Chapter 2
ANNA'S Pov
Eunice appeared behind me like a ghost. The laughter—it had been hers all along.
She let out a little squeal of delight, her voice brimming with the giddy anticipation of a child expecting a fun new toy. "Did I hear Lian say Ryan's coming too? Oh, wonderful! I've never tasted Ryan's blood before. I'm so curious—do you think it'll be as delicious as yours, dear sister?"
She ran her tongue across her lips, those blood-red eyes sparkling with keen interest.
I bit down on my lip, murderous intent flaring inside me. But I knew—with what I was capable of now, I couldn't kill her. Eunice knew it too. That was exactly why she'd come to taunt me. We shared the same mother but different fathers, yet she hadn't inherited a single trace of Dailin's kindness. Every last drop of her was vampire: cold-blooded through and through.
"I look forward to that day, Anna." Eunice let out a soft, mocking laugh, then turned and walked away.
After she left, I retreated to my room—a room with no windows.
I locked the door, pressed my back against it, and slid to the floor, knees drawn up to my chin. Dampness seeped through the floor tiles, carrying a smell of mold that crawled into my nostrils. I'd been breathing this stench for six years, long enough to make me gag, but tonight I would have gladly stayed here forever, never stepping outside again.
Eunice's eyes.
Back in that corridor, when she'd said Ryan's name, there had been something in her voice—a probing, predatory curiosity, like a cat toying with the idea of a new prey.
Nothing will happen.
I told myself that, but my fingertips wouldn't stop trembling. I crouched by the edge of the bed, closed my eyes.
Ryan was probably at the library right now, or at one of the Human Alliance's secret hideouts, poring over yellowed ancient texts, searching for a way to destroy vampires. He had a bright future ahead of him. His professor said he was the most brilliant student in a decade. He shouldn't—he couldn't—wade into this cesspool early, not for my sake.
All I had to do was stay alive.
Stay alive until the day Ryan found a way.
I curled into myself, buried my face in my knees, and repeated those words over and over in my mind, like an incantation that could keep me breathing.
Three days before the banquet, the estate began its preparations.
Lian had purchased twelve blood slaves—all young people, seventeen or eighteen years old. One glance was enough to tell they'd been handpicked: fresh, untapped, never "harvested" before. As I carried a tray through the courtyard, I saw them locked inside a cage-like carriage, huddled together and trembling.
One girl, who looked even younger than me, gripped the iron bars with shaking hands, her eyes red and swollen. The moment she spotted me, she lunged forward: "Please, help us, we don't want to—"
The butler's whip cracked through the air and struck the back of her hand. She screamed and recoiled.
My fingers clenched around the edge of the tray until my knuckles turned white.
Don't look. Don't stop walking. I told myself, quickening my pace toward the kitchen. But that scream lodged in my ear like a thorn I couldn't pull out.
What was I, anyway? What could I possibly do?
I was a human who couldn't even protect herself. In vampire territory, sticking your nose into other people's business only accelerated your own death.
The night of the birthday banquet, the grand hall was packed with vampire aristocrats. Silk, perfume, laughter—and beneath it all, a faint but unmistakable smell of rust laced with something sickly sweet. Blood. Mostly masked by expensive perfume, but after years of living here, I could pick it out instantly.
Eunice stood at the center of the hall in a crimson gown, accepting congratulations, her smile blazing with confidence. Lian stood beside her, then suddenly raised his glass and signaled the orchestra to stop.
"Tonight, to celebrate my daughter's Full Awakening—" Lian's voice wasn't loud, yet the entire hall fell silent, "—I've prepared a special entertainment."
He waved his hand. Several servants opened the floor-to-ceiling windows and gestured toward the forest beyond.
"The blood slaves have already been released into the woods." Lian smiled—a smile so refined and composed it was as though he were discussing something perfectly ordinary. "Ladies and gentlemen, tonight is a night of revelry. Hunt to your hearts' content."
The guests erupted in approval, drifting outside with their wine glasses, faces lit with an excitement I couldn't quite name—something almost feral.
The first scream tore through the forest depths soon after, followed by a second, then a third, rising and falling in waves, tangled with broken pleas for help. The shrieks were sharp enough to pierce eardrums. A chill swept through my entire body, and the tray nearly slipped from my hands.
That girl who'd been gripping the iron bars—was her voice among them?
