I haven't seen him since last night.
Not a trace. Not a shadow. Not the whisper of his footsteps in the corridor outside our room. When I woke up this morning, the other side of the bed was untouched—the sheets cold, the pillow still fluffed like no one had lain there at all.
He's avoiding me.
The thought sits in my chest like a stone. I push it down, down, down, until I can pretend it's not there.
The second drip came this morning. A nurse with steady hands and a face like marble slid the needle into my arm, and I watched the clear bag empty into my veins, feeling the lightheadedness recede like a tide going out. My body felt less hollow after. More mine.
They've been feeding me fruit. Juicy things—peaches, plums, mangoes sliced into perfect little cubes on a silver tray. Iron restoration, the nurse said. I ate it all, licking the juice from my fingers, pretending I didn't notice the way she watched me like I was a wounded bird learning to fly again.
My neck still has the bandage patch on it. A square of white gauze taped over the wound, hiding the twin punctures underneath. It's healing. I can feel the skin pulling together, tight and tender when I turn my head too fast.
I still remember that night.
The pain. The way my body arched off the bed, screaming without my permission. The hot-wire feeling of his fangs sinking in, wrong-wrong-wrong, nothing like the books said it would be. I cried. I screamed. He didn't stop.
I shiver, even now, standing in the middle of the sunlit bedroom.
The books lied to me. All those dark romance novels with their pleasure bites and euphoric highs—they made it sound like poetry. Like surrender. Like the most intimate thing two people could share.
It wasn't.
It was fire and tearing and the taste of copper in my throat.
Maybe the books are false about love after all.
I push the thought away. I don't have time for that. Not today. Today, I'm wearing a green gown—a ridiculous, beautiful thing with bows and ruffles cascading down the bodice, the fabric pooling at my feet like I stepped out of a fairy tale. Super princess-like. I feel like a princess in this manor, even if the prince is nowhere to be found.
The boredom is suffocating. The loneliness worse.
So I decide to explore.
I step out of the bedroom and into the long, dark hallway. The fortress is eerie in the morning—the weak daylight filtering through tall, narrow windows, casting pale stripes across the black marble floor. The air smells old: wood and dust and something metallic I'm trying not to recognize.
I know where the kitchen is. The front door. My bedroom. The garden. But there are corridors I haven't seen, rooms I haven't peeked into. The vampire estate is a maze, and I'm tired of staying in the same three places.
I walk. The hallways stretch forever, each one darker than the last. The light slowly disappears behind me, swallowed by stone and shadow. The silence is thick—no footsteps, no voices, no heartbeats but my own.
I stop and sigh, leaning back against the wall. The stone is cold through the silk of my gown.
That's when I feel it.
Something in front of me. Watching.
I freeze. My eyes adjust to the gloom, scanning the darkness. There—pressed against the wall, barely a silhouette in the dim light—a figure. Tall. Still. Unmoving.
I squint.
The figure steps forward, emerging from the shadows like a ghost taking form. Dark hair. Pale skin. Familiar jawline, familiar height, familiar arrogant set of the shoulders—
My heart lurches. It's my husband—
No. Wait.
The man looks exactly like Eryth, but older. The same sharp cheekbones, the same crimson eyes, the same raven-black hair—only his is longer, brushing his shoulders, and there are faint lines at the corners of his eyes that speak of centuries, not decades.
"Exploring?" he asks gently.
His voice is softer than Eryth's. Warmer. Almost kind.
He's hanging upside down off a shelf.
I blink. He's somehow clinging to the wall like a spider, his body suspended at an impossible angle, his head tilted toward me with a curious expression. Then he walks down—his feet finding purchase on the stone as if gravity is a suggestion he politely declines—and lands in front of me.
He's tall. About the same height as my husband. And he's the man I saw last night, scolding Eryth in the garden.
"Hi!" I say, beaming. I can't help it. The surprise has worn off, and now I'm just delighted to have someone to talk to.
I expect him to give me a bland, emotionless face—like the rest of the vampires I've met, their expressions frozen in aristocratic indifference. But he returns my smile. His eyes become half-lidded, warm like honey over coals.
"You're as lively as they say," he says sweetly.
My cheeks redden. He's hot. He's so hot. He literally looks like my husband except older, and that should be weird, but somehow it's not? It's like Eryth's face but refined, softened, aged into something approachable.
I need to get a grip.
"How is your neck?" he asks, his gaze dropping to the bandage. "I heard about the incident."
I touch the patch self-consciously. "Healing. The books lied to me about vampire bites."
His lips quirk. "Which books?"
"The romance ones. You know—pleasure bites, euphoria, ethereal bliss. Turns out that's not the default setting."
He chuckles. A real sound, low and warm. "Ah. The Pleasure Bite. That requires intent. Eryth was not in his right mind that night. He should have explained the difference before—" He stops, as if catching himself. "Before anything."
"What's your name?" I ask, eager to change the subject.
"Oculan." He offers me his arm. "First cousin to your husband. The black sheep of the family, some would say."
I take his arm without hesitation. "Nice to meet you, Oculan. I'm Ophelia, but you probably know that."
