Reincarnated As the Twin of Rosalie Hale

Location: The upper balcony study, overlooking the chilling night garden

Time: Moments After Nathaniel is Taken to Rest

⌈ Cain & Evangeline ⌋

Cain stood by the tall window, one hand resting on the banister, the other turning a thin crystal glass between his fingers. Snow dusted the dead hedges below. Silence lingered like smoke in the air.

Evangeline entered behind him without ceremony, arms folded across her corseted waist, her dark hair loose for once, cascading like a velvet curtain down her back.

"Are we going to tell him?" she asked quietly. "He feels like he failed. He succumbed to his hunger, but he pulled back at the last second after that one taste. That takes a strong sense of willpower."

Cain's reflection in the glass was unreadable.

"He barely pulled himself back," he murmured.

Evangeline approached slowly. "But he did. You know what that girl is. He was locked and chained in a room with a Canticari Sanguis mere minutes after his change. And was told not to feast on her blood. What were you really expecting from this?"

Cain turned, crimson eyes sharp and gleaming in the low firelight of the chandelier.

"I expected exactly what happened," he said, voice calm but edged like tempered steel. "I expected him to falter. To fail. To feel the monster stretch its limbs inside him."

He took a slow sip from the crystal glass, then set it on the nearby table with a quiet clink.

"And I needed him to fear it."

Evangeline's lips parted, but she didn't speak at first. Her gaze narrowed.

"You wagered centuries of suffering against the instincts of a newborn," she said, her voice cool and measured. "Balanced a boy's fractured soul against blood he was never meant to resist. You're fortunate the girl still draws breath."

"I am not lucky," Cain replied, voice low as shifting earth. "Zeh lo mazal—this is not chance. It is judgment, weighed and measured. I've walked too many lifetimes to leave outcomes to the whim of fate."

He walked past her, his boots making soft clicks on the old marble floor, stopping near the tall bookshelves that lined the far end of the study.

"Like you said, she's a Canticari Sanguis. A 'blood singer' born from a line of humans bred in silence and shadow to call to our kind. A relic from the old courts of Vienna. Their blood was never meant to nourish—it was meant to tempt."

Evangeline crossed her arms more tightly.

"I know that," she said. "And I know what you're trying to prove. But he's not you, Cain. He wasn't cursed by Heaven, cast out as the first predator, or burdened with millennia of guilt. He's not the Father of our kind. He's a boy who died in an alley for his sister."

Cain's expression hardened. "And that's exactly why he must be tested."

He turned to face her fully now, eyes glowing faintly in the amber light.

"I've seen what happens when a newly turned Noctari doesn't confront their singer early. They romanticize the hunger. Mistake obsession for love. Eventually, they give in—not out of necessity, but desire. And when they do, it consumes them."

Cain paused.

"Her blood resonates with him on a primal level. But she is not his mate, she is a crucible, Evangeline. A forge to test the edges of his control. And he barely emerged whole. Had he known what she was from the beginning, any restraint he showed would've been meaningless."

Evangeline's face softened slightly, but her voice stayed low.

"He still believes he failed," she said again.

Cain gave a short nod. "Good. Guilt is a tether. It anchors him to his fading humanity, keeping him cautious of his own instincts and aware of the darkness now living beneath his skin. If Nathaniel believed he passed with flying colors, if he saw himself as strong or in control, he might grow confident. And in a Noctari, especially one so newly turned, confidence without discipline is the fastest route to corruption."

The silence between them grew again.

Then Evangeline said, quietly, "You see so much of yourself in him."

Cain looked away. "And that is what frightens me."

Evangeline stepped to the window, watching the snow drift lazily down, soft and indifferent to the weight of what had just transpired. She reached for Cain's discarded glass and brought it to her lips, more for the familiarity of the gesture than the taste. She stared at the faint smear of crimson left behind—Nathaniel's, likely, from earlier. The blood bond hadn't fully faded from the air.

"You fear the boy because he mirrors your past," she said after a moment. "But he didn't choose this like you did. He didn't court darkness. He was dragged into it."

Cain didn't answer.

"You're afraid," she pressed, not unkindly. "Not that he'll fall. But that he won't. That he'll bear it, master it, become something greater than even you. And that means… you were never as damned as you pretended to be."

That drew a subtle twitch from his jaw. Not anger. Not quite.

"You're romanticizing again," he muttered.

"No," Evangeline said, her voice as smooth and sharp as cut obsidian. "I am hoping that my father figure would finally have some peace from his demons." Placing the glass down, she turned and walked away without another word, leaving the brooding ancient vampire alone in his thoughts.

---

Location: Garden Gazebo – Hale Estate GroundsTime: Midnight, under a pale winter moon

⌈ Nathaniel ⌋

The brush trembled slightly in my fingers, but the stroke was steady. Midnight blues bled into silver-gray across the canvas, mimicking the way moonlight spilled over the snow-blanketed hedges. I worked in silence, save for the quiet crunch of frost beneath my boots whenever I shifted weight.

I hadn't planned to paint.

But after waking—after Evangeline's blood had cooled the burn, and Cain's warnings still echoed in my ears—I couldn't bear to remain in the manor. Everything inside felt suffocating. Too warm. Too expectant. Like the walls had opinions and the paintings whispered behind my back.

Out here, though? The cold was honest.

It didn't care what I was now. It bit into me the same way it had when I was human, but it no longer chilled me. My breath no longer steamed. The snow no longer soaked through. I simply was.

The gazebo creaked softly with the breeze, its iron frame draped in skeletal vines and faded remnants of summer roses. I'd found an old easel tucked away in one of the garden sheds and dragged it here. There was something fitting—poetic, maybe—about creating something under a sky that looked like brushed velvet.

