Lucianus When my servants arrived with the news, I was irritated, but I was also oddly impressed. She must have been conserving her energy, her strength, to be able to take the blade and do so much damage so quickly. That or the woman there had simply underestimated her. It didn’t matter. The issue was whether or not I was going to allow her to get away with this. She was a blood slave as far as I was concerned, a prisoner of mine. Never have any of my prisoners been allowed to decide on their own freedom, least of all human ones. I drifted through the hallways as little more than a shadow until I reached the dungeon cell where they had left her. Her arm had been bandaged tightly, but my servants knew nothing of human medicine. No more than me, anyway. I pulled the vial of elixir from my pocket. Once when humanity and vampires had not been at war, we had had something like a peace treaty. They offered us a steady supply of humans in exchange for magic. Humans had always been greed
TrinityI woke up slowly. I couldn’t say where I was, but I knew I wasn’t where I had been before I’d cut myself. Had they thrown me somewhere else? Was I dead? My lips twitched, and I moved my hand. I felt no pain and frowned as I sat up and looked at my arm. There wasn’t even a scar. How was that possible?I had to be dead. It was almost a relief. “You’re smart… for a human.” I looked over at the man who had been in charge of my torture. I didn’t flinch, but I met his gaze evenly. He looked less derisive of me as he stared back at me.His lips twitched, and he turned his head. “She’s awake.”A woman came in that I didn’t recognize. She wasn’t one of the servants who had been in charge of taking my blood. She wasn’t the vicious one that seemed to enjoy cutting me, but I couldn’t remember her clearly if she had been a nice one either. The man stood. “Strong-willed too,” he chuckled. “You certainly got the master’s attention with that little stunt. Ira will get you cleaned up and tak
TrinityI didn’t see him again after that meeting, but the servants who came to take my blood also came with food. Even the few who didn’t come with food weren’t cruel about taking my blood. In place of their daggers, they’d brought needles. That made me pause. It seemed that vampires spent enough time in the human world to get human medical supplies. That meant they had a way of getting there quickly and without being noticed. He’d flown away on great black wings with me, but there was no way he and the rest of them just flew into the human world whenever they pleased. They’d be caught. They had to have some other way to get there. I had to find it and use it as soon as possible. But how was I going to get there? Was it in the castle or outside?Ira drew my blood gently as if I was just getting blood drawn at the doctor’s office. The other woman was silent and standoffish, but I didn’t see the man again. It was a start. A few days in, the man showed up again and told me that I wo
LucianusI felt the slightest disturbance at the edge of my territory, or maybe it was somewhere in the castle, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. Whatever it was would have to wait, and it was likely just the girl trying to find a portal to the human world. I was tempted to have the castle drop her back into the dungeons just to teach her a lesson. My gaze traced the familiar planes of my wife’s face in the portrait that had returned to my desk. For years, it had been too painful to look upon her face, yet it seemed that I could not go a day without seeing her in her portraits or walking around in her old gowns that still had the faintest trace of her perfume lingering on them. My wife had been so beautiful and bright. Her name felt lost to time and too sacred to be uttered, yet I felt it trembling on my lips. Her presence was long gone, yet my heart ached as I stared at the small portrait of her. I remembered when she sat for it. I could almost hear her complaining about it, a
TrinityThe man didn’t look quite human or even like the vampires at the castle. He was almost skeletal, frail-looking, but there was nothing in the way he spoke that told me he wouldn’t snap my neck in an instant, given half a chance. “What have we here?” He hissed as I reared back. “A human.”“A human?” I screamed as another one appeared in front of me. His eyes were dark as the night. He was pale and drawn as if he was starving. “It’s been centuries since I’ve tasted human blood. How could a human have stumbled into our little prison?”“A gift?” Another one said. “A sign?”“What does it matter? Let’s just—”“Out of the way,” another one hissed. “I get the first bite.”They hissed at each other, and as they squabbled, I turned and ran back through the red-lit path. I didn’t know if I was heading back the same way or just away from them, but it almost didn’t matter. At least in the castle, I knew he wasn’t going to kill me. There was hopeHere, I was just prey without a hope of su
Lucianus I landed on the balcony of my bedroom and threw her to the ground. I expected her to scramble away, to sob or please with me, but she just lay there, staring bleakly into some middle distance as if her mind had escaped her body. The shock had seemingly settled in, and the realization that there was only one escape from this castle, from me, was likely settling in. Good, but the sight of her so broken did not bring me the gratification I thought it would. She was so still, I thought she might be dead. I grabbed her by the front of her dress and yanked her up. Her jaw trembled. Her eyes overflowed with tears, but she said nothing. Where was all the will to survive in her now? Where was that bit of life that had led her to run out that open door into the darkness of the forest? It didn’t matter. I called my insignia ring to my hand and heated it until it was blistering hot. I pulled the collar of her dress aside and pressed the seal in her flesh. A wild, animal scream of ago
TrinityI had no idea what to think, but when Ira had said nothing and dressed me in this black dress, any hope that this would all be over vanished. This was… my life now. Being dressed up and bled every day. Maybe I could make it easier on myself and content myself with being trapped, or I would just stop functioning. I’d just let my mind drift away until nothing of what made me remained. I’d forget my parents, my boyfriend, the future I had planned for myself, and every glimmer of hope I had. After the second time, they held me down and crammed dry bread and water down my throat. I knew there was nothing worth hoping for. It felt like my mind had gone dark without even a glimmer of starlight. The mark still burned on my chest, throbbing every once in a while. I kept waiting for another wave of pain to come and tried to ignore the low burning ache, but it was almost impossible. The room was beautiful, decorated in an oddly tinted gold that reminded me of old antiques. There was t
Lucianus I stopped. The dagger froze in midair, trembling merely a breath away from piercing her chest and ending my torment. I shouldn’t have stopped, but I couldn’t help it. I had to stop. I wanted to drive the blade through her chest and be free of this, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t with her looking up at me with my wife’s face, my Trinitia looking up at me, to die by my hand? To have her last words be that nickname as I plunged this dark cursed, blade into her chest. I couldn’t. I knew this woman wasn’t my wife. I knew she wasn’t, yet I couldn’t. It would be forever engraved in my mind. It would break me in a way her first death had not. I had gone on a rampage against humans for her first death, but I could not do the same against myself. I shook myself. This had to be done. This torture had to be over. I couldn’t continue on like this. Trinitia was dead. My Trinitia would never speak my name again. This woman was not my wife, and I would prove it by wiping her from existence.