5. Aria
Aria
I come awake slowly, the damp chill of mid-morning clinging to my bones.
It takes me a moment to remember where I am: tucked against a crumbling wall with my shoulder bandaged and the remains of a small fire nearby. Above me, the sky glows in a cloudless blue, and sunlight slants through the broken archways, golden and sharp.
My breath catches in my throat. Not from fear, exactly—but surprise. I never see the sky like this. Not so open. Not so exposed.
My clan keeps to a strict nocturnal schedule, our world ruled by velvet shadows and moon-silver silence. To wake beneath an open sky—beneath the sun —feels jarring. Foreign. Like I’ve crossed into another life by accident.
The sun is no enemy of mine—it won’t burn me to cinders or reduce me to ash like the old myths claim. That fate belongs to the turned —those cursed by a bite and left to rot in their hunger. But still, it’s so bright, almost too bright, burning across the ruins with a clarity I’m not used to.
That’s the real danger.
The sun doesn’t kill us. But it reminds us that we don’t belong to its world.
It lays us bare, strips away the veil of darkness where we thrive. Makes us look too human, too soft. Makes us want things we shouldn’t.
I lift my hand—the one not bound tight with bandages—and stretch it out of the shadow. Sunlight pierces through a crack in the stone above, sharp and gold, like a blade held to my skin.
The light kisses my palm first. Warm. Brighter than I remember. No fire. No smoke. Just the press of morning against my skin, as if the sun itself is daring me to believe in something more.
I watch, mesmerized, as the light glows along the curve of my knuckles, settling into the pale of my palm. I turn my hand, slow and trembling, letting it catch in the golden spill.
For a breathless second, I forget the gnawing hunger. I forget the ache in my shoulder, the weight of fear, even the chase that brought me here.
I feel something else instead. Something I don’t have a name for.
And then—
“You always greet the dawn like it’s a god, or is today special?”
I jolt slightly, snatching my hand back into the shadows. My head snaps toward the voice before I can stop myself.
Roan.
It’s startling how close she’s come without a sound. She’s watching me—not with suspicion, not with fear, but with something like…curiosity.
I look at her then—really look. The sun catches in her hair, brushes gold across the edge of her jaw. And for one impossible moment, I feel caught between worlds.
One foot in shadow. One in the light.
And she’s the tether between them.
Roan raises a brow when I don’t respond. Then she shifts her weight, tilting her head slightly, voice gentle but teasing. “You’re awfully quiet in the morning, huh?”
The remark—simple, unthreatening—cuts through the strange hush between us like a blade into silk. I let out a breath that edges toward a laugh.
But it catches—because that’s when it hits me.
The hunger.
It doesn’t creep in. It crashes.
A violent surge, blooming hot in my chest and gut, curling low like a fist closing around my insides. I lean hard into the stone wall behind me, trying to ground myself. My gums throb, the pressure sharp and familiar. My fangs want to drop. My vision sharpens and tunnels at once, focusing on the outline of Roan—alive, warm, too close. My shoulder pulses in time with the hunger, the bandage tugging uncomfortably as my body strains under the ache of too many needs unmet.
The sun won't burn me. But this hunger—it might.
“Hey.” Roan’s voice cuts through the fog. She’s suddenly there, crouched in front of me, her face etched with concern. “You alright?”
“No.” The word tears from my throat before I can stop it. My arm jerks out instinctively, palm outstretched. “Stay back.”
Her body stills, every line of her posture alert, respectful. She doesn’t move closer. Doesn’t press. But her eyes—gods, her eyes—go soft with worry.
I turn my face away, ashamed of how close I’d come to reaching for her.
Don’t look at her. Don’t imagine what it would feel like—warm, pulsing.
Gods help me.
My hands curl into fists against the stone, nails digging half-moons into my palms. It’s not her fault. It’s not. But the scent of her—sweat, leather, life—is too close. Too sharp.
“I know how to hunt,” she says, as if sensing the storm rolling behind my eyes. “Habit. Picked it up after I lost a job—years ago. Ran out of rations halfway through a contract. Learned my lesson real quick.”
The story tumbles into the space between us like a stone skipping across a lake. Distracting. Mercifully so.
I latch onto it, dragging my mind from the ache gnawing at my ribs. “It’s not rabbits I need,” I whisper, before I can stop myself. “I need…”
Roan doesn’t pounce on the pause. She just watches me, quiet, steady. “Go on.”
My mouth feels like cotton. “I need… to tell you something.”
My throat tightens. I can feel the truth pressing against the inside of my ribs, demanding air, even if it gets me killed.
She waits.
“You may have guessed, but…” I glance away, toward the broken stones and the stretch of pale morning sky beyond them. “I’m not human.”
A beat of silence.
Then she shifts. Not much. But I catch it—the tension in her shoulders, the slight curl of her fingers like she’s bracing for something.
“Yeah,” she says at last, voice careful. “I figured.” Her tone isn’t cruel, but there’s steel threaded through it. “Vampire, right?”
The word lands harder than I expect.
