Everything you’ve heard, about monsters, about nightmares. Legends whispered around campfires. All the stories are true.

^{Her footsteps are soft, always soft, but he hears it all the same. Simon’s head lays on the pillow, his neck stiff and hurt, his hair tangled in black messy locks around his face. There are biting marks from the below of his ears down to his jugular, red angry trails her sharp polished nails across his chest, and two deep wounds on his left shoulder where she had bitten him. They are healing, he knows, but he wishes they won’t. For every new scar, there’s a new lesson and history in each one of them, she had told him on the second day of their training. Camille had smiled, a little bit tad too sad, and told him to attack her. She won fourteen times, but at the fifteenth, he had kissed her and he won for the first time. There were bruises too, but they all had disappeared.}

^{And now, even at nights they were alone, she always disappears to fetch food for him, because he is still not good enough or clean to hunt. He wishes he can learn faster, but more oft than not, he wishes not to learn faster, because they both had sworn to themselves, that when it’s done, they will disappear from each other’s life and return to whatever their homes have left to offer.}

^{Simon shuts his eyes and forces himself to sleep.}

^{Camille leaned forward. When she did, the neckline of her black silk blouse gaped open. If Simon had still been human, he would have blushed.}

^{“Will you let me see it?”}

^{Simon could actually feel his eyes pop out. “See what?”}

^{She smiled. “The Mark, silly boy. The Mark of the Wanderer.”}

^{– City of Fallen Angels}

^{“Eternity is a long time to spend alone, without others of your kind.”}

^{magnus & camille (city of fallen angels) requested by anonymous.}

^{“I’ve missed you, Magnus,” she said.}

^{“No, you haven’t.”}