this time a deeper, more lethal gash. Within minutes, the same thing happened.
I had no idea what was going on, but one thing seemed certainly true despite what they had done to me: I was still immortal.