He threw me into this cage as easily as one discards trash. As the cart pulled away from the place where my mother slept, I heard the words that sealed my fate. Peace treaty. A bridal offering. A truce between the Warlock Lord and the Vampire Lord, secured by the body of his estranged bastard daughter.
They called me a bride, but I knew better. I was not a gift, not a negotiation, and certainly not a symbol of peace. I was the price of his failure. I was being delivered to the Vampire Lord not to broker a treaty, but to serve as a lightning rod.
I was the convenient scapegoat, the conduit for the Vampire Lord to vent the overwhelming, consuming rage Thaurion had stirred up. I was a vessel for pain, and my new life would begin only when his vengeance was complete.
For five years, I lived in that castle. Five years since they had chained me, five years since Thaurion's betrayal, and five years of living under a rule more insidious than a death sentence. They couldn't kill me or bite me, but everything else was permitted.
I had only met the Vampire Lord Lucien once, the day they dragged me through the fortress gates. He had looked down from a high balcony, his face an unreadable mask of cold, ancient disgust.
He never sought me out again, but his absence was not freedom. His court, his servants, and his guards saw me as a living trophy, a discarded trinket of their enemy, and they treated me accordingly.
They didn't leave scars that would spoil the merchandise, but the wounds they inflicted ran deep. Humiliation was their preferred weapon. They stripped away my dignity piece by piece, forcing me into costumes, binding me in endless poses for their amusement, and leaving me exposed to their scorn.
Every guard shift brought a new invention in cruelty, a fresh round of mocking laughter, and the chilling realization that my fate was a spectator sport. I was a vessel of anger, and every vampire in the castle felt entitled to their pound of flesh, provided it was psychological.
My mother was my world, and when the war took her, it took my will to live with her. In that stone cage, with the ceaseless mocking ringing in my ears, I tried to end the torment.
I gnawed at my wrists, I held my breath until my vision blackened, I even tried to smash my head against the unyielding stone floor. It didn't matter what method I attempted; someone always stopped me.
They were terrifyingly efficient at intervention, always appearing just as oblivion beckoned. It was the final, brutal irony. I was not even allowed to choose how I should die. My life, or what passed for it, belonged to them.
I existed in a timeless cycle of pain and survival, so when the air changed, I didn't notice with my eyes or ears, but with the cold, raw awareness of a hunted animal.
The darkness was thick not from the absence of light, but the presence of something sinister. I sat against the cold stone wall, my right wrist chained to a rusted ring set deep into the mortar.
The iron bit into my skin, cold and unyielding, a permanent part of my bone structure. I had counted the hours by the drip of condensation from the ceiling, each drop a monotonous reminder that time still moved, even here in this dungeon.
Then, the air broke.
The Vampire Lord Lucien appeared instantly, with no sound or smell. He was shrouded in shadow, and his form seemed to shimmer. He looked sharp and powerful one moment, and blurry the next.
I was braced for the usual contempt, the effortless disdain he had shown five years ago. I was ready for a threat, or perhaps even a final, fatal decree. But he did none of that. His inhuman grace failed him entirely. He pitched forward, striking the cold, wet flagstones with a sickening thud, and collapsed to his knees.
His veins pulsed violently beneath his pale, fine skin, not just blue but black and swollen like roots choking a tree. They snaked up his neck, throbbing against his collarbone.
His eyes, which I had expected to be silver, cold, and cruelly composed, burned instead with a fierce, feral gold. He was consumed by something.
I knew that look. I knew that pain. It was Moonthorn Venin. I had only read about this poison in secret books and heard it whispered in covens. It was the poison that stripped away a vampire's civility and left only the pure, desperate beast. Now, that poison was inside him.
The pain in the room was intense, but it wasn't a burn or a cut. It was much worse. It was hunger. A deep, ravenous hunger that felt like claws scraping his ribs. His throat was dry as dust, as if he hadn't drunk blood in a century.
He stood up and staggered onto the heavy table clutching his chest. A low, uncontrolled growl escaped his lips. It wasn't human or noble. It was the wild sound of a beast on the hunt. His distorted reflection stared back from the dark window.
As I watched, his pupils bloated, great black voids swallowing the metallic gold of his iris. His fangs lengthened, not with the elegant, restrained sharpness I'd anticipated, but with a grotesque urgency, splitting his gums as they erupted.
Then his spine arched, bones cracking with a sharp, sickening sound, as if his body were rebelling against its own nobility, forcing the proud lines of his lineage into a predatory curve.
I shook the chains, the heavy steel rattling against the marble floor. "Lucien!" I cried, my voice surprisingly sharp, carrying both fear and an instinctive, desperate warning. "You've been poisoned by Moonthorn! You need he—"
He turned in a blur of black velvet and speed. The growl that followed my words was a verdict. He lunged.
Instinct took over. I scrambled back, desperate for a place to run, but the room was a lavish tomb. The chain anchored behind me yanked my neck back hard, a harsh reminder that I was still a prisoner.
His weight crashed into me, it was immense and cold. I felt his claws press my shoulders and his ragged, hot breath near my ear. I could feel his control slipping. The air left my lungs, replaced instantly by terror.
Then came the bite. It wasn't gentle; it was a raw, consuming need. His fangs pierced my neck, and the pain was sharp, immediate, blooming like liquid fire. My cry was swallowed by the silence of the massive room.
My hot blood flowed into his dry throat. Yet, even as he consumed me, I felt a small, clear tremor in his huge body. It was a profound, almost reluctant hesitation that came from the man still left inside him.