Chapter 3

Aeron

I can see the resentment in Isla’s eyes when she reaches back to undo the zipper of her dress, but she’s incapable of resisting my command.

She pulls her arms out of the sleeves and the wispy dress floats to the floor, pooling at her feet.

She goes to unhook her bra, but I stop her. “That won’t be necessary. Turn around.”

Frowning, she turns around, showing me her back.

“Lift your hair,” I order, feeling as if someone just stole the air from my lungs.

She throws her long, brown curls forward and stands perfectly still while I scan her body, skipping over the abrasions on her neck left by the overseer at the great hall.

I lower my eyes, reading her from left to right… and then I see it. Right between her shoulder blades. It glows under her skin, pale blue and beautiful. Perfect concentric circles signifying the unending darkness.

A pang of longing shoots through my heart.

It looks exactly like the one on my chest. It pulsates in response and I can feel her blood resonate in my soul.

The rune. Proof. Finally. After all these years. After searching for centuries, failing over and over again. Finally. I’ve found her.

“Get dressed,” I say. “A familiar will be by with your food shortly. You will only eat what I give you, is that understood?”

“Yes, Prince,” she whispers.

“Good night, Isla,” I say and without looking back, leave her room, closing the door behind me.

I go up to my apartment on the top floor and grab the blood bag my familiar, Eve, left for me on the bar counter.

She’s the only one who serves me. She also serves me in bed, but now that Isla is here, she’ll have to go.

If Isla was anyone else, I’d keep Eve around but my bride deserves better than that.

I knew I’d find her tonight. I’ve been sensing her for months now. ‘On the night of the harvest moon, upon her eighteenth year, the Prince of Stone will find his bride.’

And I did. Just kneeling there, blood dripping down her white dress, staining her purity like she was nothing more than a common donor.

Samuel, my brother, knocks and enters without waiting for an invitation. He’s always been forward that way, and there’s no curing it. He gives me a big white smile and tears into his own blood bag. “Drinky poo?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say with a sigh and sag to the ancient couch.

We kept some of the humans’ ingenious inventions around. I do not wish to return to a world without indoor plumbing and warm water on tap.

Electricity is annoying – humans can’t hear it, the constant sizzling and popping of the live wires, but it’s quieter than it used to be, and they need it for their survival.

Samuel saunters over to the bar in the corner, and pours each of us half a glass of whiskey. He’s a handsome man – a head shorter than me, but with thick black curls, light brown eyes, long eyelashes the will make a model jealous, and flawless skin.

He adds half our blood bags to the whiskey. It is the only way we can get a buzz on unless we make a human black out drunk or high as a kite before we feed on them.

“So,” Samuel says and flops down on the deep brown leather armchair across from me. “Found yourself a new little pet, did you? How long will you keep this one around?”

“A while. She’s the one.”

“The one?” Samuel asks, and I can literally see the hamster fall of its wheel. “Like the one? The chosen one.”

“Yes.”

I sip my whiskey and blood concoction. I’ll need several more of these before I’ll feel it, but it does warm my insides and that helps a little.

“Are you sure? You thought so before, and they turned out to be duds.”

My brother is right. Over the centuries, I’ve found many brides who I thought were the one, but this time is different. She has the mark. “Relatively sure.”

Samuel just nods and sips his blood-whiskey. “Well, time will tell. Did you tell her?”

“Of course not. She has to realise it by herself.”

My brother eyes me skeptically. “By herself? How? Humans are slow.”

“Tsk,” I click my tongue at him.

Samuel holds a particularly low view of humans in general. He dislikes them on sheer principle alone.

“We were all human once,” I remind him.

“Yes,” he agrees and brings the glass to his lips, “then we got better.”

I roll my eyes at him, but I laugh at the same time.

“How is she going to figure out what she is to you?” my brother asks.

“It’s a… feeling. She already knows, she just doesn’t know that she knows.”

Samuel smirks and raises his eyebrows at me. “You’re lucky to have me.”

“Am I?”

“Hm. I may the only person in existence who knows what you just said.”

Chuckling I empty my glass, and hold it out to Samuel, who wordlessly gets up to mix another drink.

I lean my head back and close my eyes. I listen to my brother as he goes over to the bar – humans can’t hear us, but I can hear him. The way he puts the glasses down in such a way that it barely makes a sound, the soft splash of whiskey hitting the bottom of the tumbler.

I can hear the hum of the fridge behind the bar, a cricket chirping on the other side of the garden, a mouse scurrying across the roof. I can smell Samuel’s donor, the sharp scent of alcohol, Isla’s perfume on my fingers.

“Here you go,” Samuel says.

I open my eyes and take the glass from him, but before I can drink it a scream shatters through the quiet peace of the castle.

Isla.

I am on my feet and out the door before Samuel can even put his glass down.

He won’t catch up with me. I’m the oldest living vampire in this castle – no one else can match my strength or speed.

In less than a minute, I make my way down five flights of stairs, and the seven different twists and turns that lead to Isla’s room.

Her door is open and I can smell the unmistakable scent of her blood drifting towards me on a current of air.

I step inside her room and see a young initiate on top of her, his fangs buried in her neck.

Red.

That’s the colour I see when I’m so enraged that I will kill anyone who looks at me the wrong way.

The whole world turns to different hues of crimson.

Her heart is already slowing.

She’s cooling, her life slipping away.

My stomach twists into a cold knot of fury.

She is mine.

I grip the initiate by the back of the neck and pull him off her. “Just what in the actual fuck do you think you’re doing?” I snarl.