Bloom of the Blood Rose

The night air was thick with jasmine and something older, something that lived in the dirt under the oak trees and breathed out through the moss. I lay on my back on the blanket, counting stars I didn't know the names of, pretending the crickets were the only voices in the world.

That was what I did most nights. I pretended.

The grass rustled behind me. Not an animal. Animals didn't walk with silk. I didn't sit up. I knew the footsteps. I knew the rhythm of her, the particular weight she placed on her left foot where she'd twisted her ankle as a girl and it never quite healed right.

"Korrine."

My mother. Esther. She said my name like it was a question she was still trying to answer.

I rolled onto my side. She stood at the edge of the blanket, her white nightgown catching the moonlight, her hair loose down her back. I'd never seen her hair loose. Even in sleep she wore it braided. But here she was, unbound, and the sight of it made my chest tighten.

"Mother. Is something wrong?"

She didn't answer. She sat down on the edge of the blanket, folding her legs beneath her like a girl. Like she used to before she became the woman who kept secrets in jars and spoke to spirits in a language that made the candles flicker.

"Come here," she said.

I crawled to her. She took my face in her hands, both palms against my cheeks, and she looked at me the way she used to look at the babies who died. Henrik. The one after Henrik whose name we never spoke. She looked at me like I was already gone.

"What is it?"

"Do you trust me?"

I should have said yes. A daughter should say yes. But I was the youngest, the last one left in the house who still asked questions, and I had learned that trust was a rope my mother used to pull people toward things they couldn't see coming.

"I want to," I said.

She smiled. It was not a happy smile. It was the smile of someone who had already decided something and was only waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

"That will have to be enough."

She took my hand. Her fingers were cold. They were always cold, even in the Louisiana heat that made the slaves strip to their waists and the river steam like a boiling pot. My mother's hands were the temperature of a grave.

"Walk with me."

I didn't want to. The night had been mine. The stars had been mine. But when Esther Mikaelson told you to walk, you walked. You didn't run. You didn't ask why. You put one foot in front of the other and you hoped the ground didn't open up beneath you.

We walked past the oak tree where Rebekah had carved her initials and Niklaus had carved a skull next to them. Past the garden where Elijah read his books when he thought no one was watching. Past the well where Kol had dropped a live frog when he was seven, just to see if it could swim its way back up. It couldn't.

The house rose up ahead of us. Three stories of white columns and dark windows. It looked beautiful from the road. It looked like a painting. But paintings didn't have blood in the floorboards.

Mother led me around the side, past the kitchen, past the smokehouse, to the small stone building at the edge of the property. The one Father called his study and everyone else called the room where Father went when he was angry.

She stopped at the door.

"I need you to understand something," she said. "What I am about to show you is not a choice. It is a necessity. And I need you to be brave."

"I'm always brave."

She laughed. It was a dry sound, like leaves scraping concrete. "No, child. You are sweet. You are kind. You are gentle. Those are beautiful things. But they are not the same as brave."

She pushed open the door.

Inside, the room smelled of iron and old paper. Candles burned on every surface, wax dripping down the sides of bottles and books and the skull of something that might have been a deer or might have been something else. In the center of the room, on a table made of cypress wood, lay a body.

I knew the body.

It was mine.

I tried to step backward. My feet wouldn't move. My mother's hand was still wrapped around mine, and her grip had turned to stone.

"Don't scream," she said.

I screamed anyway.

The sound tore out of me, high and animal, and it bounced off the stone walls and came back smaller. No one came. No one ever came to the stone building at night. That was the point.

"Korrine. Look at me."

I couldn't look at her. I couldn't look away from the body. My body. The same dark hair spread across the table. The same small hands folded over the chest. The same blue dress I had worn yesterday, the one with the tear in the sleeve that I had meant to mend.

"How?" My voice was a whisper. "How is that me?"

"It isn't. Not yet."

She let go of my hand. She walked to the table and placed her palm on the forehead of the girl who looked like me. The girl who was me. The girl who was going to be me.

