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emember. Maybe it was because my mother never really recovered from my birth. She died a few
years later. Damon loved her very much, and I always had the feeling that he blamed me." He paused
and swallowed. "And then, later, there was a girl."
"The one I remind you of?" Elena said softly. He nodded. "The one," she said, more hesitantly,
"who gave you the ring?"
He glanced down at the silver ring on his finger, then met her eyes. Then, slowly, he drew out the
ring he wore on the chain beneath his shirt and looked at it.
"Yes. This was her ring," he said. "Without such a talisman, we die in sunlight as if in a fire."
"Then she was… like you?"
"She made me what I am." Haltingly, he told her about Katherine. About Katherine's beauty and
sweetness, and about his love for her. And about Damon's.
"She was too gentle, filled with too much affection," he said at last, painfully. "She gave it to
everyone, including my brother. But finally, we told her she had to choose between us. And then…
she came to me."
The memory of that night, of that sweet, terrible night came sweeping back. She had come to him.
And he had been so happy, so full of awe and joy. He tried to tell Elena about that, to find the words.
All that night he had been so happy, and even the next morning, when he had awakened and she was
gone, he had been throned on highest bliss…
It might almost have been a dream, but the two little wounds on his neck were real. He was
surprised to find that they did not hurt and that they seemed to be partially healed already. They were
hidden by the high neck of his shirt.
Her blood burned in his veins now, he thought, and the very words made his heart race. She had
given her strength to him; she had chosen him.
He even had a smile for Damon when they met at the designated place that evening. Damon had
been absent from the house all day, but he showed up in the meticulously landscaped garden precisely
on time, and stood lounging against a tree, adjusting his cuff. Katherine was late.
"Perhaps she is tired," Stefan suggested, watching the melon-colored sky fade into deep midnight
blue. He tried to keep the shy smugness from his voice. "Perhaps she needs more rest than usual."
Damon glanced at him sharply, his dark eyes piercing under the shock of black hair. "Perhaps," he
said on a rising note, as if he would have said more.
But then they heard a light step on the path, and Katherine appeared between the box hedges. She
was wearing her white gown, and she was as beautiful as an angel.
She had a smile for both of them. Stefan returned the smile politely, speaking their secret only with
his eyes. Then he waited.
"You asked me to make my choice," she said, looking first at him and then at his brother. "And now
you have come at the hour I appointed, and I will tell you what I have chosen."
She held up her small hand, the one with the ring on it, and Stefan looked at the stone, realizing it
was the same deep blue as the evening sky. It was as if Katherine carried a piece of the night with her,
always.
"You have both seen this ring," she said quietly. "And you know that without it I would die. It is not
easy to have such talismans made, but fortunately my woman Gudren is clever. And there are many