But survival wasn’t enough for me. I wanted more.
The day the soldier arrived at our door, I felt it—a shift, as though the world had finally begun to notice me. He came cloaked in shadow and authority, his dark presence consuming the small space like a stormcloud. My stepmother didn’t hesitate. Her voice was calm, her expression unyielding as she faced him.
“I have no daughter,”she said, the lie leaving her lips with an ease that made me ache.
And in a way, she was right. She had never treated me as her child, and I had long since stopped hoping she ever would. But this time, I didn’t cower behind the door. I didn’t slink into the shadows and let her words erase me. This time, I waited. And when the soldier left, I followed him.
Barefoot, the dirt road rough beneath my feet, I ran after him. My cries broke through the still air as I begged him to stop. I didn’t care what I risked. I was desperate to show him what I was—what I could do.
He stopped. Slowly, he turned, his dark hood obscuring his face. For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t acknowledge me at all. Then his gaze dropped to my trembling hands, and I lifted them, letting the power spark and crackle between my fingers. The air seemed to hum as I waited for his judgment.
The soldier studied me in silence, his face indecipherable. Finally, he spoke.“Wait by the watchtower tonight,”he said, his voice calm, almost gentle.“I will come for you.”
That night, I pretended to sleep, lying still and quiet as the house settled into uneasy silence. I counted every creak of the floorboards, every muffled sigh from my stepmother’s room. When the last candle was snuffed out and her snores drifted faintly through the thin walls, I crept out of bed. I didn’t know what to expect, but I clung to the soldier’s words:“I will come for you.”
But when the knock came, it wasn’t at the watchtower.
It was at my front door.
My stepmother opened it, and there he stood—the Vampire King.
He was nothing like I had imagined, yet somehow exactly what I had feared. His long white hair was tied back in a sleek knot, thechiseled angles of his face both regal and predatory. His teeth glinted faintly in the dim light, a reminder of what he was. But it was his eyes—icy blue and piercing—that held me frozen. They didn’t look at me with malice, but with a calculated intensity, as if he could see every fractured piece of me.
When he stepped inside, his imposing presence filled the room, making the air feel thinner. Then he knelt before me. My breath caught. I was trembling—whether from fear or something else, I wasn’t sure. His cold hand reached out, steadying mine with a surprising gentleness. When he turned my hands over, examining the scars, I realized I was crying—silent, shamed tears slipping down my cheeks. One tear fell onto his hand, and I looked away, unable to meet his gaze, overwhelmed by my own vulnerability.
He didn’t scold me. He didn’t recoil. Instead, he took me aside, sitting me on his lap like I was something delicate and irreplaceable. His cold fingers brushed through my hair, the touch oddly comforting despite the chill. My stepmother stood rooted to the spot, her fear so palpable it seemed to hang in the room like smoke. She didn’t move, didn’t dare intervene.
“Your Majesty,”she whispered, her voice trembling with the effort of saying those words aloud.
A monster sat before me—no, held me—and yet all I felt was tenderness. The villagers had feared me, treated me like a contagion, but to him, I was not a thing to fear. I was something else entirely. That night, he negotiated for my life. My stepmother accepted the king’s offer—a sum so generous it melted the tension from her face. She let me go without protest, barely sparing me a glance.
I never asked the Vampire King why he took me in or how he learned of my magic. Maybe he pitied me—a child marked by darkness, discarded by the world. Or maybe he saw himself in me, a fellow monster bound by the weight of what others couldn’t understand.
But some truths unravel slowly, like threads you didn’t know were loose.
I loved him. I still do, in the way a child clings to the only warmththey’ve ever known. But I learned, eventually, that I would always be alone. There is only one witch born each generation. And though he called me daughter, though he gave me a place beside his throne, I always knew why. It wasn’t because of who I was. It was because of what I was.
Magic.
Power.
The one thing he could never claim for himself—unless he claimed me first.
The only thing I will ever be.
Frustration wells up inside me as I slip the gloves back onto my scarred hands. The fabric hides the evidence, but it doesn’t erase it. Hiding doesn’t change the truth, I remind myself. It never has. The darkness he saw in me, the darkness he said he understood—how much of it did he create? How much did he exploit? My father’s face flashes in my mind, his gaze just as sharp now as it was when I was a child trembling in his presence.
I clench my fists, the fabric of the gloves taut against my skin. I can’t shake the need to know. The fragments of my past feel more jagged now than ever, cutting into me at the worst times, leaving me raw and uncertain.
“You’re doing it again,” Sera’s voice cuts through my thoughts, teasing, but not unkind.
My head snaps up, and there she is, sitting cross-legged on the edge of my bed. Her golden hair shines in the soft candlelight, framing her face like sunlight spilling through a crack in the darkness. Her bright blue eyes are fixed on me, narrowing slightly as though she can see the turmoil written all over me.
“Doing what?” I ask, my voice coming out more clipped than I intended.
“Brooding,” she says, dragging the word out as she swings her legs off the bed and stands. She crosses the room with the effortless grace I’ve always envied, her skirts swishing softly around her ankles.
“Honestly, Lailah, you might as well brand‘troubled heroine’across your forehead. It’s exhausting watching you sometimes.”
