OUTSIDE THE ESPERANZA HOUSE

Zephyr was walking in the grounds, not inspecting or guarding, but just walking. He looked at the large house. 

As he walked, he felt a presence follow him. He didn’t hear footsteps but he was sure someone was behind him. The grounds were dark with no lamp, only the moon with a bare shimmer. He reached for his gun in his holster, and turned around only to see Dani. Her pale skin looked almost as if it was glowing in the moonlight.  Her beauty was just like the moon. Mysterious and celestial. 

“Why were you following me?” Zephyr asked. 

“I wasn’t. I just happened to see you on my regular night walks.” she said. Zephyr couldn’t tell if she was lying. She looked like she was gonna say something to him but was keeping it to herself.

“What were you going to say?” he asked.

“I just…I just don’t trust you.” Dani said. “Before I became Sophie’s physician, many doctors claimed they could cure her disease and they all failed to find a cure. They gave her false promises. They told her they could protect her. As far as I know, I’m the only one that could keep her alive. I can’t cure her, but she’s alive.”

Dani looks him in the eye. “And then suddenly you walk in, claiming you can do my job. Saying that you’re her family. I don’t want her to get hurt. You’re not getting anything out of this. Sophie doesn’t know you and I’m sure you don’t know anything about Sophie.”

Zephyr made sure she finished her sentence and let her breathe before answering. Dani had every right to feel that way. 

“I don’t know Sophie or her family,” he said. “But I feel like I owe it to my family to protect her. Not this family now. But to the family I had.”

Zephyr looked away from Dani. He looked at the house of the Esperanza’s. “They told me I could live to watch all my loved ones die and be alone forever. I was cursed with immortality because I refused to marry into a Spanish official's family. I learned it was somewhere around the 1590s when it happened. They were starting to set up colonies and the officials were marrying the locals so that they would stop living in remote areas and all live in sets of towns. I listened to my heart and my cousin sacrificed herself and married the official instead of me.”

Dani’s gaze softened. “Does Sophie remind you of your cousin?”

“So much.” Zephyr laughed. “I feel it’s my turn to serve this family. Even if I’m three hundred something years late. I know I’ll still continue to be cursed but it makes me feel better.”

“Why did you refuse in the first place? You would’ve saved yourself centuries of agony.”

Zephyr turned silent. He didn’t want to tell her. Zephyr didn’t want to tell Dani that he refused because he was willing to wait for his lover. The lover that promised she’d return but never did. Zephyr figured Dani would laugh at him if he said that. Most people laugh at him when he tells them that’s the reason he’s immortal.

Dani must have noticed his silence and realized it was personal. “I’m sorry, it must’ve been something you’d rather not say.”

Dani’s eyebrows furrowed as she looked at Zephyr. “Did you fight? In the war?” It must have been the moon’s light shining through his translucent shirt. She must’ve seen his scars. 

“Many people mistake these for battle scars. I did fight in the war. But these are surgery scars. I’m biologically female. I can’t remember exactly what year in the nineteen hundreds I had the surgery but I knew I was a man for a long time.”

“I see.” 

Zephyr was surprised she understood. But she was a physician so she must have read it somewhere. “Vampires also shift appearances,” said Dani. “It must be something like that.”

Ah, right. Vampires. The reason why he was here in the first place.

“Speaking of vampires, what do we know about the soon-to-be spouse of Sophie? What is even the point?”

“Hmmm. Well, it is a political match. Vampires don’t believe in the rules that modern society has made. Probably why they work in a mafia system. They were forced into hiding during Spanish colonialism and reintroduced themselves in society a year ago. They work well with people who have noble blood from pre-colonial times which is why they agreed to a marriage to strengthen ties. Sophie’s fiancé is the most powerful mafia don so we need to make sure everything in their wedding goes right.”

Zephyr seemed skeptical of these vampires. Since Zephyr has noble blood, he wouldn’t have a problem with them but he felt suspicious about the fiancé. No one knew anything about him but he probably knows everything about Sophie. He and Dani have to make sure Sophie is safe.