The house had been too cheap.
Elara Voss had known that from the moment the deed changed hands. No one sold a solid stone cottage deep in the Blackthorn Wood for the price of a second-hand grimoire,unless something inside was wrong. Very wrong.
She didn't care.
After sixteen years of scraping by in attics and hedgerow hovels, of being whispered about as the crimson-eyed exile who bled roses from her fingertips, Elara wanted silence. She wanted walls that didn't belong to someone who feared her. She wanted a place where no one would flinch when warm droplets of her own blood beaded on her hair like morning dew.
So she bought the house sight-unseen, hauled her crates of forbidden books and dried herbs through the door, and spent three days scrubbing centuries of dust from the floors.
The downstairs was ordinary enough: a cold hearth, warped shelves, windows choked with ivy. But the narrow staircase at the back of the hall led to a single locked door on the upper floor.
The key had been left on the ring.
When she turned it, the hinges sighed like something long asleep.
The room beyond was not empty.
Roses,hundreds of them,crawled over every surface. Deep crimson blooms thick as fists, stems heavy with thorns, spilling from cracks in the plaster, twining across the ceiling beams, carpeting the floorboards in bruised petals. The air was thick with their perfume, cloying and metallic, the scent of summer gardens left too long in the sun.
In the center of the room stood a coffin.
Not a crude pine box, but an ornate thing of dark wood and tarnished silver, long enough for a man. Candles,long extinguished,ringed it in a perfect circle, their wax melted into grotesque stalagmites. Cobwebs draped the corners like funeral veils. A single human skull grinned from the foot of the casket, half-buried in withered petals.
Elara's breath caught, not from fear, but from recognition.
This was no forgotten grave. This was a shrine.
Her boots crushed petals as she crossed the room. The rose scent grew heavier, pressing against her temples, tugging at her eyelids like invisible fingers urging sleep. She shook it off,her blood stirred warm beneath her skin, pushing back the drowsiness with a familiar sting.
The coffin lid was unlatched.
She lifted it.
Inside, on a bed of faded crimson satin, lay a man.
No,he was too perfect for a corpse. Skin pale as moonlight on snow, lips faintly flushed, long black hair spilling over the velvet like spilled ink. He wore an ancient black coat embroidered with silver thorns, a ruby brooch at his throat catching the weak light filtering through the ivy-choked window. His hands,elegant, deadly,were crossed over his chest, fingers locked around the stem of a single black rose.
Thorns pierced his pale skin, yet no blood marred the petals.
He looked dead.
He looked alive.
Elara leaned closer, her own blood beading thicker on the strands of her red hair, dripping soundlessly onto the coffin's edge. The sleeping man's grip on the black rose was iron. She reached out, pried at his cold fingers, and felt the weight of centuries in that unyielding hold.
Whatever he was, someone had wanted him to stay asleep forever.
And someone had failed.
Elara's fingers ached from prying at the corpse-cold hands, but the black rose finally came free with a soft, reluctant sigh,as though the stem itself resented leaving him. Thorns bit into her palms, drawing thin lines of her own blood that beaded instantly, warm and familiar.
She didn't hesitate.
From the small ritual knife at her belt, she drew a shallow cut across her forearm. Blood welled, bright and eager. Cupping her hand beneath the wound, she whispered no incantation,her magic never needed words, only will. The droplets gathered, thickened, twisted into living petals of deepest crimson. Thorns sprouted, delicate and razor-sharp. In seconds, a perfect blood-rose bloomed in her palm, warm as flesh, pulsing faintly with her heartbeat.
She placed it gently between his crossed hands, pressing his fingers closed around the stem. A single stray drop escaped, falling slow as honey onto the pale skin just above his ruby brooch.
The drop soaked in at once.
His chest rose,barely. A fraction. Then settled.
Elara leaned closer, curiosity overriding every warning bell in her skull. She reached out and poked his cheek with one blood-slick finger. The skin was cold, smooth as polished stone.
"Hey," she murmured, half amused, half testing. "You alive in there?"
For a long moment, nothing.
Then his lashes trembled.
Crimson eyes snapped open,deep, ancient, and utterly inhuman. They fixed on her with the focused hunger of something that had not fed in millennia.
A slow, velvet voice slipped into the heavy air, low and dangerous, laced with wonder and threat.
"A blood mage… how rare. How very… interesting."
The words were barely past his lips when he moved.
Not a slow awakening, not a confused stirring,he exploded upward, coffin lid slamming back against the wall hard enough to crack the wood.
Petals burst into the air like startled birds. His hand clamped around Elara's throat before she could draw breath, lifting her clear off the floor, fangs already lengthening with a wet, audible click.
Elara's vision tunneled. Cold fingers like iron bands crushed her windpipe. She felt the blood on her skin smear across his pale palm,warm against his icy touch.
She smiled.
