Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 17)

The court receives our company with polite smiles and a careful façade of respect.

By virtue of their stations, Chryseus and Canus are able to directly approach the Prince, who looks aged in a way that only vampires can. He can’t have been more than twenty when he became immortal, but, at first glance, nobody would ever realise it. There’s a strange sense of fatigue, of parchment fragility, that is utterly incongruous with his youthful appearance.

I pay more attention to his features this time around. His hair is blond, paler than Canus and less saturated than Chryseus, and his eyes are a fathomless green. He shares a nose and a mouth with Canus, and the shape of his eyes are identical to Chryseus’s, down to their long eyelashes in dark blond. All three of them have similar jawlines and eyebrows, and they share, too, an eerie beauty that I begin to suspect is a vestige of their dhampiric heritage.

Most immortals are attractive, of course. For one, most vampires go out of their way t