My heart sank as I gazed at the darkened horizons. I didn't know what was worse: the dark or the shiny mirrors awaiting me in Murano.
8
Murano Island was a flare of colorful two-story buildings. It had to be one of the most enchanted places on earth. The ground was painted with all kinds of colors, specifically orange and green, and so were the buildings. In some neighborhoods the island looked like a flaming eruption, balanced beautifully with the sky's eternal blue.
It turned out that Murano was where glass was invented. In fact, the art of glassblowing had been a centuries-long secret, only concealed behind the hands of Murano's talented artists, all before those artists were wrongfully exiled from the island due to the catastrophes they had caused with the fire they used for their art. Glass only came from fire and sand.
Everywhere in Murano people blew glass into vases, artifacts, cups, and all kinds of souvenirs. It startled me how the beauty of transparent silver glass was born from the pits of the deepest and hottest fires, something I hadn't known or seen in Styria. It seemed like a beautiful paradox, how the world could give birth to good from evil and the other way around.
Sadly, my fascination was short-lived.
Everywhere I went mirrors shimmered in the sun, reflecting upon me. I wanted to shrink into myself and disappear. In the beginning, I thought I could just avoid the few places where they made those new and shiny silver mirrors, which hadn't been anywhere else in the word then, but I was wrong. There was no place to hide from the mirrors, and I couldn't take it.
I fought my way to Amalie Hassenpflug's house, hiding behind my veil, and realizing that I had begun to fear mirrors. It wasn't just a precaution or submission to what I had been raised to get used to. What started as a taboo had turned into fear. It seemed like the possibility of ever looking in a mirror was done for me.
I knocked on Amalie's door, and told her what Angel told me to say—that I was the love of his life, purgatory, and after.
Amalie was welcoming and very helpful. She explained to me how she was a vampire slave, half turned only to serve the vampires in Lohr as a blood vessel to feed on whenever they wanted to drink—she still suffered from the aftereffects, but didn't want to share them.
Amalie had been forced by Night Von Sorrow to pretend she was Angel's mother when his father had sneaked him among humans in Lohr to study them and locate the Karnsteins. Angel loved her dearly, for she understood his love for humans and his wish to emerge from the depths of hell to become a good man. I spent all day listening to her, but then it was time for her to face me with the dark truth about my love for Angel.
"Can I ask you how much you love Angel?" she said. "I don't want some poetic answer filled with descriptions and metaphors. I want a realization, deep down in your heart"—she pointed at hers—"that it is an inevitable truth, that you love Angel Von Sorrow."
"You mean like 'until death do us apart'?" I asked, already blushing, because the buzzing in my heart had never been logical or explainable.
"Not even death," she said. "It can't tear you apart."
I said nothing, only stared at her.
"You know he might be immortal, don't you?"
"He talked about it, but he isn't sure," I said. "Because he is still a half-vampire. Only vampires are immortal. If he could ever find a cure to become all human, he certainly won't be immortal anymore."
"You're right, Angel might not be immortal yet," Amalie said. "The thing that he doesn't know yet is that True Love, if that is possible, grants his kind immortality, even if he is still a half-vampire."
I was supposed to shriek, but no sound came from my chest. Maybe I'd taken the impact of the information inside me. The idea of the one I loved living forever left me undone. I didn't know whether it was good or bad. After all, I wasn't an immortal, and didn't know if I wanted him to spend his eternal life without me. I was curious about one thing, though. "True Love?" I cocked my head. "How do we know it's True Love, Amalie? What does True Love even mean?"
Amalie sipped her tea and shook her shoulders. "Who knows what True Love really is? They call it Adage in our world of Sorrow. A simple word of infinite unconditional love, not just for a love interest but for a child or a god."
"Adage." I couldn't stop myself from repeating the world whenever I heard or thought about it. "Then why are you asking me about my love for Angel? I don't suppose it's the immortality issue by itself."
"Of course not," she said. "The situation both of you are in is like this: you're hunted by two families, whether good or bad, it doesn't matter, because evil is only a point of view." She held my hands. "If you both insist on being together, there is no place on earth you can escape to. If not from the Karnsteins, then never from Night Von Sorrow. Wherever you go, he will eventually find both of you."
"Are you suggesting I leave Angel?"
"No," she said. "Hold
