I wake up choking on air.
My body jerks before my mind catches up, lungs dragging in a breath that burns like dry ice. Panic hits first—hot, clumsy, and humiliating.
My hands claw at the sheets, searching for the familiar dip in my mattress, the tangled recharge cable, the comforting plastic click of my phone. I find none of it.
The bed is wrong. The room is wrong.
My pulse pounds hard enough to blur my vision, a rhythmic roaring in my ears. And then I notice it. Another rhythm. Not inside me.
Somewhere close.
I freeze.
The sound is muffled, steady, and entirely independent of my panic. It is the sound of a heart that beats with the slow, heavy deliberation of an ancient engine.
Too close.
My stomach drops. I stay perfectly still, every muscle locked. The ceiling swims into focus: heavy, dark wooden beams and a spreading water stain. The air is thick, tasting of old dust, beeswax, and something sweet and coppery beneath it all. Blood. Not fresh, but soaked into the floorboards.
New Orleans. 1910. Rue Royale.
I've seen this room on TV, but the screen never told me it would smell like a tomb.
A sound tears out of me—half laugh, half sob. My hand flies to my mouth, and that's when I feel the weight against my collarbone.
The amulet.
In my old life, it was just a piece of jewelry that smelled like my mother's perfume. Now, it feels... heavy. Wrongly heavy. As I touch it, a sudden, sharp coldness stabs into my skin. It doesn't make me feel "powerful"—it makes me feel like I'm being anchored to the bed by a lead weight.
My heart is racing so fast I think I might faint, but then the amulet pulses. It's a physical thud against my bone, and for a second, my mind just... goes quiet. Not because I'm calm, but because something is forcing the static in my head to stop. It's jarring and intrusive.
I try to think, to remember how I got here, but my thoughts feel like they're being dragged through a thick, dark basement. There's something else down there. Something coiled and heavy. Something that feels like a fever burning in my blood, making my skin itch and my teeth ache.
I'm terrified. I'm a mess. And I have no idea what's happening to my body.
The door opens.
Louis de Pointe du Lac pauses when he sees me sitting up. His face is beautiful and tragic, his hand tightening on the doorframe until the wood splintering makes a sharp crack.
I shrink back against the pillows, the sheets bunched in my shaking hands. He smells of flowers and something old.
"You're awake," he says. His voice is a low, velvet baritone.
It should be comforting, but hearing it in real life makes that "fever" in my blood spike. A low, territorial growl starts in the back of my throat before I can stop it. I clap a hand over my mouth, my eyes wide. Did I just make that noise?
"You collapsed in the courtyard," Louis says, taking a cautious step forward. I flinch. "You simply appeared. One moment the stone was empty, the next, you were there. You've been unconscious for hours."
"I... I don't..." My voice is a wreck. I'm trembling so hard the bedframe is rattling. "I don't know where I am. I want to go home."
Louis studies me, his eyes searching mine. "No wounds. No fever. But your heart... it's beating with a strength that shouldn't belong to a girl your size. It's like a drum in this room."
I shake my head, tears blurring my vision. I feel like an animal trapped in a cage. I feel the amulet pulse again, and this time, it's a warning. It turns ice-cold, a sharp bite against my skin that tells me someone else is coming.
"Well," a voice drawls from the doorway, bright and sharp. "This is a delightful complication."
Lestat de Lioncourt stands there. He looks like a predator who just found a new toy. The moment his eyes meet mine, he tilts his head, his brow furrowing. He's doing something—I can feel a physical pressure against my forehead, like someone trying to push their way into my skull.
It hurts. I let out a small, pained whimper and curl into a ball, clutching the amulet.
The gold flares hot. It's like a door slamming shut in my head, a loud, metallic cland that makes me gasp.
"…No," Lestat mutters, taking a predatory step into the room. His charm is gone, replaced by a sharp, dangerous curiosity.
"I can't hear a lick of your thoughts, chérie," he says, his voice dropping to a hiss. "You're as quiet as a dead man's grave. Not even a whisper."
Louis turns sharply to him. "What do you mean you can't hear her? Is she... like us?"
Lestat doesn't answer. He just stares at me, his eyes fixed on the amulet. I'm sitting there, shaking, caught between two monsters, with a piece of jewelry that's acting like a mind-shield I never asked for and a body that feels like it's about to explode into something else.
I'm not a hero. I'm just a girl who's deeply, dangerously out of her depth.