The adjoining chambers bloom with color like wounds healing in reverse—deep purples cascade from the curtains, midnight blues pool across the carpets, and there, just a single drop of crimson in the pattern of the wallpaper, repeating like a heartbeat.
Dorian's mark, subtle but undeniable, claiming this space as his even as he gives it to me.
I run my fingers along the connecting door between our rooms, its dark wood worn smooth by centuries of touch. The handle turns but meets resistance. Locked from his side.
The message is clear—proximity but not access, closeness but not communion.
Days pass in strange isolation. Vassier brings word that Lord Dorian and Lady Lydia have returned from their urgent business, but Dorian never appears.
Not at meals, not in the corridors, not even as a shadow passing beneath my door.
My body aches with his absence, skin remembering touches that feel like lifetimes ago, though only three days have passed since he held me in his study.
"He's in residence, my lady," Mira confirms when I finally ask. "The servants see him occasionally."
"And Lydia?"
"She prowls the castle like a caged beast. She tried to enter your chambers yesterday, but Vassier turned her away. These rooms are protected by ancient law—only Lord Dorian or those he explicitly permits may cross the threshold."
The fourth evening brings sounds through the connecting door. Footsteps, heavy and uneven. The clink of glass against glass. Something shatters, followed by cursing in a language I don't recognize.
Then more pacing, endless pacing like a wolf trapped in too small a cage.
I press my ear to the door, listening to him move through his space. Another bottle opens—I know that sound now, the pop of cork, the glug of wine filling a glass.
Or perhaps straight from the bottle, based on the lengthy swallow I hear next.
My hand finds the door handle, testing it without hope. It turns freely.
The door swings open on silent hinges, revealing devastation. Dorian sits on the floor, back against his bed, surrounded by empty wine bottles like soldiers fallen in battle.
His shirt hangs open, his hair disheveled, and when he looks up at me, his eyes burn too bright, fevered with drink and something darker.
"You shouldn't be here," he says, but makes no move to send me away.
"How long have you been drinking?" I ask, counting the bottles.
Seven, eight, twelve.
More on the mantle, the desk, rolling under furniture.
"Since the ballroom." His voice carries the careful precision of someone fighting to not slur their words. "Since I tasted all that blood and remembered why I avoided drinking it decades ago. The wine drowns out the taste, the memory of how good it felt."
"Dorian…"
"Do you know what it's like, Rosalind? To crave something that destroys you? To need it so badly your bones ache, your teeth throb, your very soul screams for it?" He laughs, bitter and broken. "Of course you don't. You're still human, still pure, still everything I can never be again."
I move closer, careful not to disturb the glass graveyard surrounding him. "Why did you choose these chambers for me?"
His eyes find mine, focusing with effort. "Because they're the only rooms in this entire castle that Lydia cannot enter without my explicit permission. As long as you stay here, you're safe from her."
"But not from you?"
"I locked the door to keep you safe from me too." He reaches for another bottle, hands shaking slightly. "Didn't work, apparently."
"You're a vampire, Dorian. A wooden door is nothing to you." I gesture at the scattered bottles. "Besides, you kept the key. The door was locked when I first tried it, which means you unlocked it tonight. Why?"
He stills, the bottle halfway to his lips, caught in his own contradiction. "I don't know."
"Liar." I step closer, glass crunching under my feet. "You wanted to see me. After what happened in the tower, what we didn't finish—you wanted me to find you like this."
"Perhaps I did."
What are blood rights, Dorian? What hold does she have over you?
He stills, the bottle halfway to his lips. "Blood rights are the old laws. The firstborn of each vampire line holds power over their progeny. Lydia is older, which means she can invoke certain... obligations. Demand my presence, my compliance in matters of family law, my participation in rituals I'd rather forget exist." He takes another long drink.
"I miss you," I say, the words escaping before I can stop them. "These past days, knowing you're so close but unreachable... I miss you."
The bottle slips from his fingers, rolling away as he rises to his feet in one fluid motion despite his intoxication.
Before I can step back, he's there, pressing me against the doorframe, his hands bracing on either side of my face. It’s becoming a habit.
"You miss me?" His laugh is dark, desperate. "I've been sitting here for days, drinking myself into oblivion to keep from breaking down this door and taking what my body screams for. You think you miss me? You have no idea what missing someone means until you've craved them for centuries."
He kisses me then, hard and demanding. His body pins mine to the doorframe, every line of him pressed against me, and I can feel how much he's held back.
How much control he's been exerting even now, drunk and ravaged by need.
The kiss deepens, his tongue claiming my mouth, and I taste it clearly now—the pomegranate wine but also something else, something wrong.
Death creeping through his veins, decay held at bay only by will and wine. He's dying faster now, the drink accelerating what the blood abstinence started.
He tears himself away, breathing hard. "Go back to your room."
"Dorian."
"Go." He pushes me gently but firmly through the doorway into my chambers. "Before I do something we'll both regret."
The door slams shut between us, the lock clicking with finality. I press my palms against the wood, still tasting him on my lips, still feeling the fever-heat of his skin.
"The wine is killing you," I whisper to the door.
I stay there, forehead pressed to the door, listening to him return to his bottles, to his slow self-destruction. The taste of pomegranate lingers on my tongue, sweet and bitter and tinged with the unmistakable flavor of endings approaching too fast.
The wine is winning, I think, and I know with horrible certainty that if something doesn't change soon, I'll lose him to it entirely.