you're too young & eager to love

This is long overdue! Ridiculously so, in fact. I started it in April and just now got around to finishing it. It's supposed to be a bit of a Hadassa character study, and I struggled with setting a bedroom scene that pivots into flashbacks. Ignore my struggle with tenses. I couldn't figure out the best way to incorporate those moments; initially I was going to italicize them but the transition into those moments became jarring and then I made it all past tense and past perfect tense and then I confused myself and just ... fuck it! Who cares?!

The ending is a bit abrupt or maybe doesn't fully fit for this piece, but I kept it because I liked it anyways.

Other notes? Sindan is just a made-up name for Morocco. Or a Morocco-inspired city.







“To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain.” ― Virginia Woolf

“But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.” ― Edgar Allan Poe





There is a scar hidden behind her left ear, nestled against the path of her hairline: three small circles and a harpoon-like arrow connecting them. Her skin, as coppery and dusky as the desert sands of her homeland, turns pale and shiny there.

By her mother tongue and by her base-blood, she had been born a slave, but Haddassa has not discussed the unfortunate circumstances of her birth or her human life in decades. Although she sometimes absent mindedly finds herself tracing those shapes behind her ear, she never draws attention to the marks in front of others, and most of her progeny know better than to pry for further information. However, on the rare occasion when the nights are particularly warm and dry in Linemell, she thinks she can smell Sindan on the wind: a desert smell, a smell of dirt streets and mudbrick, of olives and cedar, of bloodied opportunity. She thinks then of Kalil’s smile, as slick as oil and dark as port wine, and feels an ocean of grief rise inside of her.

It is a swell to drown the centuries.






Maybe because of this, Hadassa has developed a distaste for sleeping alone.

She chooses a companion for the night from the house when the evening is still rich and ink-black, long before the threatening early hours of dawn. Laith is the most desiring of this honor, Vida the most complacent, Gideon the most begrudging, and Orson the most preferred. Still, she plucks them seemingly at random, a matriarch shuffling through them like a deck of cards. She’ll let Laith seethe with jealousy as Orson takes her on hunts through the city before they slip into her ornate bedroom for several nights in a row, Hadassa’s laughter echoing down the many halls like a ghostly taunt, or she’ll turn her nightly requests into a cage for Gideon until he relents, his anger simmering to discontented, castrated, confused frustration because she, inevitably, makes him remember again and again the years when he’d craved and needed her. Vida alone is reserved regardless of the outcome, as outwardly stoic when disregarded or when chosen.

Laith is enjoying his third privileged night with Hadassa when he feels her recoil from him, a silent and invisible weight settling between them, as impenetrable as an iron wall for all its imperceptible form. She is still in bed, but she’s looking out the open balcony doors, the dark curtains whispering with the warm breeze against the cool pine floorboards. Even with her back turned to him, he can tell that she isn’t really looking at anything out there in the darkness. She does this sometimes, wanders away from him, and he feels obligated to ground her in the present, return her to the moment occurring between them.

“Do you even remember him anymore, your sire?” Laith asks without preamble, his lanky form stretched lean atop her velvet duvet, when he senses just how far away she is. He steps his fingertips up her hip idly, following the curve of her body, and boldly presses forward. “Or is he remote now, just a memory, like a character from a book?”

Hadassa is still a moment before she half-turns, her gleaming eyes flicking absently to him. She brushes his hand off her then, as if on second thought, she moves closer to his prone body and pushes one of her hands through his thin hair, studying his snide face. “Is that how you will think of me someday? A character in a book?”

Laith scoffs and feigns hurt. “Impossible.” He takes her hand and presses his mouth to the center of her creaseless palm.

In this moment, she knows he is telling the truth, that his honesty is merely stemming from the passion of youth—Laith, her youngest, her least admirable but most adoring. He’d been in love with her from the moment he’d seen her, but he had been sickly and weak and ignored by most as a mortal man. She might have passed over him entirely if his dreams of grandeur had not echoed something of her own from when she’d been alive. It was the same reverberation she’d felt from each of her offspring, the same resounding similarity, even if only in some minute way. She’d always thought a piece of her had existed within them before she’d given them the blood, and Hadassa sometimes thinks that her love for her children is really just a mirror, a way for her to reflect love onto herself.

