Chapter 1
Chapter One
The silver morning light streaming in from the large window burned Thomas’s flesh. Not enough for him to move or care, but it stung like a colony of fire ants was crawling and biting across his hands and wrists. His face, neck and scalp.
He didn’t mind, of course, because he had felt worse. Much, much worse.
“Your grace!”
Thomas didn’t turn his head, but his gray eyes shifted at the sound of Mira’s voice. She’d come into his room and he hadn’t heard her. He’d been submerged in the cold white space that occupied his head of late.
She set a silver breakfast tray down on the bistro table, carefully pushing aside the untouched plates and glasses from yesterday evening, then rushed over to him. Her pale blue skirt rustled around her ankles as she walked.
“Your grace, you shouldn’t sit there—look at your hands!” Flustered, she whirled around and went back toward the table as Thomas slowly glanced down. The tops of his hands were bleeding, the ugly scabs there having burned and split open because of the rays of overcast sunlight.
Huh. He marveled. It hadn’t felt like it was quite that bad.
After making some ruckus at the table and sweeping past Thomas to draw the heavy curtains over the window closed, Mira returned to his side with a dampened napkin. She knelt, then placed the cool compress atop his hands as they rested against his thighs.
Thomas sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. Mira hesitated, glancing up at him with apologetic and concerned brown eyes, then gently pressed the cloth more firmly over his hands to stop the bleeding.
They were silent as she cleaned the newly formed wounds. Diligently, Mira went back and forth between Thomas and the old-fashioned wash basin in the corner of the room, rinsing and wringing out the napkin to clear the remnants of his blood and flesh.
When the gnarled blisters atop his hands were no longer leaking out, Mira sat back against her haunches and sighed. “You refuse to drink the blood you’re given, so your skin burns—even from indirect light.” She raised her chin to meet his eyes. “Are you… trying to die?”
Thomas didn’t think he was intentionally trying to die. He wasn’t intentionally trying to live either. The indifferent white space that filled him was like an empty void where he felt and thought nothing. Because nothing mattered anymore.
Ideally, he would erode into a cloud of dust. Or turn into a pillar of sand that suddenly dispersed and was carried away on the wind, as if he’d never existed. An inconsequential life.
Mira’s fist gripped the material of her skirt as she dropped her head.
“Lord Blakeley is becoming impatient with your lack of feeding and eating. The decline in your bodily health is obviously worsening with each passing day. If you don’t feed of your own will, your father will order another injection. ”
This was a peculiar thought for Thomas, because for months, his elder father had been intent on killing him. At least, he’d thought that was the ultimate goal.
He’d been kept isolated within the dark depths of the castle’s underbelly among the rats and parasites, then given blood that was inadequate for his vampiric nature.
He’d been sick so many times that he’d eventually stopped feeding altogether, forced to live in his own filth and without any medical attention when his skin began to dry out, split and crack from starvation.
His elongated fangs became a permanent fixture within his mouth, throbbing angrily and giving him an unfathomable headache—like a jackhammer wreaking havoc and pounding inside his skull.
The darkness had become an impermeable and constant thing as he drifted in and out of consciousness, like existing in a poisonous and toxic womb. Across every inch of his skin, all he registered was pain. An itching, burning fire.
At the exact precipice when his demise seemed imminent, Thomas had been abruptly pulled out of the dungeon.
He didn’t remember much about that day, except that the light had been too bright and he couldn’t hold himself upright.
His limbs were deadweight and his head felt as if it weighed a thousand kilos.
He’d been bathed, forcibly injected with blood that didn’t immediately make him ill, then laid to rest in his bedroom.
That was a week ago. At least, he thought it was. Time felt slippery now.
“Sir Thomas?”
His eyes flickered down to Mira in the dim light of the room. That title felt peculiar, too. “Sir.” A formality bestowed upon a vampire of honor. The eldest son of a purebred family with a long and illustrious history in one of the oldest vampire aristocracies in the world.
“Will you speak to me?” she asked.
Thomas blinked slowly. He hadn’t spoken to anyone in so long.
Well, aside from “Yes, father” and “No, father” that day he’d been dragged to the breakfast table to eat with his clan.
That morning was another blurry memory. He’d barely been able to keep himself from falling out of his chair and onto the floor, let alone lift a fork or take hold of a glass.
So, he’d sat there, silent and detached. Again, the light of the room had been too bright, and his younger brother, Oliver, had openly stared at him in abject horror the entire time, as if he were dining with a monster.
Thomas swallowed. The subtle movement felt uncomfortable now that he was focused on it. The walls of his throat had become the same texture as sandpaper. “What… would you have me say?” His voice was raspy and quiet. He didn’t recognize it.
Mira straightened. “Will you feed of your own volition? Or should I request another injection?”
He glanced away and toward the heavy burgundy drapery covering the window. Neither, he thought. The tone of her voice was soft, but the words themselves felt like a threat. He wanted to be left alone in silence.
“He won’t let you die,” she went on when he didn’t respond.
“He… Lord Blakeley didn’t want you to die.
His intent was never that simple. I—Well, we think he wanted to teach us all a lesson of his control.
Of what would happen should any of us disobey his command.
If he would do this to his eldest son, how much worse would it be for the rest of us? ”
Quietly, Thomas took that in before shifting his gaze to her. “We?”
“The serving staff,” Mira clarified. “We had no idea… We never imagined that he would take things this far.”
A bitterness that had nothing to do with his lack of feeding materialized in the back of Thomas’s throat.
In those early days, disbelief and upset over being caught had overwhelmed his emotions while he sat in the dungeon. How had his eldest father found them? He and Dawn had been so careful with their plans to elope and escape. They hadn’t told anyone about their intentions.
