Cristian’s expression darkened. “I want nothing affiliated with the French.”
I shut the fridge door slowly. “You’re holding a four-hundred-year grudge?”
“Some betrayals never age,” he said, deadpan.
I snorted. “You need to relax.”
“My spine has not relaxed since 1650.”
I blinked. He wasn’t joking. But I laughed anyway. “You’re handling this weirdly well,” I said.So much better than me.
“Panic is inefficient.”
“Sure,” I said, cracking eggs into a bowl. “Tell that to my nervous system.”
He leaned one hip against the counter, watching every movement like I was demonstrating fire for the first time. “How does this machinery produce heat without flame?”
“Electricity,” I said, whisking the eggs. “Don’t touch it.”
He didn’t move.
“Whenare you from, exactly?”
“Fifteen-ninety-seven,” he said. “I was turned into a vampire in my early thirties.”
The words fell out of me before I could stop them. “How did it feel? Being turned into a vampire?”
He tilted his head. “Have you never met one before?”
“I’ve heard of them,” I said, dipping bread into the egg mixture. “They’re rare now. Big taboo about turning humans. Very frowned upon. Lots of paperwork, probably.”
“I did not choose it,” he said. “It happened during the ‘Thirty Years’ War. I was a soldier. I did not want that life of chaos, smoke, and bodies littering the ground. I did not want the one that came after it either.”
I paused, bread dripping back into the bowl. “Someone forced it on you.”
“Yes. I don’t even know who, but they turned my brother and myself at the same time.”
His voice remained even, but something heavier moved under the surface. Loss, maybe. Barely restrained anger. I could feel there was more to it, but pushing would have been cruel.
He continued, “The process is simple. The vampire drains the human to the brink of death. Then, before the body fails, the vampire feeds them their blood. Without both steps, the transformation is incomplete. Timing is everything.”
He said it like he was explaining anatomy, not horror.
“Right,” I said faintly. “Fun breakfast chat.”
He nodded, serious as ever.
“So… the bond,” I said, trying to change the subject and also because I wasbonded to a freaking vampireand would like to resolve that ASAP, thank you very much. “What exactly is it? Why do I feel like someone’s puppeteering my insides whenever I think about leaving?”
“It is a stasis bond,” he said. “A result of the curse placed upon me when I was put to sleep. Whoever wakes a vampire from stasis becomes bound to them. Permanently.”
My stomach dropped. “So, this happens often? Vampires getting… napped?”
He almost smiled. “A cliché, you might say. Vampires are difficult to kill. Stasis is the next best thing for those who want them out of the picture.”
“So, what does this mean for me?”
“I’m not sure.” His tone was measured, as if he’d spent centuries sanding the edges off his emotions. “It is said to be a gift, not a curse.”
