"Two months, or thereabouts, and I would lose my mind to the hunger. It has been a month now, and I would have drank more than she could have suffered." She could have drained her, really, and spared herself the trouble for some time, but outside, here, where anyone could pass by as she is most occupied with her victim, she would scarcely have made it past the point of death before she would need to flee. Most mortals were no trouble at all, but hunters did exist, and more than she fears the blood madness, she fears the idea of silver stakes, and bullets drenched in holy water. And panicked, terrorised mortals tended to draw those things like flies her way.

"It cannot be more than a couple weeks, if I never meant to do lasting harm, but that is frequent enough to raise suspicion, would you not agree?" That is a lot of people to put under the thrall, and to hope they obey the order to forget, which is doubtful practice at best. Celeste much prefers a final, clean option, something that asserts her dominion over anything living by taking that precious bit of breath away.

"I don't remember it hurting," she says, as though he made any uncouth suggestion, but for all the ways he has not yet responded like a man under her spell, she is out for blood still. Even in life, she had a soft spot for the overly honourable and chivalrous sort, even if they drove her properly insane midway into every conversation. Now that he sees her as so obviously foul, and himself so blithely good, it seems almost unfair to expect her not to have a taste of that saintly glory of his.