Ezra did not wait for a second command. The raw, undisguised terror in her father's voice was more potent than the most rigid social decree. She turned and ran, the stiff black challis skirt hindering her ascent of the main staircase.
Her room was a sanctuary that was now turning into a battlefield. She threw open the wardrobe and the chest of drawers, her mind working with ruthless speed, separating survival from superfluous respectability. She left the heavy velvet dresses, the excess corsets, and the collection of respectable knick-knacks scattered on the dressing table.
She seized the only things that mattered:
First, a small, lacquered wooden box hidden beneath loose floorboards. Inside lay three vials of concentrated, dark crimson Elixir Vitae—the lifeblood she required. Ezra was a Vampire, a lineage she concealed with agonizing care beneath her mortal façade. But she was not one of the noble, powerful bloodlines. She was, in the language of the Old World, a mere Fae-Lesser—a lineage born of a dark, minor curse, requiring only modest sustenance and offering few powers beyond eternal youth and swiftness.
Second, concealed beneath her mattress, was a tattered, hand-written manuscript. It was a fragment of the Ancient Prophecies—forbidden texts detailing the founding myths of their world. Her eyes scanned the brittle pages as she tucked it inside a velvet pouch:
"...The Prime Nexus sxhall rise, the convergence of the four bloods, and shall claim the Creatrix Regium, the rightful inheritor of the Fae-Witch sovereign line, destined to bind the world anew..."
The Creatrix Regium. The reincarnation of the original Fae-Creator. That was the claim Valerian was making, the destiny her father feared, and the reason the King was defying him. The King believed marrying her to the Duke would stop the ancient prophecy from being fulfilled, thus preventing Valerian from gaining an omnipotent magical partner.
But Ezra knew the truth: she was not the Creatrix Regium. She had no Fae blood, no sovereign magic; she was a plain, mortal-strength Vampire. The prophecy was spectacularly wrong, or Valerian's scrying was flawed. The realization was both terrifying and darkly humorous. Valerian, the terrifying Abomination who controlled the very elements, was trying to claim the wrong girl.
She strapped the pouch around her waist, covering it with her outer skirt. She then snatched a small, but powerful, revolver from its hiding place beneath the washstand—a necessity for any creature navigating the dark streets of Atheria.
A violent shout from downstairs shattered the silence. "Ezra! The horses are hitched! No time for sentiment! Now!"
Her father had been quick. The panic was authentic. With one last look at the room—the sanctuary that had just become a cage—Ezra Finch, the Fae-Lesser Vampire mistakenly claimed as the Creatrix Regium by the most powerful being in Veridia, fled the remnants of her mortal life