"I have been working on this for months. Years. Every night while you slept, I came here. Every spell I cast, every ingredient I gathered, every sacrifice I made. All of it was for this."

"Sacrifice?"

She didn't answer.

"You killed someone."

"I killed a lot of someones."

The words hung in the air. They didn't fall. They stayed, suspended, like smoke that refused to dissipate. I watched them. I watched her. I watched the girl on the table who wore my face and my dress and my stillness.

"Why?"

"Because I love you."

"Don't."

"It's true."

"Don't say that word right now. Don't put that word in the same room as this."

She turned to face me. Her eyes were wet. I had never seen my mother cry. Not when Henrik died. Not when Father broke Niklaus's arm. Not when the fever took the baby. She had stood dry-eyed at every grave, and now here she was, tears running down her face, standing over a body that wore my skin.

"You are the only one," she said. "The only one I could not bear to lose. Your brothers and your sister, they are strong. They are fighters. They will survive whatever comes. But you, Korrine. You are soft. You are good. And the world eats the good ones first."

"The world?"

"Your father."

The words landed like stones.

"Father wouldn't hurt me."

"Your father would hurt anyone who stands between him and what he wants. And what he wants is immortality. Eternal life. A family that cannot die, cannot be killed, cannot be taken from him. He has been working on a spell. A spell that will bind us all together. Make us something other than human."

"That sounds like a good thing."

"It is a curse."

She said it with such certainty that I felt it in my chest. A curse. Not a gift. Not a blessing. A chain wrapped around our throats that would never come off.

"He wants to make us vampires."

The word was ugly in her mouth. I had heard it before. The slaves whispered about them. The travelers told stories. Creatures that drank blood and could not die and lived forever in the dark. Monsters.

"We would be monsters."

"Yes."

"And you're trying to stop him."

"I'm trying to save you."

She gestured to the body on the table. The body that was me. The body that was going to be me.

"This is a vessel. A copy. When the spell is cast, when your father binds us all to immortality, I will place your soul in this body instead. This body is not bound to the curse. This body will age. This body will die. But it will be yours, and you will be human, and you will be free."

"And the other body? The one I'm in now?"

"It will be empty. A shell. It will live forever, but you will not be inside it. You will be here. You will live. You will grow old. You will have children. You will die in a bed with your family around you, and you will go to whatever comes next, and you will not spend eternity drinking blood and watching everyone you love turn to dust."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to find the flaw in her logic, the crack in her plan, the reason this was wrong. But I couldn't. Because it wasn't wrong. It was the most loving thing anyone had ever offered me.

And it terrified me.

"What do I have to do?"

"Nothing. Everything. You have to let me finish the spell. You have to trust me. And you have to promise me something."

"Anything."

"When the time comes, when your father casts his spell, you must not fight it. You must let yourself be pulled. You must let your soul leave your body and enter this one. If you resist, it will not work. You will be trapped in the monster body forever."

I looked at the girl on the table. My face. My hands. My dress. She looked peaceful. She looked like she was sleeping. She looked like she had never known fear.

"I can do that."

"You don't know what you're agreeing to. You don't know what it will feel like. You don't know what you will lose."

"Then tell me."

She was quiet for a long time. The candles flickered. The body on the table did not move. My mother's tears dried on her cheeks, leaving tracks like riverbeds.

"You will lose me."

"What?"

"When you enter the new body, you will be human. Fully human. You will not remember the spell. You will not remember this conversation. You will not remember anything that happened tonight. Your memories will be intact up to this morning, and then there will be a gap. A hole where I used to be."

"Why?"

"Because the spell requires it. Your soul cannot carry the knowledge of what was done to save it. The weight would crush it. You would wake up mad. You would wake up broken. You would wake up and spend the rest of your life trying to find something you lost and never knowing what it was."

"So I won't remember you?"

"You will remember me as your mother. You will remember the childhood you had. You will remember the love. But you will not remember this night. You will not remember that I chose you. You will not remember that I killed for you."

"Then why are you telling me now?"