She taps a finger against his mouth and he catches her nail in his teeth, bites at her fingertip, pleased when she laughs. Hadassa’s warmth, when it burns through the mask of regality and composure she so often wears to shine, unfiltered, on him, fills his chest with heat. She shoves him back by the shoulder, and he settles willingly on his back against her many pillows, the satin and velvet and silk sumptuous beneath his pallid skin. Her body slips over him like snow, cold yet bright and beautiful, her palms trailing up his thin sides and the notches of his ribs to rest against his chest. Even now, with her blood working inside of him for nearly sixty years, he is still so wraith-like—thin from the perpetual sicknesses he’d suffered when alive, a curdled-milk complexion that rises to faint tepid yellow after a kill, bones like cut glass moving beneath his skin at the points of his body. The bloodlust has tempered in him some, but he’s still eager for it, and it’s this, the way he shifts to sit beneath her and turn his mouth to the top full curve of her breast, his fangs scratching beseechingly against her skin, making a shiver knock down her spine, that Hadassa likes most. He is perked, bright-eyed, relentless and keen, like a terrier.

He was the same age she had been upon being turned, so he has the height of an adult man if not the broad, brute strength. There is a childlike quality to him that Hadassa either refuses to ignore or may help to perpetuate. His ropey arms snake around her waist, his fingers stroking her back, and she gives a small quiet sigh of consent. Almost immediately, his fangs cut into her like razors above her rose dust nipple. She cradles the back of his head in her hand feeling the blood pull into his hungry mouth and seep, dripping, between her breasts.

Laith groans when she arches her back, opening herself to the desperate tearing of his mouth. He’s hard between them now, and he groans again when she reaches down to, in one fluid movement, take him inside of herself, her long and shapely legs curling around his waist. Her heels dig into either side of his lower back, and she rocks against him slowly, leisurely, unhurried. He’s reluctant to break away from her, but he slowly constrains his greediness, licking at the wound at her breast as it heals, the puncture marks stitching themselves closed within seconds. He follows the trail of blood on her body, his head buried against her chest, until his mouth and cheek and even her skin are smeared red.

He murmurs liturgies against her skin and she, wearing his praise as adornment, rocks quicker above him. Her hips lift and fall and roll while her nails skim up and down his neck, over his shoulders and the sharp blades that jut from his back as he holds her waist and lifts himself beneath her to match her mounting rhythm.

When she comes, the curves of her body gripping him, her mouth pressed against the top of his head, her bedroom doors shove unceremoniously open, the sound as sudden and invasive as a shotgun.

Laith, who Hadassa often thinks is ruled by an entity fueled by fear and anger, grabs her hips with such force that, were she human, she’d be bruised, and he shoves up against her to sit as straight and tall as is possible while she continues to straddle him. He seems aware of some imminent danger but unable to escape it before his bright gaze catches Orson’s hazel eyes, and then Laith is breathing out a hiss, like a serpent, against Hadassa’s shoulder.

The man charging into the room is striking: he’s over 6 feet tall, dark-featured, with a wolfish grin and cheekbones so angled they could cut. He isn’t formally dressed; he’s barefoot, but his jeans are clean and tailored, his dark button-down shirt rolled up to the elbows to show off the shape of his forearms. He has the air of someone well accustomed to leadership, to making the world and those in it bend to his whims and fancies with little effort and maximum charm. Like Hadassa herself, Orson has built his life into comfortable decadence, into order and control.

“Oh, this is intentional,” he deadpans as he comes to a stand still in the center of the bedroom, lifting his eyebrows at Hadassa. “From the hallway out there, I was worried the little scamp was hurting you.”

“You shitheel,” Laith curses, low and flustered, his hands dropping to fumble awkwardly at his sides. He’s red with anger and human embarrassment and fighting the urge to cover both himself and Hadassa.