I dipped the brush again and worked on the edge of a tree I hadn't seen since I was mortal. A birch. Dead now, frozen stiff, but somehow… beautiful in its quiet death.

The moonlight danced across my canvas, and for a moment, I forgot about the chains. The test. The girl's blood. Her calm eyes.

Her scent still haunted me—like a chord I couldn't resolve.

I paused, brush hovering midair.

I'd almost killed her.

No, not almost. I would have. If she hadn't made that sound—if pain hadn't cut through the haze of instinct—I'd have drained her dry.

My throat tightened. Not from thirst. From shame.

Cain said I passed. Barely. But I didn't feel like I passed. I didn't feel in control. I didn't feel like a man at all.

I dipped the brush in water, trying to rinse out the trembling that had nothing to do with the cold. The scent of Evangeline's blood lingered at the back of my throat, rich and laced with something ancient. I hated how much I needed it. I hated that Cain was right.

You must fear it, he said.

I did.

I feared the hunger.

But worse than that?

I feared how good it felt when I gave in.

A soft crunch behind me broke the stillness.

I froze, half-turning.

Evangeline stood at the path's edge, dressed in a dark velvet cloak that shimmered faintly beneath the moonlight. Her eyes—stormy and unreadable—rested on the painting. Then on me.

"I thought I'd find you here," she said softly.

I looked back at the canvas, uncertain. "Was it a guess, or instinct?"

She smiled faintly. "A little of both."

She stepped into the gazebo, her presence warming the space in a way the fire never could. She didn't speak right away, just observed the painting. The birch. The moon. The touch of red I'd used near the roots—subconscious, maybe. A wound in the snow.

"You're troubled," she said after a moment.

I let the silence sit before I answered. "I don't know what I am anymore."

Evangeline approached, her voice like a lullaby carried from another century. "You are becoming. That's always the hardest part."

I set the brush down, turning to face her fully. "Cain says I passed. But I don't feel like I did. I wanted to tear her apart."

"You didn't," she said gently.

"But I wanted to."

"That will never stop mattering," she said. "As long as you regret the impulse, you're still choosing who you are."

The words didn't comfort me. Not really.

"I don't want to be a monster," I whispered.

"You're not," she said. "But you are not human anymore, Nathaniel. That part of you died. You need to mourn it—but you cannot live in denial of what replaced it."

I looked up at her. "Then what am I?"

Evangeline touched the edge of the canvas, tracing the crimson thread I hadn't realized was shaped like a vein.

"You're something new," she said. "A soul reborn in blood and ash. You are still Nathaniel. But now you are Noctari."

Her gaze locked on mine, fierce and calm.

"And what you choose to do with that… begins now."

I swallowed hard and looked back at the painting.

Then whispered, "Then I choose not to fall."

She stepped beside me, her presence like shadow silk.

"Good," she said, softly. "Because tomorrow, we face your past. And you'll need every piece of who you are to survive it."

"Tomorrow?" I asked.

She nodded. "We're going to see the Cullens. Remember?"

I did actually. 

I glanced toward her again, something quiet gnawing at the edge of my thoughts. The moonlight bathed her features in silver-blue, delicate and still, but it was her eyes that held my attention.

They were that same color since I woke up changed. That deep, liquid crimson that gleamed like garnets under frost. But I remember her eyes having a beautiful jade green color when we came across each other when I was human.

How odd. 

"Your eyes," I said softly, the words slipping out before I could second-guess them. "They're red."

Evangeline turned her gaze to me. No shame. No fear. Just the calm, piercing stare of something ancient wearing the shape of a woman.

"They weren't before," I continued. "When I first saw you… they were green."

She nodded slowly. "They were. And they will be again."

I frowned. "Then why—?"

"Because our eyes betray us," she said, voice as smooth as the winter air around us. "They reveal what we feel. What we've done. When a vampire feeds—truly feeds, not just ceremonial sips—our eyes reflect the hunger we've answered. And sometimes, even the emotions we don't admit aloud."

She looked away, toward the moonlight glinting off the frost-covered hedges.

"Blood stirs more than the body, Nathaniel. It awakens memory. Passion. Anger. Pain. All of it—flooding back like music we forgot we once knew. When that happens, the eyes redden. Veins may rise. The more blood in our system, especially for the young, the more vivid it appears."

A pause, then her voice lowered.

"I fed during your turning. I gave power. Life. And my body hasn't yet let go of the blood it took in return."

I stared, thinking. "So the green wasn't a lie?"

"No." She looked at me again, her eyes still crimson but no longer glowing. "That color… it's a choice. A remembrance. It means I'm calm. Sated. In control. But red—red is the flame beneath the skin. It is our truth when we stop hiding."

I swallowed, gaze falling to the snow. "Will mine change, too?"

"They already have," she said, not unkindly. "You just haven't seen them in a mirror yet."Then, softer, almost wistfully," They are very lovely, but I admit, I find myself eagerly waiting for those pale violet gems of yours to return."

I blinked, startled. "You… remember my eye color?"

A small smile touched her lips. "Of course, I remember. Besides the fact that you stood out in a crowd with that lone wolf tendency, your eyes were the first things that captured my attention. They are unforgettable, Nathaniel."

I exhaled, suddenly unsure what to do with my hands. I didn't know if vampires could blush, but I swear I felt my cheeks heat up. The cold night air did nothing to help.

" I-uh… thanks," I mumbled, incredibly eloquent.

Her smile deepened, more amused now, but still kind. "You're endearing when flustered," she said. "It is quite adorable." She chuckled. Then she shocked me even more by what she said next. "It is quite fortunate that you were not born a lady. As it is, your gentle looks catch the eyes of both maidens and gentlemen alike."