How had his fathers even known?
Thomas’s shock and suspicions were cast aside when the hunger had set in. The need to feed and blatant lack of resources had swelled like an opaque and ferocious balloon within his entire being, taking up every rational thought.
When he’d finally been given blood, he’d gulped it down, only to realize it was like poison to his purebred nature.
It dawned on him now. The truth that they had all stood by, compliant and sedentary, as he sat rotting, sick and starved beneath the castle.
The serving staff, his younger father and his siblings.
Even Mira, his maidservant since he was a boy.
No one had come for him. No one had rescued him nor put a stop to the torture.
The white emptiness in his mind shifted sinisterly as he inhaled a deep breath. Not looking at her, he croaked, “Where were you?”
Mira’s confusion was obvious. “Excuse me, your grace?”
“Where were you? When I was down in the dungeon for God knows how long, decaying. What were you doing?”
“I…” Mira paused for so long that Thomas looked at her. She was still kneeling at his side, her head bowed. “I was assigned other duties, in addition to keeping your quarters clean and free of dust, my lord.”
Free of dust. He nearly barked in a nonsensical laugh. Thomas watched her in the silence, hating her with every fiber of his being. He hated every one of them for doing nothing to help him.
His younger father, who’d always doted on him and encouraged him in his literary and philosophical studies.
Oliver and Sasha, his siblings, whom he’d been intentionally kind and thoughtful toward as their elder brother.
All of the serving staff who had smiled in his face for years.
He’d smiled right back and made it a point to treat them with dignity and respect, a trait that his elder father had severely lacked.
Thomas closed his eyes. The pain and bitterness in his chest were overwhelming, as if what remained of his already corroded and broken heart was crumbling to ashes.
“How long was I down there?” he asked.
Another long pause. Mira spoke quietly. “Nearly three months.”
Everything within him stilled and stiffened. He couldn’t believe it. How had he even survived that long? Why had he—
“Sir Thomas—”
“Do not call me that.” Thomas clenched his eyes shut tighter as the words came out rough and sharp.
How dare she feign respect toward him when they’d all left him for dead beneath the castle?
Wasting away in his own filth and surrounded by rats and cockroaches.
This entire charade was utterly ridiculous.
Mira took a breath. “My lord… if you don’t feed of your own volition, I’m afraid that Lord Blakeley will punish you further.
He could easily switch out the quality of your blood supply again and keep you half alive in this room.
I think… I believe strongly that you should cooperate. Please drink the blood?”
She stood, hastily dusted her skirt and walked back to the bistro table. The sound of flatware clicking and dishes being settled littered the silence as she set up his breakfast and removed the untouched plates of food from the prior evening.
Thomas couldn’t escape. How could he possibly manage it in his weakened and emaciated state? He could barely tolerate the reflected rays from the overcast sun. And where would he go?
He did not wish to be physically abused any further. The thought of being given malnutritious blood made him shiver within his core.
It seemed the question wasn’t whether Thomas wanted to live or die. Rather, it was whether he wanted to live with a potential modicum of dignity or be forcibly kept conscious and tortured.
Steeling himself, he attempted to stand.
He’d been sitting in the tufted chair for hours, awake since the middle of the night and unable to sleep.
His legs were numb. When he attempted to push himself upright, he faltered.
Mira took a hurried step toward him as he caught himself on the arm of the chair and hissed, “Don’t touch me. ”
She froze mid-step, eyeing him wearily and with pity.
Taking a deep breath, he straightened. His entire body ached and his head swam, but slowly, he made it over to the table. He allowed Mira to pull out the chair for him before he sat down in an exhausted heap.
“May I assist you, my lord?” she asked, hovering.
“No,” he said. “Go away.”
She dipped in a polite bow, then grabbed the tray stacked with yesterday’s food. “Yes, your grace… I—I’ll be just outside the door. Please call for me if you need help.”
Ignoring her as she left, he looked over the colorful arrangement before him. Fresh fruit—strawberries and diced honeydew melon—a hard-boiled egg, almonds, a wedge of buttery cheese, toast, jam and a pot of tea with a single cup. Beside the empty teacup, a tall glass of blood.
He didn’t think he could keep any of this down aside from the blood. Thomas couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a meal this full and rich.
With a trembling hand, he reached for the glass of blood, willing himself not to knock it over. He lifted it, then licked his dry and cracked lips before bringing the rim to his mouth.
Hesitating, he tasted. He’d never drunk blood from a glass before, and something in it was unsettling.
Still, if he ignored the utter strangeness of that, the first sip was surprisingly palatable, so he drank more.
The liquid was warm, peppery and sweet as it coursed down his sandpaper throat and into his body.
It soothed him fundamentally and was oddly… comforting?
Purebred blood. So, Mira wasn’t lying. The torture was truly over. For now.
Thomas drank to his satisfaction, then stood and made his way back across the room toward his large four-poster bed. He climbed atop the duvet and lay down across the bottom of the mattress, exhausted. He needed sleep.
As the dizzying haze of unconsciousness gradually overtook him, Thomas decided that yes, he would live. Not to thrive or dream as he had in his university days. Nor to experience the world and all its offerings, seek knowledge, find camaraderie or fall in love.
No. He’d live to see the day when his elder father suffered as he had. He’d live to witness him broken, starved and rotting on a cold stone floor with no one around to help him. Thomas wanted to see him abandoned and decaying.
Whether this fate would happen by Thomas’s hands or not, he was uncertain. Regardless, the thought soothed him like the darkest lullaby as he drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.