Cruz's lips were cold, but his kiss wasn't. It was heart-achingly sweet. I reached out to him at first and met the pressure of his lips on mine. The tentative contact changed to surprise, to disbelief, to full commitment to this one kiss.

It was also weightier than any smooches I shared with Dylan.

I tasted Cruz's worst fear that had just come true, the smartening of the wound. But there was the desire to survive it too. He was in turmoil, accepting so much and hurting so much that it was on the edge of my ability to comprehend. I tried.

My eyes closed, as I tried to give back all the tenderness I could give a boy. Comfort him from all the terrible pain Freida had inflicted. I was only guessing at the darkness that would always haunt him after today. I wanted to keep it at least an inch above his head, without crushing on him with its full weight.

It was amazing that I, Zoe Green, could do something so magical as kiss Cruz in this starless realm.

Finally, he let me come up for air, because he didn't need a break. I inhaled and sighed with a deep, full feeling.

"Zoe, open your eyes," Cruz whispered, turning me around by the shoulders toward the moist waft coming from the lake. "You have to see this."

The light was so faint I didn't know if it seeped through my eyelids or I caught the first glimmer of it just as I reluctantly lifted them. Yet, the familiar bluish glow intensified as more and more water lilies buds floated to the previously lifeless water's surface and opened up.

"Wow!" As if spurred on by my gasp, sand broke up around us, letting through growing spikes that opened up into dry-land lilies like in a montage film. "More lilies?"

"Lilies are just like the vampires...us. A dead thing, sleeping for most of the year only to bloom with eternal beauty of youth."

"I hope you don't sleep away my entire life."

"Well..." Cruz chewed his lip, pierced it with his fang, cried out and stuck his lower lip forward and up in a desperate effort to hide his developing vampiric teeth. Luckily, he never scratched my lips with them. Or, more likely, he was concious of it. He was this kind of guy. "I guess, it's one way to keep you safe from me."

I bopped his shoulder. "Don't you dare, Cruz Triana. We'll figure something out. Your grandpa will help too..." I trailed off instead of saying, if he comes back for us, but even unsaid, the thought hung in the air between us.

"Grandpa isn't here," Cruz said thickly, "and in a few hours the pangs of hunger will come back. I won't be myself any longer."

I reached for my belt. Freida's dagger wasn't there, and no wonder! We tumbled out of a crumbling building, fell into a lake and crawled through the sand. It was for the best that I left my wallet and phone back at the Eternal Acres.

My movement didn't escape Cruz. He blanched. "If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, then absolutely not."

"But you said it yourself that you can't go hungry!" I argued. "The more control you have—"

"You will not be my feeder!" Cruz jumped to his feet and ran to the water's edge. His hands raked through his hair as he walked along it. "Never. Never! I love you, Zoe, and you are clueless about what happens when...what happens if...my grandparents...anyway, absolutely not!"

I hugged my knees to my chest, watching him, because I was tired and because the strangest thing was happening.

While Cruz left our private lily bed to do his pacing, new flowers popped up wherever he stepped, until he left a border of lilies in his wake. It was wonderfully straight and perfectly spaced. I doubted any master-gardener could have done a better job.

He whirled to look at me—and saw his gardening improv.

Whatever he wanted to say about his grandparents's fate, the argument died on his tongue. He stared at the lilies wide-eyed, mussing his hair.

"This...this changes everything." After this cryptic revelation, he marched straight into the water.

"What are you doing?" With a sigh, I got up to my aching feet. "Why are you...ah...picking flowers?"

He glowed brighter than the lilies he plucked out of the water and started braiding with a few blooms from the shore. "We are on a shard of Necrontium, a realm that was imbued with magic. And magic isn't directionless. It has sentience, it has fluidity. Together, we created the bloom on the lake."

I did the same thing he'd just done: I stared at the lilies wide-eyed. "We created this? But how?"

"We kissed, and the shard liked our intentions. They vibed with us and there they were, the flowers."

"That's so cool! Can we light the stars next?" It seemed to me, the lilies nodded when I asked Cruz about creating the starlight.

"It will take a lot of cultivation, so not tonight. But with work and determination, yes, we can."

"Wow!"

