The silence that followed was louder than any scream.
He didn't pull away.
Not when I admitted the lie.
Not when the guards shifted behind him, clearly waiting for an order.
His eyes searched mine like he was trying to remember a nightmare he once loved. Then, slowly, he turned to the Watchers who lined the blood-marble walls.
"This one," he said, his voice low and final. "I choose her."
The girls gasped. Even the handlers stiffened.
The Binding Ritual wasn't for another three nights. Tradition demanded tests. Blood trials. Compatibility offerings. A feast.
But tradition bent when royalty spoke.
He had chosen me.
The assassin.
I should've felt victorious.
Instead, I felt seen.
The guards moved. The other girls were dismissed without a word, ushered away like dust swept from a royal floor. Some wept. Others stared at me with the kind of envy that poisons.
One lingered. A red-haired girl with eyes too hollow for her age. "You won't survive the night," she whispered. "None of us ever do."
I didn't reply. I was already walking toward the throne.
He sat as I approached. His body loose, but his stare was all blade. There was no hunger now. Just curiosity. As if he'd invited death to dinner and couldn't wait to see which one of us bit first.
"What's your name?" he asked.
I considered lying.
"Iria," I said instead. "Iria Vale."
His head tilted slightly. "That name is forbidden in this kingdom."
"I know."
He leaned forward, elbows on knees. "So tell me, Iria Vale—descendant of traitors and ghosts—why walk into the lion's mouth wearing the skin of prey?"
I smiled again. "To see if the lion bleeds."
The corner of his mouth twitched. Not a smile. Not yet. But almost.
"I should kill you," he said softly.
"Then do it."
He stood. In one smooth movement, he was in front of me again. Too fast for the eye to track. Too close for comfort. His breath was cool against my skin. His fangs hadn't emerged.
But his voice changed.
"I don't think I will," he said. "I think I'll bind you."
"To what?" I whispered.
"To me."
—-
The Binding Night
They dressed me in black silk the color of mourning and stitched silver glyphs into the sleeves—binding runes, the kind that shimmered when touched by vampire blood. The palace servants didn't speak. Their eyes were hollow, like their tongues had been taken long ago.
I didn't ask questions.
I already knew this was a cage.
A beautiful one.
When they were done, they left me alone in a moonlit chamber at the top of the Citadel. It was windowless. The air tasted faintly of ash and incense. Every surface gleamed like bone. And in the center was a mirror—tall, ancient, rimmed in jagged ruby.
I stared at it.
Not for reflection.
For memory.
My mother once told me that the first consort of the Crimson Throne never cast a reflection in the prince's mirror. She was his equal. His undoing. His curse.
She also said that the mirror would show your true self the night before the Binding.
So I looked.
And I saw her.
Not my mother.
Me.
But not as I was.
This version of me wore a crown of bone and black thorns. Her eyes bled silver. And there was blood dripping from her lips—not her own.
The door opened behind me.
I didn't turn. I already knew it was him.
His footsteps were soft, deliberate. Like a king who didn't have to prove he ruled.
"You're calm," he said. "Most chosen consorts are trembling by now."
"I don't tremble for dead things."
His laugh was low and bitter. "Neither do I."
He stepped beside me and looked into the mirror. For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then he said, "Do you know what the Binding really is, Iria?"
"It's not love," I said. "It's a leash."
He smiled.
"Wrong. It's a memory. A vow written in blood. One the throne never forgets."
I turned to him.
"So what happens if you bind the wrong consort?"
He met my gaze with something ancient and unspeakable.
"Then the throne wakes up angry."
And with that, he took my wrist gently. Too gently.
His lips grazed the skin—just a breath.
Then the fangs came.
Fast.
Precise.
He bit.
It should have hurt.
But what I felt was a rush—not pain, not pleasure, something older. Like being rewritten.
My blood poured into his mouth, and I felt the glyphs on my gown ignite.
