Chapter 3

The hastily bandaged gash on my temple still throbbed, a dull, rhythmic ache.

I navigated the castle corridors alone.

When I pushed open the heavy double doors to my chambers, a biting draft hit me.

But there was no familiar warmth waiting inside. Just a suffocating emptiness.

Every single trace of Vincent was gone.

From his tailored coats to his favorite black quill—scrubbed completely clean.

I hurried out to the balcony. The planters that once held my favorite midnight roses were totally decimated. Nothing remained but upturned, ruined black dirt.

'Whenever you feel troubled, just look down at them. Every blooming rose is my eternal love for you.'

His gentle murmur from when he planted them himself echoed in my ears.

Now, that "eternity" hadn't just been boxed up; it had been violently uprooted. Tossed out like literal trash.

A bitter, hollow laugh scraped up my throat. Such ridiculous caution. He was so terrified that seeing his things might jog my memory and ruin his grand wedding with Camilla, he hadn't even spared the damn dirt.

That cold, calculated cruelty snapped the very last thread of my lingering affection. Without a second thought, I slid the obsidian ring off my finger. I shoved the ice-cold band, along with a short letter, into a thick parchment envelope.

I marched back out to the terrace and shoved the envelope deep into a hidden crevice behind an abandoned planter.

I knew Vincent too well. Whenever he was restless, he’d stand in this exact blind spot, drinking freezing blood wine alone.

This letter would be the absolute last gift he ever got from me for the rest of his immortal life.

The second I hid it, the communication crystal at my chest flared with an angry, blinding crimson light.

"Elara! What the hell is going on?!" My best friend Liana’s furious voice nearly shattered the gem. "I just got a wedding invitation for Vincent and that pathetic little hypocrite, Camilla! Has he completely lost his mind?!"

"He hasn't," I replied. My voice was so terrifyingly calm it. "We broke the blood pact a little while ago. I already took the oblivion draught."

Dead silence on the other end. Then, an explosion of rage that could’ve blown the roof off.

"Broke the pact?! And he made you drink the oblivion draught?!" Liana's voice shook with pure venom. "Where does he get off?! Five years ago, when vampire hunters ambushed him on his own territory and left him bleeding out, it was you who saved him! You gave up your initiation at the Royal Workshop! You practically bled yourself dry over the alchemy table day and night to brew his cure! Did he just throw all of that away?!"

"If it weren't for you, he'd be nothing but ash in a crypt right now! And he’s tossing you aside for his first love?" She hissed, practically spitting the words. "He is going to regret this so badly. He doesn't even know that the draught you brewed has no antidote!"

The words sawed through my sealed memories like a rusty blade.

Ten years ago, Vincent was nothing but a broke, destitute vampire noble trying to study at the human capital's alchemy academy.

I fell for him at first sight.

When he was at his absolute lowest, I gave him everything. I used my own blood, sweat, and intellect to help him rebuild his fallen House, grueling step by grueling step.

'You are my eternal mate.'

The fiercer those vows burned back then, the more bone-chilling his betrayal felt now.

Everything changed. He had carved out a space in his heart for another woman, and had the absolute unmitigated gall to demand I be gracious enough to forgive his "pity" for Camilla.

Before the sickening taste of his charity could fade, the sound of frantic rummaging from down the hall snapped me back to reality.

Pulling a thin silk robe around myself, I followed the noise to the adjoining dressing room. In the dim candlelight, Vincent’s towering figure was tearing through the velvet-lined drawers.

Hearing my footsteps, his head snapped up. He took one look at me shivering in the doorway, strode over, and shrugged off his heavy velvet coat to drape it over my shoulders. It still carried his body heat.

Before I could even get a word out, his gaze darted away.

A forced, unnatural casualness crept into his tone. "By the way, Elara... I need to borrow your 'Immortal Rouge'."

Every muscle in my body locked up.

"Camilla loves it. She wants to wear it at our... wedding." He avoided my eyes, hurriedly weaving his pathetic little lie. "It's a master jeweler's legacy piece, after all. One of a kind. Just letting her borrow it will fulfill her dying wish."

"Mine?" I stared him down. "Who gave me this? It feels too precious to just hand over to her."

A flicker of panic and guilt flashed across his crimson eyes, but he instantly smothered it with irritation.

"It's just a necklace, Elara. Stop being so petty about it," he snapped. "I'll give it back the second the wedding is over. Name your price for compensation. Whatever you want, it's yours."

His flippant dismissal felt like a backhand across the face. He was lying to me. Right to my face.

During our blood vow ceremony, Vincent had dropped to one knee, covered in his own blood, and fastened that necklace around my throat himself.

That gem, pulsing with its eerie red light, wasn't some jeweler's trinket. It was a legendary artifact he had risked his immortal life to drag out of the depths of the Blood-Red Abyss! It took him months of fighting through literal hell to get it. It carried potent magic specifically designed to slow a mortal's aging.

'Wear this, and you can stay by my side forever. This necklace belongs only to you. It will guard your life in my stead.'

And now, just because Camilla breathed the word "like," he was personally stripping my lifeline from my neck.

I didn't say another word. With numb fingers, I removed it from my neck and passed it to him. I watched the relief wash over his face as he shoved the necklace into his pocket. And I watched him turn and stride out without a single backward glance.

The heavy doors slammed shut with a final, echoing thud.

I stared at it, a dark tide of sorrow and absolute despair clawing up my throat.

"It's fine..." I whispered to the empty room. A broken, jagged smile stretched across my face. "I won't be needing it anyway."

The heavy velvet coat he’d just draped over me still radiated his body heat. Suddenly, it felt like a blood-soaked python coiled tight around my neck. A violent wave of nausea hit me.

I ripped the coat off my shoulders. Treating it like disease-ridden filth, I hurled it against the freezing stone floor.

The next second, a tearing, blinding agony ripped straight through my skull.

It felt like an invisible, monstrous hand had plunged into my brain and gouged out a massive chunk of bloody flesh.

The sorrow, the sheer rage, the suffocating despair that had just been drowning me were violently sucked into the void.

Erased in a single heartbeat.

As abruptly as it came, the pain vanished. I blinked, my mind swimming in a vast, empty fog.

I looked around the hollow room. My eyes drifted to the coat lying on the floor, then to the jewelry box resting under my hand.

My brows drew together.

"That's weird..." I murmured into the quiet room. "What was I just so sad about?"