"On one condition." Cruz's elation seeped from under the veneer of seriousness as he approached me and went to one knee. His hands extended the crown of lilies to me. "Zoe Green, will you be my queen and claim this shard of ancient Necrontium with me from Freida Seidr?"

Most girls I knew were fortunate to have a room their moms didn't surprise-visit. Cruz was offering me a magic realm!

Yet, I had a sickening feeling he wasn't saying something important. Something damning. I squinted at him. "Your queen? What does it mean?"

He glanced away. "It's a pledge to a single feeder sealed in Necrontium."

"Yet I distinctly remember you abhorring the notion of me being your feeder five minutes ago! What changed, Cruz?" A shiver crawled up my spine because he still wouldn't look at me. "Cruz! What are you hiding?"

"I'll never be able to touch another's blood. W-without yours, I would fall into a vampire's sleep and linger in a vegetative state until someone takes pity on me and drives a stake through my heart, then burns the body and scatters the ashes to the four corners of the world."

There it was, the catch. "This sounds an awful lot like you're going to place your life in my hands."

"And you—into mine. Both will be committed to cultivating this Necrontium's shard into something we all love. It will not be easy, but I won't be a predator, and you won't be my prey."

It sounded great, but his eyes burned with fires of self-sacrificial passion. I was almost certain that his true intention was to perish and give me my life back. My heart and my head hurt, trying to figure out what I could ask to get him to admit the truth and talk him out of it.

He'd just allowed himself a few minutes of personal happiness! He kissed me! He deserved more, so much more than a twilight non-existence of an eternal trance!

"Promise me you won't hide somewhere and fall into this trance or do something else equally stupid to protect me."

He bit down with his fangs into his low lip. Hard. No blood came out. The cut healed as soon as it appeared. The wound in his gaze didn't. "You don't understand! Grandpa mastered the magic of extending a mortal's life, so grandmother lived for a hundred-sixty years. I read her diaries! It's...I can't..."

I clenched my hands into fists. "Promise me, Cruz!"

"Okay. Okay...once we claim the shard, I'll be able to cultivate a portal from our shared magic, like Freida did. We'll help Grandpa apprehend her, and I'll submit to the coven's authority at the Eternal Acres. They will decide my fate. Is this fair?"

The crown in his hands shook, beautiful beyond belief. He extended it to me. "Zoe, please? The hunger is coming on."

My breath came in short bursts as I went through everything he had said in my head, looking for loopholes. His grandfather was a part of the coven, so he would protect him, right? The beings full of ancient wisdom wouldn't, you know, drive a stake through a boy's heart for having rotten luck and being a noble fool. Right? Right? Or did Cruz know something I didn't?

Gosh, only this past September, I thought slipping my stupid confession letter to Dylan was hard! Ha! Nothing in my life could even compare to saving Cruz Triana from himself, while not losing my life!

Sweating and shaking, hot and cold at the same time, I took the crown from his hands.

"I'll be your queen, Cruz. You live a long, happy life, and we'll make the stars shine over the Necrontium together. You'll see. Because...because I love you. I really love you."

I doubt many queens cry when they put their crowns on, but I did.

"My Queen," Cruz said softly, "let your will be done, and let the covenant be made between you and me, in the presence of Necrontium. We're of the same heart, and...and, Zoe, I love you."

The stars didn't sprinkle the sky above us when Cruz rose from his knees to kiss me and prickle my neck for blood to seal our oath. Yet a handful of glowing lacewing moths sprung into existence out of nowhere. They danced over the lilies and us, the first living things that the shard had seen in a long, long time. I smiled, tracking them with my gaze while my vampiric Prince fed. They were as ephemeral as the happiness we would share, always blinking in and out of the darkness. But it would be for both of us, and it would be happiness. I would take it!

Cruz withdrew his fangs from my vein with a whisper of, Ah...I'm sorry. Whether a vampire or not, he remained Cruz, and I loved him all the more for it.

Cruz's hands floated through the air, drawing swirls that extended into another psychedelic portal.

"Ready?" he asked.

I swallowed. "Okay."

He took my hand, and we stepped from our serene Necrontium into a complete pandemonium.

ONC: 20000 words