A name echoed in my skull. Not his. Not mine.
The Queen of Curses.
The mirror cracked.
And somewhere, beneath the Citadel, something very old began to stir.
—
I woke on the cold floor.
My wrists burned where his mark had been sealed into my skin—two thin scars, silvered like ink under moonlight. Not a wound. A signature.
The room was darker than before. The mirror was gone.
And something was humming through the walls. No, not humming—calling.
Low. Hollow. Ancient.
I stood, legs unsteady, and realized the guards were gone. The door was left open.
That wasn't a mistake.
It was a message.
Come.
So I did.
I stepped barefoot into the corridor. The silence was heavier now, like the palace was holding its breath. The torches along the walls were out, yet I could see. The Binding had done something to me. Opened something.
I followed the pull—deeper, beneath the palace.
Down into the underlevels no consort was ever meant to see.
The air changed the farther I went. It grew colder. Wetter. The scent of roses wilted into something darker—grave soil and rust. I passed a locked iron gate. Then another. Behind one, I saw a figure chained in silver, eyes glazed with sleep or madness. He didn't speak.
He just smiled.
I kept moving.
Until I found the door.
It wasn't grand. It was jagged. Stone. Marked in blood. The glyph on it pulsed when I stepped close. Not rejection. Recognition.
This door knows me.
I pressed my hand to it.
And it opened.
The chamber beyond was carved from raw obsidian, veins of gold streaking the walls like lightning. In the center, a sarcophagus rested on an altar made of bone.
Not dust-covered.
Fresh.
Unsealed.
The lid was already cracked.
And beside it, etched in a language only blood remembers, was a name.
Nytheria.
My mother's last word before she died.
My name.
And hers.
A memory came back like a slap across centuries—my mother whispering as she bled out on the stone floor, "The true throne sleeps. But one day, she will wake. And hell will rise with her."
Behind me, footsteps.
I turned.
It was him.
The prince.
But his face was pale. Not with fear.
With awe.
"You opened her tomb," he whispered.
I looked down at the sarcophagus.
"She's not dead," I said softly. "She's dreaming."
And then the lid moved.
The lid slid open with a whisper, not a roar.
No shriek. No shadow bursting forth. Just silence—so heavy it crushed the air.
Inside the sarcophagus lay a woman with skin pale as marble and hair the color of spilled ink. Her eyes were shut. Her hands crossed neatly over her chest. But she was not dead.
She hadn't aged.
Not a single breath. Not a crack in her lips or wrinkle in her skin. Only the faint pulse at her throat betrayed the impossible.
Nytheria.
The First Queen.
The Bloodmother.
The one they said betrayed the Crimson Throne… and cursed the entire bloodline.
The prince took one step forward, but I moved faster. I stood between him and the body, blade in hand.
He didn't flinch.
"You don't know what she is," I said.
"I do," he replied calmly. "She's the reason the old kingdom fell. The one who tried to crown herself above the kings."
"She wasn't trying to rule over you," I said. "She was trying to free us."
His eyes narrowed.
"And what do you think this is, Iria? A revolution?"
"No," I said, kneeling beside the tomb. "It's a resurrection."
I placed my fingers over the Queen's heart.
It beat once.
A ripple moved through the chamber—violent and silent, like the air itself recoiling.
The walls bled.
No metaphor. Actual veins in the obsidian split open, leaking black ichor that shimmered like stars.
The prince stepped back. Not in fear.
In reverence.
"She's awakening," he whispered. "After all these years."
And then her eyes opened.
Silver. Endless.
They looked at me first. And I knew.
She remembered me.
No, not me.
Who I used to be.
"You returned," she said, her voice layered in a thousand echoes. "As I knew you would."
I bowed my head.
"Mother."
The prince's sharp inhale filled the chamber.
Nytheria sat up.
And smiled at him.
"Oh, little king," she purred. "Did you really think the throne was yours?"