DAMIEN'S POV
A thousand years is a long time to rot in the silence of a curse.
When I finally clawed my way out of the abyss, the world had changed, but my hunger had not. I woke up with a hollow void where my soul used to be, a devastating thirst that could only be quenched by the very thing that was stolen from me: my power. To get it back, the ancient laws of blood were absolute. I needed essence. I needed the life force of a thousand pure souls to rebuild the throne I had lost to betrayal.
For the first twenty-nine women, it was a chore. A mechanical ritual. I took their innocence, marked them like cattle, and drained what I needed while they trembled and wept beneath me. To me, they were nothing more than flickering candles in a dark room. Easily lit, easily extinguished. I didn't even bother to remember their names.
Then came Blair.
I had watched her through the enchanted glass of my private chamber as she stood at my gates. She was Target Number Thirty, but from the moment I caught her scent on the wind, I knew something was wrong. Most women smelled of fear—a sharp, acidic scent that made me sneer. But Blair?
She smelled of wilting lilies and sweet decay. She smelled like a sunset that knew it would never see the dawn.
"A dying bird," I had called her. I wanted to despise her. I wanted to throw her broken body back into the snow and wait for the next offering. My curse required vitality, an overflowing well of life to jumpstart my dormant magic. This human woman was a walking skeleton of failing organs, a vessel that was already leaking its life force into the earth.
Yet, when she looked at me, she didn't look away. Most mortals couldn't even meet my gaze without weeping or fainting. But Blair… she looked at me with a reckless hunger that rivaled my own.
"Are you afraid, King?"
The way that word tumbled from her lips made my cold, dead blood hiss. No one had dared to call me that in a millennium. She said it like a challenge, a taunt, a prayer. And when she took my hand—the hand that had slaughtered armies and torn hearts from chests—and pressed it against her breast, I felt it.
Her heart.
It was a frantic, broken thing, beating against her ribs like a trapped bird. It was irregular, weak, and utterly beautiful. I could feel the heat radiating from her skin, a desperate warmth that seemed to mock my eternal winter. For a split second, I didn't want to drain her. I wanted to crush her. I wanted to see if that heart would beat faster if I was the one to break her.
Now, as she lay beneath me on my bed, her black silk dress a dark stain against my crimson sheets, I realized she was more dangerous than any assassin the Council had ever sent.
"Then don't keep me waiting... My King," she moaned.
The sound was a dagger to my restraint. My fangs ached, throbbing in my gums with a need so sharp it was physical pain. I buried my face in the crook of her neck, and the scent of her was overwhelming. Beneath the smell of medicine was something else—something ancient, golden, and forbidden.
Why does her blood smell like nectar?
If I took her now, if I claimed her as the thirtieth sacrifice, my magic warned me of a paradox. Her soul was so tethered to the brink of death that marking her might snap the thread entirely. She was too fragile for the ritual, yet she was the only one who had ever made the beast inside me roar with genuine interest. I wanted to sink my teeth into her, not just to take her power, but to claim the defiance in her eyes.
I gripped her waist, my fingers digging into her soft flesh. I wanted to leave bruises. I wanted to mark her so deeply that she wouldn't be able to think of anything but me in her final ten days.
Ten days.
It was a cruel joke. I had waited a thousand years for my freedom, and fate had sent me a masterpiece only to tell me it would crumble in ten days.
"You are a plague, Blair," I growled against her skin, my voice sounding like gravel.
She didn't flinch. She only arched her back, offering herself to me with a devastating honesty. She wasn't afraid of the monster; she was inviting him in. She was the first woman who didn't look at me and see a nightmare. She looked at me and saw an escape.
I pulled back, staring down at her. Her eyes were glazed with a mix of pain and lust, her lips parted and swollen from where she had bitten them. She looked like a ruin, and yet, I had never seen anything more magnificent in all my centuries.
My curse demanded a thousand. But as I looked at her, a terrifying thought took root in my mind.
What if a thousand weren't enough? What if I only wanted the one who was already slipping through my fingers?
I wouldn't touch her. Not yet. Not because I was merciful—mercy died the day I was cursed—but because I wanted to see her break. I wanted to see that defiant fire in her eyes turn into a desperate plea. I wanted her to realize that I was the one who decided when her ten days were up. I wanted her to crave me as much as she craved her final breath.
"Sleep," I commanded, my voice laced with a subtle glamour.
She fought it for a moment, her fingers clutching my shirt, her eyes trying to stay open to memorize my face. She was stubborn, even in the face of primordial magic. But eventually, the glamour was too strong. Her heavy eyelids finally fluttered shut, and her breathing slowed into the shallow, rhythmic pulse of a dying dreamer.
I didn't leave. I sat at the edge of the bed for hours, watching the rise and fall of her chest. I reached out, my thumb tracing the line of her throat, right over the spot where I would eventually tear her open.
"Ten days, Blair," I whispered to the empty, shadowed room. "Let's see if you're brave enough to handle what happens on the eleventh."
I felt a surge of power in my veins—not from the ritual, but from her mere presence. Just being near her was doing something to my magic. Something that shouldn't be possible.
I looked at my hands. For the first time in a thousand years, they weren't just cold. They were shaking.