I bit down hard on my lower lip and dug my nails into my palms, forcing myself not to make a sound, not to shed a tear. Tears, in this place, only made you look like easier prey.
"Anna."
Lian's voice came from behind me. My whole body went rigid.
He walked around to face me and tilted my chin up with one finger. His ice-cold fingertip pressed against my skin—it felt like touching a piece of flesh that had been dead for a very long time.
"Quite lively out there, isn't it?" He cocked his head slightly, his tone as casual as if he were chatting about the weather.
I said nothing. My throat was too tight.
"There's no need to be afraid," Lian continued, his thumb brushing across my cheek. "You're not like them. You're special."
Special? I laughed bitterly inside. Special enough to be kept in this sunless cellar. Special enough to have my neck torn open every few days so he could feed. Special enough that I wasn't even allowed to scream.
"As long as you behave—" Lian leaned in, his lips almost touching my ear, his voice dropping to a low, coaxing murmur that bordered on tenderness, "—you'll never end up like them, thrown into those woods."
An order. It was always an order, just wrapped in sugar coating.
I nodded stiffly. I could feel my heart hammering so fast it bordered on madness, yet my face had to remain a mask of obedience. That was a skill I'd honed over years here—pressing every last shred of fear and revulsion down into my stomach, pressing until nothing stirred.
Lian smiled, satisfied. Then he lowered his head, and the points of his fangs settled against my neck.
Pain. The sensation of blood being drawn out was like someone sucking the life from my entire body through a straw—slowly, steadily, the strength draining inward from my limbs. My knees buckled. The candlelight smeared into a blurry wash of amber.
So dizzy.
I chanted it silently. My eyelids grew heavier and heavier, my body sliding downward beyond my control, until I collapsed entirely into Lian's arms like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Through the haze of fading consciousness, I heard footsteps.
Unhurried, light, yet somehow they cut through the distant screams from the forest and the strings playing in the hall, driving into my ears with absolute clarity.
I summoned every ounce of strength I had left to lift my eyelids. My vision was blurred, as though a film of water covered my eyes.
A man was walking toward us.
A black coat, straight-set shoulders—he looked utterly out of place among the glittering aristocrats, and not because he was dressed plainly. There was something about him, an indescribable, suffocating presence, as though the very air in the hall had rearranged itself the moment he entered. His features were sharp, his eyes deep-set, his complexion a cold shade verging on pallor, yet those eyes were startlingly bright—so dark they were almost black, as if something alive lurked within them.
Beautiful.
The thought floated up through the fog in my brain, and immediately I felt absurd—on the verge of passing out and still finding time to notice whether someone was good-looking.
He was impossibly handsome, not quite like a living person, more like a figure that had stepped out of a classical oil painting—a marble statue radiating danger from every pore.
In the next instant, Lian's grip changed completely.
He released me so abruptly it was almost as though he'd thrown me. I hit the cold marble floor with no chance to brace myself. Blood from the unhealed wound on my neck dripped onto the back of my hand—one drop, two drops, warm and sticky.
A moment ago he'd been holding me so tightly. Now he'd cast me aside like a worn-out rag.
From that single gesture, I understood everything in a flash: this man's status was far, far above Lian's.
"Prince Anderson!" Lian's voice turned abruptly deferential, his bow deeper than any he'd offered the other guests. There was a tone I had never once heard from him—an almost fawning caution. "What an honor to have you here in person. Had I known you were coming, I would have—"
Prince Anderson. Eunice had mentioned that name countless times, eyes gleaming with worship, voice thick with adoration. She'd said the Andersons were an ancient noble vampire bloodline, and that her own sire—the one who had turned her—was him. So this man standing before me was Easter Anderson.
"I caught the scent of a great deal of fresh blood." Easter cut him off. His voice was low, carrying a careless languor, but beneath that languor lay a coldness that sent an icy current down my spine. "Very rich. And there's one scent in particular that's… rather enticing."
He paused, his gaze sweeping slowly across the hall before it came to rest.
"Especially—"
Easter's eyes settled on me.
That gaze felt almost physical, sliding over my disheveled hair, my ashen face, before finally stopping on the still-bleeding wound at my throat. It was razor-sharp, like the flat of a blade pressing against skin.
Every hair on my body stood on end. Only one thought remained in my head.
It's over. I'm going to die here.