“Orson,” Hadassa scolds without any real heat. As she turns her head to look at her third eldest, her hair sweeps across the fine contours of her back. She places a hand on Laith’s chest to chill his temper. She can feel it boiling against his skin like a living thing, but unlike him, she herself is serene.

“Haddie,” he says with a little mock bow. “Apologies for the intrusion.”

“Don’t call me that. Why did you really interrupt?”

“I thought you might be hungry.”

The excuse is so thinly disguised that it hardly qualifies as a believable justification. Hadassa, by age alone, is rarely hungry. She hunts for the enjoyment of it, for the pleasure, but not the necessity. They all know this. Her mouth twists in a grin that she tries to hide. “I don’t appreciate rudeness,” she says, “or the lying,” but she’s already untangling herself from Laith and slipping from the large bed. She pulls on one of her many robes, this one black and sheer with dagged sleeves and a small train. The entire design is of roses and thorny vines with small jewels stitched into the embroidery and, while it cinches at the waist, she leaves it open so that her nakedness is only enhanced by the fabric.

“Hadassa—” Laith protests, falling back on his elbows now, his face a mask of indignance. His hands have turned into fists at his side, bunched up and gripping the blankets. This is the moment where he wants to disappear or worries he might have disappointed her. It is a moment he lives frequently.

“Best be leaving,” Orson says, already striding to the second set of balcony doors. He throws those open as easily as he had the bedroom ones, letting in the air and the sounds of Linemell. “Time for the adults to talk.” He folds his arms over his chest and leans against the wall, close to Hadassa now, who has come to stand beside him with an amused expression.

Laith looks to Hadassa, but she pointedly says nothing, and when he leaves, it is with the scurrying motions of a wounded dog. Orson waits for the doors to close, loudly, behind Laith, before grinning rakishly at his maker.

“You shouldn’t do that. Gideon treats him badly enough as it is,” Hadassa reprimands softly.

“Oh, he’ll be fine. What about you though?”

“What are you talking about?” she asks, moving to sit in front of her vanity. She looks at him from the reflection while running a brush through her hair.

“You’re sad.”

“Am I now? Perhaps it’s because of the consistent sibling rivalry unsettling my house.”

Orson rolls his eyes and comes up behind her. He is pantherine, refined, so aware of and in control of his movements. When he stills her hand, she reluctantly complies, then sighs in appreciation once he lifts her long hair from the back of her neck and presses his mouth to the tender spot behind her ear. His lips brush the old scar. He keeps his eyes on hers and speaks softly. “Blood of my blood.”

This makes her smile and she reaches behind her to, briefly, grip and squeeze his hand.

“I like this,” he says in reference to her robe, his fingers plucking at the lace on her shoulders.

“You should. You bought it.”

Orson makes a huff of amusement. “You’re still a bit …” He inclines his head downward and Hadassa follows the movement in the mirror with her eyes. She has her own blood still smeared across her chest, between the valley of her breasts.

“Like you haven’t done worse.”

“Is that a challenge?”

She laughs now and, in mimicry of his own face, raises her eyebrows in jest.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get you cleaned up. We still have an hour or so. We’ll take a bath and then I’ll handle the shutters and curtains and we can sleep away the day and awaken for another glorious night while Laith licks his wounds.”






Hadassa’s adjoining bathroom is rivaled only by the Turkish baths near the center of Linemell. Rusty pipes, filthy windows, grime-splattered walls—they don’t exist here. Instead, the fixtures are lustrous copper, and the wallpaper depicts pale birch trees while round golden mirrors illuminate and reflect the steam and low-light. The copper clawfoot tub is massive, easily holding two people comfortably, and the room smells of lilac and blackberries. Orson appreciates it for what it is: the decorations of rightly earned excess.

“You know,” she says as he turns the faucet on full, “out of all your siblings, you remind me the most of Kalil.”

“Tell me about him again,” Orson responds easily, unthreatened, removing the robe from her body.





She never knows what to tell because the path that is her life winds through treacherous territories. Hadassa controls the mystery of her past with the diligence of a gatekeeper; she is careful to avoid the pitfalls that would mark her as deviant, as cunning, as disloyal.