With a thought, the blood on her forearm surged. It erupted outward in a whip of crimson thorns, lashing around his wrist and forearm, digging deep. Flesh parted with wet sounds; black-red blood,thick, ancient, and sluggish,oozed from the gashes.
Valerian hissed, grip loosening in surprise. Elara dropped, rolled across the petal-strewn floor, and came up in a crouch. More blood beaded across her hair and shoulders, glistening like fresh dew.
He stepped out of the coffin with unnatural grace, coat swirling, thorns still embedded in his arm. The wounds weren't closing,not yet. He stared at the black ichor dripping from them, then at her, something between fury and fascination in those glowing eyes.
"You dare wound me, little mage?" His voice was silk over steel.
"You dared choke me first," Elara answered, voice steady even as her heart hammered. She flexed her fingers; the blood-whip coiled in the air beside her like a living serpent. "Fair's fair."
He smiled,beautiful, terrible, fangs fully extended.
Then he lunged.
The fight was fast, brutal, and intimate.
Valerian moved like smoke and shadow, faster than anything human. One moment in front of her, the next behind, claws raking for her throat. Elara twisted, blood hardening into a jagged shield that shattered against his strike, shards slicing both of them. She bled freely now,droplets flying with every motion, some landing on him, sizzling faintly where they touched his skin.
He laughed, low and delighted, even as her thorns carved fresh furrows across his chest, parting centuries-old fabric and marble flesh. Black blood spattered the roses, making them drink greedily, petals unfurling wider.
Elara slammed her palm to the floor. Blood pooled beneath her, then erupted upward in a cage of barbed vines that wrapped his legs, his torso, piercing deep. Valerian snarled, ripping free in a spray of gore that painted the walls crimson and black.
They crashed together,her knife at his throat, his fangs grazing the pulse in hers. Close enough to smell the metallic sweetness of her blood, the dry dust of his long sleep.
For one suspended heartbeat, they held there,breathing hard, bleeding on each other, eyes locked.
Then Elara whispered, almost conversational, "If you kill me, you go back to sleep forever. Think about that."
Valerian's fangs hovered a hair's breadth from her skin.
His crimson gaze narrowed.
And for the first time since waking, the ancient prince hesitated.
Elara felt his breath,cold, stale with centuries of nothing,brush her throat. She didn't flinch. Blood from the gashes she'd carved into him still dripped slowly down his coat, mixing with the brighter crimson beading from her own hair and arms.
Slowly, deliberately, he drew back. Not far,just enough that his claws no longer pierced her cloak. His hand remained at her collar, loose now, almost thoughtful.
"Persistent little thing," he murmured, voice velvet and venom. "Tell me, blood mage,how do you intend to break the curse you so eagerly meddled with?"
Elara met his eyes without blinking. "That's what I'm asking you. How do we end it?"
Valerian's lips curved into a slow, mocking smile, fangs glinting in the dim light.
"Simple," he said, tone light as a lullaby. "True love's kiss."
Elara stared at him. Flat. Unimpressed. The bored look she gave him could have frozen a lesser creature solid.
"Do you think this is some happy-ever-after fairy tale?" she asked, voice dry as bone dust.
Valerian's smile widened, genuine amusement flickering in those ancient eyes for the first time.
"No," he admitted, releasing her entirely and stepping back with elegant disdain. He brushed a speck of his own black blood from his sleeve as though it offended him. "I don't know how to break it. The witch who cast it took that secret to her grave. Or so I assume,she was always dramatic."
Elara exhaled through her nose, wiping a smear of blood from her cheek. The room stank of iron and crushed roses. Her thorns still twitched in the floorboards, ready.
Valerian's gaze tracked every movement, hungry but controlled now. The feral edge hadn't left him,it had simply been leashed. For the moment.
"You're starving," she said. Not a question.
His eyes flicked to the pulse at her throat, then back to her face.
"Observant."
Elara considered him for a long second. Then, without ceremony, she drew her ritual knife again and opened a shallow cut along the inside of her forearm. Blood welled bright and immediate.
She picked up a small silver bowl from a nearby dusty shelf,one of the many forgotten ritual pieces scattered in the room,and let the blood drip into it. Ten drops. Fifteen. Enough to fill the bottom in a shallow crimson pool.
She held it out to him.
Valerian froze.
The hunger in his eyes sharpened to something raw, almost pained. His fingers twitched at his sides.
"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" he asked quietly. Dangerously. "Offering blood to a vampire is no casual gift. It forms a bond. A contract. Eternal. Unbreakable,unless one of us dies."
Elara's mouth curved into a sharp, reckless smile. She tilted the bowl slightly, watching the blood ripple.
"I'm a blood mage," she said, laughing once,short, genuine, edged with madness. "Your kind of contract won't stick to me."
She extended the bowl farther.
"Drink. Or don't. But if you pass out from hunger and I have to drag your ancient corpse back into that coffin myself, I'm going to be annoyed."
Valerian stared at her for a long, silent moment.
Then, slowly, he took the bowl.