His fangs graze my throat—phantom touch, promise and threat intertwined. My pulse screams against paper-thin skin, a siren's call to the monster hovering a breath away.
The cold of his proximity seeps through my dress, through my skin, settling into my bones like winter frost.
"Do it." The words escape my lips like poison, tasting of desperation and something darker—relief, perhaps.
Or surrender.
He goes utterly still against me, not even mimicking breath. The absence of movement feels more terrifying than any violence could. It speaks of a control so absolute it defies nature itself.
"You want to," I continue, my voice dropping to barely a whisper. The words scrape against my throat, raw and honest. "I can feel how much you want to. So why deny yourself? Why play at restraint when we both know how this story ends?"
"You don't understand…"
His voice fractures, revealing something beneath the marble facade.
"Don't I?" I tilt my head further, baring more throat, offering what he craves like a sacrifice presenting itself to the altar.
The movement pulls at bruised muscles, at skin already marked by his earlier violence.
"You told me yourself—that night I tried to escape. You said you'd watch from the windows as I made my choice. As I discovered what waits beyond these walls."
My laugh tastes of bitterness and broken things, of hopes ground to dust beneath Wintergrave's weight.
"You said you'd let me choose my own death. So let me choose. Here. Now. Your fangs instead of the forest. At least make my ending mean something."
"That's not—"
"What? The same thing?" The words pour from me now, unstoppable as blood from a wound. "You were so ready to let me die then. So certain of your indifference. 'I'd watch from the windows,' you said. Like my death would be nothing more than evening entertainment."
I feel him shudder against me, feel the war raging beneath his marble skin. The tremor passes through him into me, and for a moment we share this terrible intimacy.
"So watch now. Watch yourself drain me. Watch yourself become the monster we both know you are."
"Stop…"
"You even said there was a difference—between stopping me and letting me choose death. Well, I'm choosing. Right here, right now, I'm choosing to end this torment. Yours and mine. Because we're both dying anyway, aren't we? You from your poison, me from this slow suffocation. At least make it quick. At least make it honest."
"You don't know what you're asking." His voice fractures across inhuman octaves, breaking like glass in his throat.
The sound sends shivers through me—not of fear, but of recognition. We're both breaking here, in this moment.
"I'm asking for the mercy you promised. The freedom to choose my own ending."
My pulse hammers against his lips, so close, so terribly close. I can feel the heat of my blood calling to him, can feel his hunger like a living thing between us.
"Unless the great Prince Dorian North is nothing but performance and pomegranate wine. Unless even your cruelty is just another lie—"
His whole body convulses. His other hand tangles in my hair, tilting my head to bare that vital artery. The grip sends pain shooting through my scalp, but it grounds me, makes this moment real.
His mouth opens wider, fangs descending toward the place where life sings loudest.
"Yes…" I breathe, and the word sounds like relief, like salvation, like the first honest thing I've said since arriving at Wintergrave.
He tears himself away with such violence I stagger. One moment he's there, the next he's across the room, back turned, shoulders rigid with the effort of restraint.
The absence of him feels like a wound, like something vital ripped away.
Then he's gone. The door hangs open like a wound, darkness spilling through.
"Coward!" The scream tears from my throat, raw and primal.
The adrenaline hits like lightning, electricity coursing through veins that should be empty. My legs carry me through corridors that blur with rage, stone walls becoming nothing more than grey streaks in my peripheral vision.
My chambers become the target of everything burning inside me.
The mirror shatters first—my fist through glass, through the reflection of a girl who almost died. Who wanted to die. Blood streams from my knuckles, warm and real, proof that I still live when I shouldn't want to.
"My lady! My lady, please, stop!" Mira appears in the doorway, reaching for me with hands that have dressed my wounds too many times.
"You stayed!" I round on her, eyes wild, vision blurring with tears I refuse to acknowledge. "My escape failed and you stayed—why? Why didn't you run?"
"You're bleeding—"
"Answer me!" Books fly from shelves, pages tearing like the thoughts in my head. Ancient leather bindings split, spilling knowledge across the floor. "You could have fled with Fergus, could have saved yourself, but you stayed in this tomb—"
"Because I have nowhere else!" Mira shouts back, desperation cracking her voice like thin ice. "My family sold me to yours when I was twelve. You're all I have!"
The confession only feeds my fury. It burns through me, this rage at the injustice of it all—at her bondage, at mine, at this manor that consumes everyone within its walls.
I turn on the wardrobe, wood splintering beneath strength I shouldn't possess.
"Don't touch me!" I shove Mira away when she tries to restrain me, her familiar touch suddenly unbearable. "You wrote to them! You brought false hope! You made me believe—"
"I was trying to save you!"
"There is no saving!" The bed overturns with impossible strength, feathers exploding into the air like snow. "Don't you understand? He almost killed me and I wanted him to! I wanted it to end!"
Mira grabs my arms, trying to still the destruction. Her grip is desperate, fingers digging into flesh already marked by too much violence.
"Stop this, please—"
"Let go!" I wrench free, but too hard, too wild. My hand catches her face, nails raking across her cheek.
Blood wells immediately—three parallel lines of crimson against pale skin. The sight stops everything. The world crystallises around this single moment of violence, of me becoming what I despise.
Mira touches her face, fingers coming away red. The blood drips onto the destroyed floor, mixing with glass and feathers and the ruins of everything I once was.
"Mira…" My voice breaks, shatters like the mirror. "I didn't mean—"
"I know." Her words come soft, resigned, carrying the weight of someone who has seen too much. "This place turns us all into monsters eventually."
I collapse then, the fight draining from me like blood from a wound. My legs give way, and I sink into the destruction I've wrought. I stare at Mira's bleeding face, at my own bleeding hands, at the devastation surrounding us.
The room looks like my soul feels—shattered, irreparable.
"What have I become?" The question falls between us like another piece of shattered glass, sharp and dangerous.
Mira kneels beside me, blood still trickling down her cheek, marking her with my violence. "Someone trying to survive the unsurvivable."
We sit in the ruins whilst feathers drift around us like snow, whilst Wintergrave watches through broken windows with its thousand invisible eyes.
Whilst somewhere in its depths, Dorian poisons himself against the hunger that almost won.