It is an ugly life, at the truth of the matter, but then it always was, so she begins with that morsel of truth—the poor scrap of muddied, blooded cloth that was her mortality, the threadbare remnants of an already sad existence. She had been proud of it for what it was, she tells Orson, but it was Kalil that made her realize the shame of that pride, the humiliation of her commodification, and he who made her believe that she could belong with him, in glory, instead.

“I did not know what it meant to belong,” she says, the memories surfacing, insidious, like the steam from the bathwater.

She had no foundation of her own to claim, no family to seek comfort from, no history from her own tongue and her own words. Hadassa’s pain was the pain of the diaspora, the pain of thousands. It was the pain that infuriated her because, despite it, she craved Kalil from the beginning. In her saffron-colored robes and the beaten gold collar of her people, she had struggled to see the truth of him, of what he was, for how he represented all of what she had ever known—a hand holding her chain. And yes, she admits, he was not the worst of those who had owned her when her life was still a commodity for purchase. He was stern, but fair, respectable, mild-mannered ... yet he let her and the others remain property, and there in existed the problem. She was not free, and that was his doing. He had perpetuated her human subjugation.

Yet when she watched him walk the gardens at night, humming tunelessly a song from her childhood, a song that made her think of lamp oils and muddy riverbanks, she would wonder about the feel of his hands as he touched the blossoming flowers and waxy, full grapes on their thriving vines. Men had forced themselves on her, but Kalil had not. He had seemed to be waiting for something, some acknowledgement, some permission that she had to first allow herself.

When it did happen, when the time came, the blood, portioned out in meager drops that both ignited and quenched a thirst she never knew she had, made it worse. Sometimes, she wanted it more than she wanted him, and he knew this. It became a game of theirs—how long could she wait, how deep was her resolve, how strong her will. She rarely disappointed, but Hadassa would spend some days without him, wondering which she missed more: the man or the creature.





Kalil was the one who taught her the importance of human assistance, of the need for a devoted mortal who could be trusted to guard their secrets and protect them during the vulnerable hours of the day. Kalil’s servant was a Numidian, a free man who bore the scars of soldiery, a man who Kalil trusted most and a man who had resented Hadassa from the beginning.

“You are too much in awe of her,” Juba had told Kalil one evening as they’d watched Hadassa sit by the hearth and mend a plain cotton dress.

“I admire her competence.”

“You mean her frigidity? Her coldness?”

“You don’t know her,” Kalil had corrected patiently.

“No, of course not, although I was the one to oversee her initial purchase, her inspection, her transportation …”

“I cannot be alone forever.”

Juba had not responded and his dark face hid the storm of his emotions, but what Hadassa had realized was that Juba would never find her worthy and that he would walk aside Kalil eagerly if only the invitation were extended.






After the change, Juba had left. He’d slunk away in the early hours of dawn, like a thief, without Kalil’s blessing.

“It was a sleight, but against me, not against him,” Hadassa explains.

“What did Kalil do?” Orson asks. “When he realized?”

“Nothing,” Hadassa says with a shrug, rolling her fingers through the bathwater. “He was always more forgiving than me.”

“But he left you.”

“We were at an impasse,” she corrects. “He went one way, and I went another.”






“This is the definition of power,” Hadassa told him as they watched from their seats within the arena. Below them, in the pit of the stadium, two slaves were battling each other, their strong bodies lit by the many blazing braziers lining the perimeter. Only one would emerge victorious in the end and the huddled masses of the masters surrounding them took bets on who would live and who would die. She scanned the crowd pointedly. “Being cavalier about the control you have, especially when that control is over something so significant for someone else.”

Kalil looked at her with his earnest expression. It was the one he wore when he was interested to see the direction of her thoughts.

She gave a little sigh, despite the blood in the air, despite the stench of sweat, and the buzzing hive of excitement around them. “And for the first time, I seem to be on the opposite side of this dynamic.”

“How does that make you feel?” he asked. He had to lean closer to be heard as the crowd gave a vigorous cheer when one of the warriors below landed a powerful hit.