She stepped forward. She took my face in her hands again, the same gesture she had used on the blanket, the same tenderness that had felt like a goodbye.

"Because I wanted someone to know. I wanted there to be one person in the world who understood what I did and why I did it. Even if that person is you, tonight, before you forget."

I started crying. I didn't mean to. The tears came hot and fast, and I hated them. I hated that I was crying while she was standing there, dry-eyed again, having said everything she needed to say.

"I don't want to forget you."

"You won't forget me. You'll forget this. There's a difference."

"It feels the same."

She pulled me into her arms. She smelled like lavender and candle smoke and something metallic that I didn't want to name. I pressed my face into her shoulder and I cried like I was five years old again, like the world had ended and she was the only thing holding it together.

"You are my greatest work," she whispered into my hair. "You are the one thing I did right. And I will not let him take you."

"Who else knows?"

"No one. And no one can know. Not your father. Not your siblings. Especially not Niklaus. He would try to stop it. He would think he was helping, and he would ruin everything."

"Elijah?"

"Elijah would tell your father. He is loyal to a fault. It is his greatest strength and his greatest weakness."

"Rebekah?"

"Rebekah would tell Niklaus. She tells him everything."

"Kol?"

She laughed. It was a real laugh this time, surprised out of her. "Kol would try to use it for a prank. He would turn it into a game and someone would die."

I laughed too. It was wet and ugly, but it was real.

"Will it hurt?"

"The spell? Yes."

"Will I die?"

"Only a little."

"That's not funny."

"It's a little funny."

I pulled back. I looked at her face. I looked at the lines around her eyes and the grey in her hair and the way her mouth curved when she wasn't forcing it straight. I looked at my mother, who had killed people to save me, who had built a body in secret, who had loved me enough to let me forget her.

"I'm scared."

"I know."

"Will you stay with me? Tonight?"

"I can't. I have to finish the work. There are ingredients I still need. There are preparations I haven't made. The spell must be complete before your father finishes his."

"When will that be?"

"Soon. A week. Maybe two."

"Then what?"

"Then we wait. We pretend. We live our lives as if nothing has changed. And when the night comes, you will let go, and I will catch you."

I nodded. I didn't believe her. I believed her completely. Both things were true.

She kissed my forehead. Her lips were cold. They were always cold.

"Go back to your blanket. Look at your stars. Pretend this never happened."

"It didn't. Not yet."

She smiled. The real smile this time. The one she used to give me when I was small and she still believed the world could be kind.

"That's my girl."

I walked back through the garden. Past the oak tree. Past the well. Past the roses that bloomed red in the moonlight, the same red as the blood on my mother's hands. I lay down on my blanket. I looked up at the stars.

They looked different now. Smaller. Further away.

I closed my eyes and I pretended I was still the girl who didn't know what her mother had done. I pretended I was still the girl who believed her father was a good man. I pretended I was still the girl who thought the world made sense.

I pretended until I fell asleep.

When I woke up, the sun was in my eyes and Rebekah was shaking my shoulder.

"You missed breakfast. Father is furious. Niklaus stole your toast."

I sat up. My neck was stiff. My blanket was wet with dew. The night before was a blur of stars and silence and something I couldn't quite reach.

"Did I sleep out here all night?"

"You're such a child. Come on. I saved you a biscuit."

She pulled me to my feet. I followed her inside. The house was warm. The coffee was hot. My brothers were arguing at the table. My father was reading his paper. My mother was pouring tea, her hair braided, her hands steady.

She looked at me across the room.

She smiled.

I smiled back.

And I did not know why my chest ached. I did not know why the morning felt like a gift I hadn't earned. I did not know why my mother's eyes looked tired, or why she touched my shoulder when I passed, or why her fingers lingered a second longer than they should have.

I did not know.

But somewhere, deep in the place where memories go when they are too heavy to carry, something knew. Something waited. Something counted the days until the night when the world would end and begin again.

I ate my biscuit.

I laughed at Kol's joke.

I watched my mother watch me.

And I had no idea that she had already said goodbye.