"I do. You're all anyone talks about."
We walk down the hall together, his steps silent beside my rustling gown. He asks me about my family, about the human side of the estate, about what I think of the fortress. I answer easily, chattering about my mother's garden, my sister's soccer games, the way the vampires all stare at me like I'm a puzzle they're trying to solve.
He laughs at that. A real laugh, not the icy amusement of the others.
We've only exchanged a few dialogues when I feel it—a shift in the air. A coldness that wasn't there before.
I look up.
Eryth is leaning against the wall at the end of the hallway, arms crossed, watching Oculan closely. His crimson eyes are narrowed, his jaw tight. He's dressed in his usual black—sharp lines, silver rings glinting in the dim light—and he looks like he's about to commit a murder.
"What are you doing with my wife," he says. Not a question. An accusation.
Oculan doesn't flinch. He gently places a hand on mine—a soft, possessive gesture—and says, "Accompanying her on a house tour. She was lost."
"She wasn't lost." Eryth's voice is flat, but his nostrils flare. "She knows her way back to her room."
"Clearly she didn't," Oculan replies smoothly.
I step back, my eyes darting between them. They look... strikingly similar. The same bone structure. The same pale skin and dark hair. The same height, the same build. It's like looking at two versions of the same painting—one in sharp, young strokes, the other in softer, matured shades.
"Has anyone told you two look super same?" I ask.
They both stop. They stare at me, then at each other, confused. As if the thought never crossed them. As if no one has ever pointed it out. As if I'm speaking nonsense, and the idea is entirely foreign.
"We're... cousins," Oculan says slowly. "First cousins."
I blink. "That... kind of explains why you look like twins. Like doppelgangers."
Eryth's expression shifts—something flickers in his eyes, but he masks it before I can read it. "Cousins," he repeats flatly. "First cousins. Our mothers are sisters."
"Oh." I look between them again. "Well, that's—"
Before I can finish, Eryth strides forward, grabs my arm, and pulls me away. His grip is firm but not painful, and I stumble to keep up with his pace.
"I'll give you a house tour myself," he says, not looking at me.
I blink, then smile. "Jealous?"
He sighs. A long, tired sound. "He's dangerous."
"He seemed nice."
"He's dangerous, Ophelia."
I let him drag me around a corner, my gown swishing against the floor. "You're dangerous too. So what's your point?"
He doesn't answer. He just keeps walking, his hand wrapped around my arm like he's afraid I'll disappear.
We stop in front of a door I haven't seen before. He releases me and turns, crossing his arms again, his face unreadable.
"This is the library."
"I figured." I look at him. Really look. The tension in his shoulders, the shadows under his eyes, the way he won't meet my gaze. He hasn't slept. He's been avoiding me. He's been drowning in guilt.
I feel it too, I realize. The hollow space where trust used to be.
But I can't stay angry. Not when he looks like this—broken, beautiful, desperate.
I step closer. He stiffens.
"I have another order," I say softly.
He snaps his head to me, his crimson eyes widening. A flash of hope, of fear, of hunger. Then his face drops, guilt etching itself into every line.
I press my finger to my lips.
"A kiss," I say innocently.
He freezes. More than he already is. He blinks, his mouth opening, then closing.
"What?" he asks, dumbfounded.
I smile, slow and deliberate. "You heard me. I want a kiss."
He doesn't move. Doesn't breathe, I think—but that's normal for a vampire. His eyes search mine, looking for the catch, the trick, the punishment.
There isn't one. Not this time.
I just want to remember what it feels like to have a mouth on mine, without pain, without blood, without the screaming.
I want to reclaim something from that night.
His throat works. His hands uncurl, then clench again. "I don't deserve that."
"I didn't ask if you deserved it. I ordered it."
He looks at me for a long moment. The silence stretches, heavy and thick, filled with everything we haven't said.
Then he steps forward.
Slowly. Carefully. Like I might shatter if he moves too fast.
He stops inches from me. His breath ghosts across my lips—cool, like winter air, like the space between heartbeats.
"Where?" he asks, his voice rough.
"Here," I whisper.
And I close the distance myself.
His lips are cold.
I knew they would be—I've felt them before, at the altar, a brush of ice against my mouth that lasted barely a second before he pulled away like the contact burned him. But this is different. This is my choice. My movement. My lips pressing against his, soft and deliberate, the way I've imagined a hundred times while watching him across the dinner table, while he slept on the other side of the bed, while he knelt at my feet and looked at me like I was the sun.
And he's frozen.
Completely, utterly still. His mouth is a cold line beneath mine, unmoving, like he's afraid that if he breathes, I'll shatter. Or disappear. Or turn into something he doesn't deserve.
I press closer, my hand finding his chest. The fabric of his shirt is smooth under my palm, and beneath it—nothing. No heartbeat. No warmth. Just the stillness of a creature who stopped living three centuries ago, standing in a hallway with a human girl pressing a kiss to his frozen mouth.
He doesn't kiss back.
I feel the shape of him—the sharp line of his jaw, the cool planes of his face—and I wait. I wait for him to tilt his head, to soften, to give me something that isn't this rigid, terrified stillness.