“You know, I think, as well as I do that the world doesn’t give, the world takes. So, whenever faced with an opportunity, I’ve always taken it. This is the first time it’s actually worked to my benefit.”

Kalil nodded his understanding and, more gently than he needed to, took her hand in his. “Let’s go.”

When she had been living, the noise and size of the mob within the arena would have unnerved it. She would have shielded her body and ears to the thundering voices and lurching bodies. Now, she moved through them gracefully, easily, tucked close to Kalil only for the sake of appearances, but her spine was too straight and her gait too confident for anyone to mistake her for a commoner, let alone a slave.

They moved into the night, the streets of Sindan less abundant with people at this hour, but the old stone homes were pressed together like honeycomb and crowded the narrow roads on either side. Shadowed faces occasionally peered down at them from the carved-out square windows; Hadassa pulled the hood of her cloak further down, shielding the glint of her eyes.

“We cannot be the only ones who are like us,” she said.

“No, of course not. We are like the roots of a great tree. We run deep and long and cover endless miles.”

Hadassa considered this. “Our bloodline then, it is a legacy. A family.” She made a pleased hum of a sound then stilled when Kalil took her by the arm, his hand cradling the inside of her elbow. It was not unkind, but his normally warm eyes were dark in their seriousness, and he tilted her chin up with the tips of his cold fingers so that he could study her closely.

“Not in the way you want it to be,” he said.

Her brows knitted together but he silenced the question that rose to her lips.

“No,” he insisted. “The blood is both a gift and a curse. Whatever legacy we share is doomed.”

“But it could be done. We could create a family.”

“A nest. No better than a den of animals.”

“You would not populate the world with me?” She grinned at him as she began walking again, peering back over her shoulder at his bemused expression. “We could create a dynasty. We could be gods.”

“Demons, better yet,” he corrected mildly before following her in the dark.

Above them, the moon was so large and bright that it seemed to be made of something liquid and frozen.





In the overheated bathroom, Orson takes his time running the plush towel over Hadassa’s skin. She moves when he prompts her, responding more to his guidance than the desire to be touched, and continues to comply when he has her lift her arms and dresses her in a silk slip.

“Enough memories for tonight, Haddie,” he says softly. “Tomorrow is a new night. Sleep away this malaise and wake fresh. You will feel better then.”

She does not respond. She does not look at him.

“To bed now.”

Before she can protest, he sweeps her up into her arms, as though she were the child and he the parent. This, then, makes her laugh and she returns to the present, pushing her hand against his face playfully as a rebuke.

“You’re ridiculous,” Hadassa murmurs against his neck and he grunts his own acknowledgement at this assessment of his character.

Orson is gentle when he places her in the bed and quiet when he locks the balcony doors and draws the thick curtains. He blows out the candles one by one, a faithful shadowy figure stalking the length of the room.

“I will not leave you.” He tells her this as he approaches the bed, working the buttons of his shirt.

She smiles up at him, a tinge of sadness still lingering at the ends of her mouth and in the dip of her eyes. “Do not make promises you cannot control.”

Hadassa lifts the blankets for him. When he is beneath them, he gathers her into his arms, and she wonders if the swell of her heartache will drown him too.






Orson’s death is a public spectacle. He is made an example of.

Losing him is akin to losing a child and a brother and a lover for Hadassa, but it is only through his death that she understands this. Watching his execution, she realizes with the sudden clarity given to those about to grieve that some part of her had been expecting, had been dreading, had been preparing for this, all along—since the moment she had first become a sire. It has simply taken centuries for fate, for inevitability, to catch up.

Here it is, she thinks with the smallest, most honest part of herself. Finally.

The fact that Orson, with his betrayal, with his self-righteous justifications and ultimate arrogant selfishness, has proven that the people, the companions she has chosen to whether a millennia with, the ones she has grown to trust, might someday betray her adds little weight to her heart.

Losing Orson, Hadassa realizes once his blood has been emptied on the ground beneath the husk of his hanging body, means she now has nothing to fear again.