Chapter 4
Anna
When I opened my eyes again, I was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.
My head felt heavy and foggy. I rubbed my temples and waited for the dizziness to pass before taking in my surroundings. No lights were on in the room, and the silence was almost oppressive. I shifted slightly, struggling to sit up. My elbow grazed a silk pillowcase—smooth and cool to the touch, nothing like the coarse fabric I was used to. There was no familiar smell of mildew either. The room was immaculately clean, clearly maintained with care, and carried a faint scent of flowers. I sat still for a moment, then let out a long breath. My throat was so dry it felt like someone had poured sand down it.
I reached for the switch and turned on the bedside lamp. Warm, dim light filled the room, and I could finally see the space around me. It was spacious and refined—the walls were coated in matte art paint that gave off a soft, misty texture under the glow. The floor was polished matte marble, spotless to the point of severity. Against one wall stood a full-length bookcase, solemn and orderly, lined with old, beautifully bound volumes.
Moonlight slanted in through the window. Sheer curtains filtered out most of the outside world, letting only a diffused silver glow seep through the drapes, coating the entire room in a thin wash of pale light. The rest of the moonlight pooled on the floor by the French windows, illuminating the pattern of a rug—dark green, threaded with silver vines.
Memory came flooding back, as if someone had pressed play inside my head. It returned in fragments—Lian had sold me to Easter for two plots of land and an invitation. I had protested, but my wishes meant nothing to them. I remembered fainting. I remembered Easter standing in the light, those eyes, the way he looked at me, appraising...
I had been sold. I was in Easter's house now.
My stomach dropped, as though I'd fallen from a great height.
I was Easter's blood slave.
A chill crawled down the back of my neck. Lian might have shown me some restraint for Dailin's sake, and he still needed my blood to feed Eunice, so he wouldn't have killed me outright. But Easter? I had no idea what kind of person Easter was. Then again, vampires were all the same—monsters driven by their thirst for blood.
So what did my future look like? Being pinned down by the neck every day, feeling teeth puncture skin, blood spilling from my body, until the day Easter grew tired of me—or lost control—and I became a cold corpse. Would I end up like those blood slaves Lian had discarded? Their necks snapped from excessive feeding, and because of the peculiar properties of vampire saliva, they'd spent their final moments lost in euphoric hallucination—dying flushed and smiling. I couldn't stop myself from trembling.
Stop it, Anna. Stop. I pressed my hands against my head, forcing the horrible images away. I couldn't let myself die like that. I had promised Ryan that we would meet again someday. I still had a future worth living for...
My fingertips were tingling. My back was damp and sticky—I realized I was drenched in sweat, the fabric of my nightgown clinging to my skin. This wasn't the old shirt I used to sleep in, the one with the frayed collar. It was a pale, impossibly soft nightdress, its edges embroidered with delicate patterns.
Someone had changed my clothes.
The thought made my stomach turn. Who? Easter? One of his servants? The idea that I'd been handled while unconscious, stripped and dressed in this—it made me sick.
I might look better off now—nicer clothes, a more comfortable room—but this was nothing more than a finer uniform in a bigger cell.
My nails dug into my palms. A surge of humiliation and defiance rose from somewhere deep inside me. I forced myself to breathe.
I couldn't just sit here and wait. Waiting meant waiting to die—I knew that much. If the years at Lian's estate had taught me one thing, it was this: never expect that staying still will lead to anything good. Waiting only brings ruin.
I threw off the covers and set my bare feet on the cold floor, finding a pair of slippers by the bed. I shuffled to the door, placed my hand on the handle, and hesitated for two seconds.
What if someone was standing guard outside?
I pressed my cheek against the door. Silence—only the faint sound of wind. I was fairly certain no one was out there.
That gave me some small relief. I turned the handle gently. A draft of cooler air slipped through the gap and crept under my collar, making me shiver. The hallway was unlit, dark except for moonlight slicing in from windows on either side, casting its glow across a long carpet that stretched on and on until it vanished into shadow.
The silence was unnerving. I could hear my own breathing—each breath painfully distinct in that stillness, as if the entire house were listening. My heartbeat quickened. I braced one hand against the wall and moved forward, fingertips tracing the cold surface, using the moonlight to find my way.
How big was this place? The corridor seemed to go on forever. I didn't dare open any of the other doors. I was afraid of what I might find. Back at Lian's estate, the rooms where blood slaves were kept sometimes contained corpses—humans who could no longer endure the life and had taken their own way out.
Then I heard it—a second set of breathing.
Not mine.
The realization made me clench my fists. Panic spread through every limb, every nerve. Fear seized my mind. I swallowed hard and tried to slow my own breathing, straining to listen to that sound that didn't belong to me. A dozen wild guesses raced through my head.
The breathing was rapid, laced with a kind of suppressed panting. I snapped my head up—it was coming from the darkness at the far end of the corridor. The blood in my veins turned to ice.
I froze. Every hair on my body stood on end.
A voice in my head screamed: Run.
I wrenched my trembling legs into motion and spun around, bolting back the way I'd come. My slippers slapped against the floor in a frantic, graceless rhythm. I didn't know what that breathing belonged to—human, ghost, or something else entirely—I only knew I couldn't stop to find out.
But it wasn't falling behind.
The breathing was getting closer, as though it were right on my heels. I could almost feel it against the back of my neck—a wave of bone-chilling cold that shot through my entire body.
I'm dead.
The thought flashed and vanished. I didn't have time to dwell on it. I practically threw myself at the door to my room, hands seizing the doorframe as I lunged inside. I spun to slam the door shut—
A hand caught the frame.
Terror and shock collided in a single instant. The hand on the doorframe was pale, slender, with long elegant fingers—and impossibly strong. The door didn't budge an inch beneath it. I pushed with everything I had and couldn't move it at all.
