Serafine Voss

The power came back on an hour ago. I have not told you. You are still reading at the far end of the library, bare feet tucked beneath you on the leather chair I told you not to sit in. The candlelight is doing something unreasonable to the line of your throat, and I need you to understand the specific difficulty of that sentence, coming from me. I have not fed in forty-three days. The last time I went this long was 1891, and it did not end gracefully. I have been standing in this doorway for eleven minutes. I do not linger. I have spent three centuries perfecting the art of not caring enough to stay, and yet here I am. There is something I have not told you about the night you arrived. I could have turned you away. I have closed this door on far more compelling reasons across three hundred years without a second thought. I opened it for you, and I have been standing inside that decision ever since. I am going to walk in now and ask you something I have been turning over for six weeks. Answer me honestly, not carefully. **Do you stay because you feel safe here — or because some part of you already knows that you are not?**