yagodka_malinka: переводы

→She walked slowly up to the avenue to catch a cab. She was moving back to Riverside Drive. She would not return to that townhouse on Fifth Avenue ever again.

→So why did she feel so dead inside?

→I see the fright in her eyes, taste her fear, revel in it, and with brutal effort I catch myself before I get carried away. I am dangerous and flailing. It is I who needs to leave. I am gone before she can close the door.

→“Jack…I…” She is standing by the doorway. I have hunted down the Croatan, I have endured the tortures of Hell, and yet I cannot find the strength to meet her eyes. I have to force myself to do so.

→How did she have time for someone else? I know our meetings were too few and far apart. But it was necessary to keep her safe. If I had a choice, but I did not—we would have been together always. I lived for those moments we were together, those few times in my life that I actually felt alive. Centuries I have slumbered until we met. And I had a plan for us. I had a future in mind. I wanted to share it with her and was waiting for the right moment. But the best-laid plans of mice and men…

→Before I can say anything, she speaks, and the bluntness of her words strikes me as nothing has struck me before.

→“And that reason no longer exists, is that it?” My voice is light, playful. She is not a natural flirt; she is so serious always, my love. It amuses me a little. Of course she loves me. She is doing this precisely because she loves me.

→When we first met, I was struck by her resemblance to her mother. But contrary to what many thought about my relationship with Gabrielle, we had a deep and affectionate friendship, nothing more. I loved her as an ally, and because she was our queen. I love her daughter in a completely different way. I love her because she has become something more to me. She has become my life.

→She stands so still at the doorway, as if she doesn’t know what to do or what to say. And yet I already know. She will tell me that we must stop meeting because the coven will need me now, and that she will be saving me by taking herself away….But she could not be more wrong. Everything in my life depends on her being part of it.

→“He died to protect you. It was his duty.”

→At the mention of Lawrence, her eyes become bright. She nods curtly. “He died because of me.”

→“I am sorry about your grandfather,” I say. “Your loss is shared by all.” When the news came—that Corcovado had broken, that Leviathan walks the earth once again—I did not react as many of us did, with shock and fear. Instead I felt the old blood in these veins stir with vengeance. We will avenge each of our lost brothers and sisters. World-Breaker is waiting. We will not despair or retreat. We will fight. And we will win. War has come to us once again, and this time we will vanquish our foes for eternity. I am almost looking forward to it.

→The door opens slowly. The moment I see her face, I know something is wrong. I expected it, and yet I am still wounded by it. She does not run into my arms as before, and her eyes are clouded and gray. She displays none of that happiness to see me that I took so much delight in for so long. Only a grim acceptance.

→I flip through the pages of Anna Karenina. The book I had slipped under her door before she left. The book that I found in my locker this morning, returned to me. The light is good here—I can see all of downtown from the windows. The city is quiet and still outside. There are no cabs honking, no dogs barking, no ambulances wailing. Instead all is silenced. An eerie calm.

→It is my turn to wait. Funny that in all these months we have been meeting, it was always she who had waited for me. It was never my intention to make her wait, but my path to this place has been the more complicated one.