A porch light flicked on nearby. I froze, half expecting another stranger to shout a compliment about my pants. When none came, I sighed and turned back toward the house. The bond pulled harder now, a steady thrum in my chest leading me home like a compass.
Home. The word startled me.
Perhaps nothomeyet. But close enough to hurt.
The night air suited me.
Cool. Still. At least the trees remained the same. Old sentinels, unchanged. I had always liked trees. They endured. They stayed rooted while everything else burned or betrayed.
Sometimes I felt like that. As if I’d simply… continued existing while the rest of the world reinvented itself.
I focused, separating the strange noises one by one. A skill learned long ago on battlefields: distinguish threat from benign chaos.
That’s when I heard it—something out of rhythm. A sound that didn’t belong.
Footsteps, light but deliberate, shadowing mine.
My body went still. My instincts tensed in warning.
When I inhaled, a scent hit me.
Not human. Something older, colder.
Vampire.
I turned sharply, vanishing from sight and reappearing several yards behind the sound. The figure froze, half-shrouded in shadow.
Then I saw her face.
Ambrosia.
She stepped into the thin spill of moonlight like it was a stage cue. Her beauty was the same—too deliberate to be divine. Skin pale as spoiled milk. Lips blood-red and cruelly curved. Gold hair pinned in an intricate knot that dared gravity to intervene. Her gown was black silk laced with mourning, every movement whispering vanity and threat.
“Ambrosia,” I said flatly. “You’re still alive. Marvelous.”
“Alive?” She laughed—a silvery, echoing sound that made my teeth ache. “You’re generous, love. I preferundefeated.” She strolled forward, her boots clicking on the hard ground. “And look at you. Awake. Brooding. Somehow even paler than you were in 1650. Sleep has done you wonders.”
My first instinct was rage. Before she could take another step, I had her by the throat and drove her backward into the shadows between two houses.
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t fight me. She smiled through the chokehold. “Oh, Cristian, you’re still so handsy. I missed that.”
“This is your doing.” My fingers pressed harder. “All of it.”
She gave a strangled laugh, amused rather than afraid. “You make it sound so personal.”
“The Sovereign Court put me to sleep,” I said. “Buried me. Left me to rot.Yourcourt.”
Her nails brushed my wrist as if she was soothing a lover. “We did what was required. You wouldn’t join us. The court extended every offer—status, blood, dominion. You could have ruled beside us.”
Her smile turned faintly cruel. “But you refused. You always thought yourself above us.”
I said nothing, my jaw tight. If I were to agree to join them, any hope of autonomy would be lost for eternity.
She sighed, almost wistful. “They didn’t want to kill you, Cristian. They wanted touseyou. All that strength, all that control—wasted on your principles.” Her tone dipped lower. “If we couldn’t have your power, then neither could you.”
The old fury stirred inside me.
I let go enough for her to breathe.
