Jasper's private chambers were the zenith of the kingdom's aesthetic: a vault of seamless ivory stone and oppressive silence. The only sound was the viscous, liquid slosh of wine as he tilted a heavy crystal decanter, pouring a dark, syrupy vintage into a glass.
His movements were jagged. The usual fluid grace of the Crown Prince had been replaced by a visible, vibrating strain. He paced the length of the ivory floor, his skin feeling too tight—a frantic heat thrumming just beneath the surface like a swarm of insects trying to burrow out of his pores. He was starving for the essence that only the bond could sate, but Daniela was leagues away. The distance felt like a barbed tether wrapped around his internal organs, twisting tighter with every second he ignored the pull. He ground his teeth, refusing to believe she was the only cure for this agonizing discomfort.
In the center of the room, three women knelt in a silent row. They were perfectly still, their nudity a costume of service, the etched gold bands on their upper left arms gleaming under the soft, sourceless light.
Jasper stopped before them, his breath coming in shallow, hitching pulls. He felt jittery, his mind a frayed wire. He needed the release. He needed to feed—to know he wasn't leashed.
He took a mental inventory of the wreck he had become: his stomach was a knotted mass of nausea, his blood felt like boiling oil, and a soul-deep revulsion clawed at his throat. It was an instinctive, violent rejection of everything that wasn't her. Even the sight of a different woman was enough to disgust him. The flowing brown hair, the radiant hazel eyes—all of it was wrong.
With a low growl, he reached out, his hand snapping shut around the first maid's throat.
As he made contact, the whites of his eyes vanished, overtaken by the infinite, ink-black depths of his demon self. But the moment his skin pressed against hers, the nausea peaked. It was as if his very essence was being repelled by a magnetic force. The touch was loathsome, like pressing his palm into a warm, rotting pustule of meat.
"Fuck!" he roared. He wrenched his hand back as if he'd been burned, stumbling away. "This can't happen!"
He swung his arm, shattering a heavy obsidian vase against the wall. The crash echoed violently, shards of stone skittering across the floor, but the three women didn't flinch. They remained frozen, their eyes pointed straight ahead in practiced indifference. Even with the knowledge that his tirade could bring their deaths, they remained calm, treating his meltdown as a mere change in the weather.
Jasper snarled, wiping sweat from his brow. He wouldn't be denied. He forced himself forward again, his teeth bared in a feral grin. He reached for the same woman, his fingers just beginning to graze the curve of her breast.
A violent convulsion suddenly racked his chest. He doubled over, a wet, tearing sound echoing in his throat before he spewed a mouthful of thick, black blood across the woman's chest and shoulders. The inky liquid sizzled, burning her skin upon contact. Yet again, there was only a mild strain in her face—a practiced indifference to violence.
But the maid had noticed something she was not supposed to see. Her eyes widened. For a fraction of a second, her mask slipped, and a flash of pure, terrified recognition crossed her face. She knew. The Prince was bonded.
Jasper saw the spark of understanding.
He didn't hesitate. In one blurred, violent motion, he lunged. His nails, which had elongated into rigid black talons, struck out with lightning speed. Driven by the raw, unstable strength of his rage, he sliced through her throat, shearing the carotid artery. He kept ripping, his claws tearing and slashing through muscle and cartilage until her head was no longer able to remain on her shoulders, hanging only by thin, tattered strands of skin.
Even as her body hit the floor with a wet thud, Jasper remained over her. He was a whirlwind of mindless motion, striking and tearing at the corpse long after the light had left her eyes. It was a frantic attempt to destroy the evidence of his own weakness.
Minutes later, he pulled away, gasping. He was drenched in the black, metallic-smelling ichor of his own sickness and the hot, red spray of the maid. He walked back to his chair with a terrifying, sudden stillness. He sat, picked up his wine, and took a measured sip. A smeared, bloody handprint stained the pristine crystal of the glass.
Leaning back, he stared at the other two maids. Both remained kneeling in the spreading pool of blood. His once-pristine room had become a house of horrors; the red blood contrasted beautifully with the tanned decor.
He closed his eyes. The air around him began to ripple and warp. From the center of his chest, an inky, amorphous shadow folded outward. It looked like smoke poured into a mold, thickening until a perfect, gleaming-eyed copy of himself stood before him.
The clone didn't waste time with the aesthetics of pleasure. He grabbed the black-haired maid by the skull, fingers tangling in her hair to jerk her face down into the cooling puddle of her companion's blood. He didn't care about her fear; he only cared about the friction.
He hiked her hips up, his talons carving deep, jagged furrows into the meat of her thighs as he aligned himself with her pussy. He slammed into her with a blunt, rhythmic violence that offered no warmth, only a raw, carnal release. Each thrust was a rejection of the bond's restriction. He used her body as a vessel for his rage, his breath a wet snarl against the back of her neck as the room filled with the heavy, salt-and-copper stench of sex and slaughter.
