“But he hadn’t had Katherine. ‘Knock all you like,’ he said to me, ‘but the female dragon inside won’t let you past. I’ve tried already. Shall we overpower her, you and I?’
“I wouldn’t answer him. The look on his face, that sly, self-satisfied look, repelled me. I pounded on that door to wake…” He faltered, and then gave another humorless laugh. “I was going to say, ‘to wake the dead.’ But the dead aren’t so hard to wake after all, are they?” After a moment, he went on.
“The maid, Gudren, opened the door. She had a face like a flat white plate, and eyes like black glass. I asked her if I could see her mistress. I expected to be told that Katherine was asleep, but instead Gudren just looked at me, then at Damon over my shoulder.
“‘I would not tell him,’ she said at last, ‘but I will tell you. My lady Katerina is not within. She went out early this morning, to walk in the gardens. She said she had much need of thought.’
“I was surprised. ‘Early this morning?’ I said.
“‘Yes,’ she replied. She looked at both Damon and me without liking. ‘My mistress was very unhappy last night,’ she said meaningfully. ‘All night long, she wept.’
“When she said that, a strange feeling came over me. It wasn’t just shame and grief that Katherine should be so unhappy. It was fear. I forgot my hunger and weakness. I even forgot my enmity for Damon. I was filled with haste and a great driving urgency. I turned to Damon and told him that we had to find Katherine, and to my surprise he just nodded.
“We began to search the gardens, calling Katherine’s name. I remember just what everything looked like that day. The sun was shining on the high cypress trees and the pines in the garden. Damon and I hurried between them, moving more and more quickly, and calling. We kept calling her…”
Elena could feel the tremors in Stefan’s body, communicated to her through his tightly gripping fingers. He was breathing rapidly but shallowly.
“We had almost reached the end of the gardens when I remembered a place that Katherine had loved. It was a little way out onto the grounds, a low wall beside a lemon tree. I started there, shouting for her. But as I got closer, I stopped shouting. I felt… a fear — a terrible premonition. And I knew I mustn’t — mustn’t go—”
“Stefan!” said Elena. He was hurting her, his fingers biting into her own, crushing them. The tremors racing through his body were growing, becoming shudders. “Stefan, please!”
But he gave no sign that he heard her. “It was like — a nightmare — everything happening so slowly. I couldn’t move — and yet I had to. I had to keep walking. With each step, the fear grew stronger. I could smell it. A smell like burned fat. I mustn’t go there — I don’t want to see it—”
His voice had become high and urgent, his breath coming in gasps. His eyes were wide and dilated, like a terrified child’s. Elena gripped his viselike fingers with her other hand, enfolding them completely. “Stefan, it’s all right. You’re not there. You’re here with me.”
“I don’t want to see it — but I can’t help it. There’s something white. Something white under the tree. Don’t make me look at it!”
“Stefan, Stefan, look at me!”
He was beyond hearing. His words came in heaving spasms, as if he could not control them, could not get them out fast enough. “I can’t go any closer — but I do. I see the tree, the wall. And that white. Behind the tree. White with gold underneath. And then I know, I know, and I’m moving toward it because it’s her dress. Katherine’s white dress. And I get around the tree and I see it on the ground and it’s true. It’s Katherine’s dress,” — his voice rose and broke in unimaginable horror — “but Katherine isn’t in it.”
Elena felt a chill, as if her body had been plunged into ice water. Her skin rose in goose-flesh, and she tried to speak to him but couldn’t. He was rattling on as if he could keep the terror away if he kept on talking.
“Katherine isn’t there, so maybe it’s all a joke, but her dress is on the ground and it’s full of ashes. Like the ashes in the hearth, just like that, only these smell of burned flesh. They stink. The smell is making me sick and faint. Beside the sleeve of the dress is a piece of parchment. And on a rock, on a rock a little way away is a ring. A ring with a blue stone, Katherine’s ring. Katherine’s ring…” Suddenly, he called out in a terrible voice, “Katherine, what have you done?” Then he fell to his knees, releasing Elena’s fingers at last, to bury his face in his hands.
Elena held him as he was gripped by wracking sobs. She held his shoulders, pulling him to her lap. “Katherine took the ring off,” she whispered. It was not a question. “She exposed herself to the sun.”
His harsh sobs went on and on, as she held him to the full skirts of the blue gown, stroking his quivering shoulders. She murmured nonsense meant to soothe him, pushing away her own horror. And, presently, he quieted and lifted his head. He spoke thickly, but he seemed to have returned to the present, to have come back.
“The parchment was a note, for me and for Damon. It said she had been selfish, wanting to have both of us. It said — she couldn’t bear to be the cause of strife between us. She hoped that once she was gone we would no longer hate each other. She did it to bring us together.”
“Oh, Stefan,” whispered Elena. She felt burning tears fill her own eyes in sympathy. “Oh, Stefan, I’m so sorry. But don’t you see, after all this time, that what Katherine did was wrong? It was selfish, even, and it was her choice. In a way, it had nothing to do with you, or with Damon.”
Stefan shook his head as if to shake off the truth of the words. “She gave her life… for that. We killed her.” He was sitting up now. But his eyes were still dilated, great disks of black, and he had the look of a small bewildered boy.
“Damon came up behind me. He took the note and read it. And then — I think he went mad. We were both mad. I had picked up Katherine’s ring, and he tried to take it. He shouldn’t have. We struggled. We said terrible things to each other. We each blamed the other for what had happened. I don’t remember how we got back to the house, but suddenly I had my sword. We were fighting. I wanted to destroy that arrogant face forever, to kill him. I remember my father shouting from the house. We fought harder, to finish it before he reached us.
“And we were well matched. But Damon had always been stronger, and that day he seemed faster, too, as if he had changed more than I had. And so while my father was still shouting from the window I felt Damon’s blade get past my guard. Then I felt it enter my heart.”
Elena stared, aghast, but he went on without pause. “I felt the pain of the steel, I felt it stab through me, deep, deep inside. All the way through, a hard thrust. And then the strength poured out of me and I fell. I lay there on the paved ground.”
He looked up at Elena and finished simply, “And that is how… I died.”
Elena sat frozen, as if the ice she’d felt in her chest earlier tonight had flooded out and trapped her.
“Damon came and stood over me and bent down. I could hear my father’s cries from far away, and screams from the household, but all I could see was Damon’s face. Those black eyes that were like a moonless night. I wanted to hurt him for what he had done to me. For everything he had done to me, and to Katherine.” Stefan was quiet a moment, and then he said, almost dreamily, “And so I lifted my sword and I killed him. With the last of my strength, I stabbed my brother through the heart.”
The storm had moved on, and through the broken window Elena could hear soft night noises, the chirp of crickets, the wind sifting through trees. In Stefan’s room, it was very still.