The day the knife struck her heart the fates had failed to take from her, her beloved. He holds her in his arms, as the pungent crimson blooms across her chest. He chides her in denial, he curses the Gods in anger.

The words upon his tongue, “how could I have known?”

Visions danced before her, a lament, a daydream, a screenplay of memories. 

He, his hair curled like the fingers of a newly swaddled babe. He, his lips twisted into that cunning grin. He, his lungs bursting with strain with every common laugh. 

She, her eyes fixed on the stone they walk on. Only when she looks up does she see they had stopped, his back inches to her nose. Her beloved turns, those strands of black caught in golden rays. 

He turns, with a glint of silver in his hand. He does not know her by face. Not now. Her arms raise in welcoming, she bares a vulnerable chest. 

The pain of a blade piercing her flesh, incomparable to the pain in the eyes of this man. She feels a pair of lips move.

Her beloved drinks the scene in, gifting it an inhuman noise. He cradles her, hanging his head. Her mouth reaches up, and bites. Fangs on his vulnerable beautiful neck.

She asks him, the both of them laying still with graying pupils and slackened pose. The fates did not take him, for she had taken him for herself.

“How could I have known?”