"Hermes!" Jasper roared, the sound cutting across the wet sounds of the act on the floor.
The door opened instantly. Hermes stepped in, his gaze dropping to the floor just long enough to register the mangled remains and the violent use of the other. He remained as still as the ivory walls, though a subtle tightness formed around his eyes. The room was filling with unclaimed lust—an invitation to any demon stupid enough to try and absorb the leftover essence the Prince was not consuming.
"Bring me Hollow-glass," Jasper commanded. His voice was a dangerous rasp.
Hermes hesitated. It was a fractional pause, but it felt like an eternity. Internally, Hermes felt a cold spike of dread. Hollow-glass was a drug to demons; it stripped away the restraint that kept their darkest impulses tethered.
"My Prince," Hermes began, his voice cautious. "Is the Crown Princess not expecting you back so—"
Jasper's head snapped toward him. He didn't move, but the atmospheric pressure spiked with the weight of his intent. Hermes felt the capillaries in his nose snap. A hot, steady stream of blood began to leak from his right nostril, tracking a dark line over his lip and dripping onto his chin.
Hermes didn't flinch. He didn't raise a hand to wipe it away or even twitch a muscle in discomfort. He stood with a hollow stoicism, letting the copper taste of his own blood coat his tongue as he waited for the Prince to decide if he lived or died.
Jasper silently watched his manservant, wondering how long it would take for him to obey—or if he would kill him first.
"At once, Your Highness," Hermes whispered, his voice thick with the blood in his throat.
He backed out, the heavy ivory doors thudding shut. Only then did Hermes reach up, dragging a sleeve across his face to smear the gore away, his breath coming in a jagged, silent shudder.
He signaled to a senior maid in the hall. As she hurried toward the apothecary vault, Hermes leaned toward a high-ranking guard in the shadows.
"Pass a message to the King and Queen," Hermes whispered. "That His Majesty the Crown Prince has requested Hollow-glass."
The guard nodded and, in a sudden, silent roar of black fire, he vanished, teleporting toward the Vampire Kingdom.
Hermes returned minutes later. Behind him, a maid carried a small iron smoker hanging from a silver chain. Inside was a brick glowing with a faint, sickly violet light. She struck a spark, and a thin, crystalline smoke began to curl from the vents. She pushed the smoker, allowing it to swing in a slow, hypnotic arc over the Prince's bed.
Jasper rose and draped himself across the ivory linens. He inhaled deeply, drawing the vapor into his lungs. The effect was immediate; his body felt submerged in cool, heavy oil. The frantic heat began to settle into a simmer. He looked like a still pond—perfectly calm.
But the clone was not Jasper.
The shadow, fueled by the rawest parts of Jasper's psyche, reacted to the drug like a cornered beast. As the violet smoke filled the room, the clone's movements turned from rhythmic to predatory. It let out a soundless snarl, its hands snapping out with lethal precision. In a blur of shadow, it tore through the remaining two women. They were no longer interests of the flesh; they were obstacles.
Jasper lay on the bed, enjoying the symphony: the wet tearing of flesh, the screams of agony, the heavy scent of sex, and the dappling of warm blood tickling his skin. It soothed his soul.
Suddenly, his eyes snapped open. They were no longer black; the white had returned, though clouded. The clone on the floor dissipated into smoke that rushed across the room, re-entering Jasper's chest in a violent surge.
Jasper sat up, looking at the carnage with a detached, clinical gaze. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Hermes."
Hermes entered, stepping over the bodies. The room still pulsed with a mixture of lust and fear. He moved to Jasper's side, using a damp cloth of scented silk to wipe the dried black ichor and fresh red spray from the Prince's skin.
Jasper watched Hermes' hands move, but his mind was elsewhere—stuck on the agonizing itch that the drug had only managed to blunt. He thought of Daniela. The bond hadn't just tethered him; it had tried to starve him, turning every other touch into a mouthful of ash and rot.
A dark, manic clarity surged through the haze of the violet smoke. If she was the only one who could stop the boiling in his blood, then he would simply drain her dry. He didn't need to deny himself. He would take every ounce of her—her essence, her breath, the very marrow from her bones if that's what it took to feel whole again. She was a life-raft in a sea of fire, and he would sink his teeth into her until there was nothing left to take.
His fingers suddenly twitched, digging into the silk of his new robes. A jagged, breathless laugh escaped his throat—thin and devoid of humor.
"Mine," he rasped, his eyes fixing on his reflection with a terrifying, drug-addled intensity. "Every last drop."
He turned toward the balcony, looking out over the city. His mind was hazy and unfocused, but he didn't care. He wanted her now.