But I nod. “Yes.”
Something in me braces for revulsion. For judgment. But all Roan does is exhale slowly, eyes pinned to mine like she’s turning the truth over in her head.
“How bad is it?” she asks.
The question catches me off guard. “How…bad?”
She gestures toward me, vaguely. “Your injury. Your hunger. Whatever it is that makes you… need, you know. Blood?”
I wince. Not at the word, but at the plainness of it. The honesty. It scrapes raw against years of secrecy, of pretending.
“I’ll manage,” I start to lie—but the look she gives me stops the words mid-air.
“No,” she says, not unkindly, but firm. “Real answer, Aria. Don’t give me the version meant to keep me comfortable. I’m not some wide-eyed farm girl you’re gonna scare off.”
A beat.
My defenses rattle in their cage. Slowly, I let out a breath. “It’s not… it’s not that I’m about to lose control.” I pause. “But it’s worse when I’m injured. Healing drains energy. And that hunger—it gets loud.” I close my eyes briefly. “I haven’t fed since… before I ran. Not properly. It hurts .”
There. That’s the truth.
She nods, like she’s fitting it into a map in her head. “Okay,” she says, and I see the worry soften just slightly at the edges. “So… animal blood helps?”
“Helps,” I echo. “Doesn’t fix it. But yes. Better than starving.” My voice drops. “I don’t feed on humans. Not unless—” I stop. “Not unless I have to.”
Her posture eases, just a little. “Alright.” Then, after a beat, her brow quirks. “So… rabbit?”
I blink.
She’s serious.
And suddenly I can’t help it—a soft laugh escapes me, breathless and stunned. Of all the reactions I’d imagined, this wasn’t one of them. “Yeah,” I murmur. “Rabbit might actually do the trick.”
Roan gives a satisfied nod, like she’s already planning her next trap. Like this is normal.
Like I’m not a monster.
She glances toward the treeline like she’s measuring the distance between here and wherever the nearest rabbit might be hiding.
“I’ll see if I can find something,” she says, adjusting the strap of her pack and rolling one shoulder. “You rest. Try not to move too much, or that shoulder’ll split open again.”
She turns halfway, then pauses, gaze flicking to me. “Anything I should be on the lookout for?” she asks, tone light—but it’s not casual at all. Her fingers hover near the hilt of her sword. “I mean… if someone’s still hunting you, I’d rather not walk straight into them.”
The question stills the breath in my lungs.
I lower my gaze to the fire, watching a coal collapse inward, glowing briefly before it dulls. “Yes,” I murmur, the word scraping past my throat. “They’re hunting me.”
“Hunters?” she asks.
If only it were that simple.
I force myself to meet her eyes. “It wasn’t hunters that did this,” I say, nodding toward my bandaged shoulder. “It was… my clan. I left them. And they didn’t take it well.”
Roan stiffens, the way people do when they hear something worse than expected. Her jaw tightens, a muscle twitching along her cheek. “Your clan?” she echoes. “You mean…”
“Vampires,” I finish for her, voice brittle. “My family.”
She’s silent for a beat too long.
“Hells,” she mutters, low and rough. “That’s…a lot.”
I look away, memories gnawing at the edges of my mind—the sharp teeth of betrayal, the shadows of faces I once called kin. “They don’t take kindly to deserters,” I murmur, my voice tight. I’m not ready to spill the rest of the details—that I’d grown disgusted by the clan’s brutality, or that my own mother had me cornered in a courtyard with her loyal guards. “And they’re not going to stop looking for me.”
She purses her lips, exhaling a slow breath. “Sounds messy.”
I huff a bitter laugh. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Her eyes narrow slightly. “And they’re still looking for you?”
“Yes.” I glance toward the treeline, heart ticking up. “They’ll send enforcers, but most are night-bound. Turned. I slipped them—for now. But they’re relentless. And I know my mother. She’ll send everything she has until I’m dragged back or dead.”
Roan exhales sharply through her nose, then mutters something under her breath—too low for me to catch.
“So,” she says at last, “what do they look like, these enforcers? I should know who to gut if they show up.”
The sheer practicality of it punches the air from my lungs.
“You’re serious?” I whisper.
She looks at me then. Really looks. “You’re bleeding and hunted and alone. I'm going to at least get you upright before we part ways.”
A strange heat settles in my chest—something close to gratitude, something dangerously close to hope.
“They wear dark armor,” I murmur.
Finally, she stirs, pushing herself upright. “Well,” she says, voice a touch lighter, “guess we have a plan for the day. Stay alive and try not to piss off any vampire clans.”
She turns away, adjusting her cloak and slinging her pack over her shoulder. “I won’t be gone long.”
“Roan,” I call softly, before she steps away.
She pauses.
“Thank you,” I say, the words small but true.
She glances back over her shoulder, eyes meeting mine across the space between us. “Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t caught your damn rabbit.”
Then she vanishes into the trees, and I’m left alone with the fire, the morning light, and a heart I didn’t realize had started to ache for something more.