Nothing.
I pull back. The distance between us is barely an inch, and his crimson eyes are wide open, staring into mine like he's seeing me for the first time. Like he's watching a miracle he doesn't understand.
"You could at least pretend to enjoy it," I say, trying to make my voice light.
He looks at the ground.
The movement is so small, so human, that it catches me off guard. Eryth—the arrogant, sneering vampire who called humans cattle—can't meet my eyes after a kiss.
"I'm sorry," he says.
I blink.
Did he just—
"For what?" I ask.
He doesn't look up. His voice comes out low, rough, like the words are being dragged out of him with hooks. "For drawing out so much blood when you said to draw out a little. For making you faint. For continuing even when you pushed me and cried."
The words land like stones in my chest. He says them like a list he's been reciting in his head for two days—a catalog of every moment he failed, every second he lost control. Like they've been eating him alive in the silence between us.
"I was never mad at you," I say.
I lean in, touching my nose against his. He flinches—barely, a micro-movement—but he doesn't pull away. His breath ghosts across my lips, cool and shallow.
"But about the bite..."
I trail off. The question sits in my throat, sharp and insistent. I should let it go. I should change the subject, let the fragile peace settle around us like a blanket.
I don't.
"How come you didn't do the pleasure bite?" I ask. "Oculan said it's a thing."
His expression shifts. A flicker of irritation at the name—Oculan, always Oculan—crosses his face before he schools it into something neutral. He's quiet for a long moment, his gaze dropping to his hands, to the silver rings glinting on his fingers.
"It's a thing between vampires," he says finally. "Makes the pain less. You feed off of your partner."
A beat of silence stretches between us, thin and fragile as glass.
"I don't know how to do it." His voice is flat. Careful. "I've never done it."
Another beat.
"Oh," I mumble.
The word hangs in the air, small and inadequate. I don't know what to do with this information—the confession that my arrogant, three-hundred-year-old vampire husband has never bitten anyone for pleasure. That the only bites he's ever given were the kind that hurt. That I was his first, and I nearly died from it.
The thought makes my chest ache.
I clear my throat. "So. The manor. You promised a tour."
He looks up, surprised. Something flickers in his crimson eyes—relief, maybe, or gratitude that I'm letting him off the hook. He straightens, rolling his shoulders back, and for a moment he looks like himself again: tall, composed, in control.
"Follow me," he says.
He leads me down the corridor, his steps silent on the black marble. I follow a half-step behind, the green gown rustling around my ankles, my hand still tingling from where I touched his chest. The kiss lingers on my lips—cold, brief, unsatisfying—but I hold onto it anyway.
It's a start.
The library opens before us when he pushes the heavy oak door. It's enormous—two stories of shelves stretching into the shadows above, filled with books so old their spines have faded to ghosts of color. A massive fireplace dominates one wall, cold and dark, and a spiral staircase winds up to a second-floor gallery lined with more books than I've seen in my life.
"This is the library," he says, stating the obvious.
I step inside, my head tilted back, trying to see the ceiling. It's lost in darkness. "It's beautiful."
"It's adequate."
I turn to look at him. He's standing in the doorway, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I can't read. The light from the hallway catches the sharp lines of his face, the silver rings on his fingers, the tension in his jaw.
"Show me more," I say.
He leads me through the manor like a reluctant tour guide, pointing out rooms with clipped words and minimal description. The dining hall—long table, crystal chandelier, portraits of ancestors I don't know. The ballroom—empty, echoing, the floor polished to a mirror shine. The gallery—paintings of landscapes and battles and faces frozen in oil, centuries of history staring down from the walls.
I ask questions. He answers in monosyllables. But he stays close, his hand occasionally brushing my lower back to guide me through doorways, and I count it as progress.
We stop in a small sitting room, cluttered with furniture draped in white sheets. Dust motes float in the weak light filtering through the windows. I run my hand over a covered armchair, leaving a trail in the dust.
"What's this room?"
He's silent for a moment. Then: "My mother's."
I turn. He's standing in the doorway, his face unreadable. "Which one?"
"Lilith." The name comes out careful, like he's testing how it feels in his mouth. "She used to sit here in the evenings. Before the treaty. Before everything changed."
I look around the room again, trying to see it through his eyes. A ghost of Lilith, severe and pale, reading by candlelight while the world outside burned. A mother who watched her human sister die of plague, who hardened into ice to survive the centuries, who is only now beginning to thaw.
"She's trying," I say quietly. "With my mother. I saw it at dinner."
He doesn't respond.
I let the silence settle, and we stand together in the dust and the dim light, two people learning how to share a space that was never meant for either of us.
He clears his throat. "There's a garden."
"I've seen it."
"There's another one." A pause. "Behind the east wing."
I raise an eyebrow. "You're hiding a secret garden from me?"
Something flickers across his face—almost a smile, there and gone. "Keeping it for emergencies."
I laugh. A real laugh, surprised out of me by the unexpected joke. His eyes widen, and for a moment he looks almost boyish—almost human.
"Show me," I say.
He does.