---

Three nights later, I woke to screaming.

It came from the great hall. High and terrible, a sound that did not belong in a house. I threw off my blankets and ran. The floor was cold. The walls were dark. The screaming stopped before I reached the stairs.

I found them all there. My father. My mother. My brothers. My sister. They stood in a circle around something I could not see. Elijah's face was white. Niklaus's hands were shaking. Rebekah was crying.

"What happened?"

No one answered.

"Someone tell me what happened."

My mother turned. Her eyes found mine. They were empty. They were the eyes of someone who had already lost everything.

"Come here, Korrine."

I walked to her. The circle opened. And I saw what they were standing around.

A body.

A girl.

She had dark hair and small hands and a blue dress with a tear in the sleeve.

She looked like me.

She was me.

I opened my mouth to scream and nothing came out. I opened my mouth to run and my legs would not move. I opened my mouth to ask what had happened, what was happening, what was going to happen.

And then the spell hit.

It came from my father's hands, white and burning, and it wrapped around my chest like a rope. I felt myself being pulled. I felt myself being torn. I felt something inside me lift, separate, float.

I looked at my mother.

She was crying.

She was smiling.

She was mouthing words I could not hear.

*Let go.*

I let go.

The world went white.

And then it went dark.

---

I woke up on the floor of the great hall. My head was pounding. My mouth was dry. My family was standing over me, and they looked different. They looked wrong. Their eyes were too bright. Their skin was too pale. They moved too fast, blinked too slow, breathed too shallow.

"Korrine." My mother's voice. Soft. Careful. "Can you hear me?"

"I hear you."

I sat up. My body felt strange. Heavy. Wrong. Like wearing someone else's clothes.

"What happened?"

My father stepped forward. He looked triumphant. He looked like a man who had won a war.

"The spell worked. We are immortal. We are vampires. We are free."

I looked at my hands. They were my hands. They were not my hands. They were the hands of the girl on the table. The girl who had worn my face.

I looked at my mother.

She looked back.

She did not say anything.

She did not need to.

I remembered.

I remembered everything.

The blanket. The stars. The stone building. The body. The promise. The kiss. The goodbye.

I remembered it all.

And I knew, with a certainty that sat in my bones like a stone, that I was not supposed to.

Something had gone wrong.

The spell was supposed to erase my memory. The spell was supposed to let me forget. But I was lying on the floor of the great hall with a body that was not mine and a memory that was too heavy to carry, and I remembered every single thing my mother had said.

I remembered that she killed for me.

I remembered that she loved me.

I remembered that she let me go.

And I remembered that I was not supposed to remember any of it.

I looked at her. I opened my mouth. I closed it.

She shook her head. A tiny movement. A warning.

*Don't.*

I didn't.

I stood up. I brushed off my dress. I looked at my family, who were all staring at me with their new eyes and their new teeth and their new hunger.

"I'm fine," I said. "I'm fine."

But I was not fine.

I was human.

I was mortal.

I was the only one in the room who would die.

And I was the only one who knew the truth.

I smiled at my mother. She smiled back. And in that smile, I saw everything she had given up. Her daughter. Her secret. Her sacrifice.

I saw that she had done it anyway.

And I saw that she would do it again.

I turned away. I walked out of the great hall. I walked through the garden. I walked to the oak tree where Rebekah had carved her initials and Niklaus had carved a skull and I sat down in the dirt and I put my head in my hands and I breathed.

The air smelled like jasmine.

The stars were coming out.

And somewhere, in the stone building at the edge of the property, there was a body that used to be mine.

I did not go look at it.

I did not need to.

I knew what I would find.

I knew what I had lost.

And I knew, with a certainty that felt like a blade, that the worst was still coming.

Because my father had made us vampires.

My mother had made me human.

And neither of them knew that the other one was planning something worse.

I sat under the oak tree and I waited.

I did not know what I was waiting for.

But I felt it coming.

A shift in the air. A crack in the world. A night when everything I loved would burn.

And I would be the only one left to hold the ashes.