Blood paints the ballroom walls like a new decorator has been hired—one who works exclusively in crimson and shadow. I watch my husband become what the pomegranate wine has been holding back.
Watch the restraint shatter like the windows, like the bodies, like everything breakable in this space that was always meant for breaking.
He moves faster than thought itself. A rebel raises a crossbow—the bolt aimed at my heart, not his—and Dorian tears the arm off before the finger can squeeze the trigger.
The limb falls, still gripping the weapon, fingers twitching in death's confusion. Holy water splashes across his back from another attacker, flesh sizzling, smoking, the scent of burning meat filling the air.
He doesn't even pause.
Just turns and removes the attacker's head with surgical precision, as if decapitation is merely another form of punctuation in whatever sentence he's writing with their bodies.
"For Lady Rosalind!" The rebels' battle cry sounds more like a funeral dirge now. "For Lord Elias!"
My brother's name on dying lips. My name becoming a curse that kills anyone who speaks it.
"Stand down, North!" Lord Ashford shouts from across the room, silver blood leaking from a wound in his shoulder where a rebel's blade found its mark.
His perfectly tailored evening wear hangs in tatters, revealing the monster beneath the gentleman.
"Let them take her! She's just another bride!"
Dorian's response is to cross the space in a heartbeat and put his fist through Ashford's stomach. Not fatal—vampires can survive such wounds—but warning.
Ashford gasps, doubles over, organs visible through the hole in his torso.
"She's mine," Dorian snarls, each word dripping venom. "Mine to keep, mine to kill, mine to save."
The rebels try to form a protective circle around me, but he tears through them like paper dolls left in the rain.
I see him feed properly for the first time—not the careful sips at banquets, not the controlled restraint of pomegranate wine, but the savage draining of enemies.
Three rebels in quick succession, their bodies dropping like empty vessels, like wine bottles drained and discarded.
He moves from throat to throat with the efficiency of centuries of practice, and I understand now what the wine has been holding back.
Not just hunger. Starvation.
"Retreat!" Someone shouts—a commander perhaps, trying to salvage what's left of this suicide mission. "Fall back!"
But there's nowhere to fall back to. The vampires have sealed the exits. Lord Blackwood guards one door, his evening jacket splattered with gore.
The Ravencrest twins block another, moving in perfect synchronisation as they tear through anyone who approaches.
"Please!"
A woman's voice rises above the carnage, young and desperate. One rebel has removed their mask—a girl, perhaps sixteen, tears streaming down a face that belongs in a schoolroom, not a massacre.
"We came for my lady! Prince North, please, I just—"
He snaps her neck without looking, attention focused entirely on the rebels still trying to drag me toward the windows. The girl falls beside another body, and I see it then—the resemblance in their features.
Siblings. Brother and sister, come to die together for a cause that was lost before they ever entered this room.
I wonder if their mother waits at home, if she'll spend years staring at doors that will never open again.
I want to close my eyes, but can't. This is him without the wine, without the poetry, without the careful distance.
This is what restraint has been holding back—not just hunger, but absolute dominion, the right of monsters to make the world bleed simply because they can.
"You cannot have her!" His roar shakes the remaining windows, and I swear I feel the manor itself respond, walls groaning with pleasure at the violence. "She is mine by law, by blood, by every oath that matters!"
Lydia laughs somewhere in the chaos, the sound bright as wedding bells. She's dancing through the carnage, her white gown now painted red, looking more alive than I've ever seen her.
"Finally, brother! Finally you remember what you are!"
The chandelier above us sways with each impact of body against wall, crystal prisms catching torchlight and blood spray in equal measure, creating rainbows in the mist of death.
Beautiful and terrible, like everything in this cursed place.
A scream cuts through everything—not human, but vampire. I turn to see Lady Corin pressed against a pillar, three rebels surrounding her with silver nets.
They've isolated her from her husband, and Lord Callum is too far away, engaged with his own attackers. The net burns where it touches her skin, and she hisses, fangs bared.
"Got one of the pure bloods!" a rebel shouts. "We take her as leverage—"
My body moves before my mind decides. Perhaps it's the memory of her strange kindness in offering brandy and bitter truths. Perhaps it's simply that I've already watched too many die tonight.
I grab a fallen candelabra—heavy silver—and swing it into the nearest rebel's skull.
The crack echoes. He drops. The other two turn, confusion in their eyes.
"My lady, we're here to save—"
I swing again, catch another in the jaw. Bone shatters. Blood sprays. The third rebel steps back, silver net wavering.
"You're rescuing a corpse," I tell him, and my voice sounds hollow as a tomb. "I'm already dead. You're just too stupid to see it."
Corin moves then, faster than lightning, tearing out his throat before he can respond. She stands there, silver burns healing already, regarding me with those ancient eyes that have seen too many unexpected turns to be truly surprised.
"Well," she says, delicate fingers wiping blood from her lips. "How unexpectedly delicious."
"Rosalind!" Another rebel, this one with a commander's bearing, fights toward me. "Your brother sent us! We have horses waiting—"
Dorian intercepts him, and this death is slower. He wants me to watch as he drains this would-be saviour, wants me to understand something fundamental.
The commander struggles, gurgles, reaches toward me even as life fades from his eyes. His fingers stretch, almost touching my skirt, before going still.
"Your brother," Dorian says, letting the corpse drop with deliberate slowness, "has signed more death warrants tonight than I have in a century."
His eyes find mine. "Every person he sends for you dies screaming your name."
Another wave of rebels crashes through what remains of the western windows, glass shards glittering as they fall. Then I see him—Elias, waiting in the shadows.