VERA’S POV

“Again,” I growled, planting my feet and pivoting hard.

Steel rang as my blade clashed against the royal guard’s. The courtyard echoed with the sounds of our deadly dance, metal against metal, boots scuffing marble, breath drawn tight between fangs.

The royal vampires were fast, strong, and honed by centuries of elite discipline.

But I was faster.

“You’re holding back,” Darian barked from the sidelines, his voice cutting through the night air. “Stop thinking like a fledgling!”

I ducked a vicious swing and drove my shoulder into my opponent’s gut, knocking him back against the fountain’s edge. Before he could recover, I spun and brought the flat of my blade to his ribs with a solid smack.

He grunted and dropped to one knee, acknowledging defeat. “Well fought, my lady.”

“Just Vera,” I said, stepping back and trying to catch my breath, a habit I hadn’t quite broken despite not needing to breathe.

The other vampires circled me, and I caught something in their crimson eyes that I’d never seen before. Not disdain. Not pity.

Respect.

That still felt strange.

A slow clap echoed across the courtyard, each sound deliberate and mocking.

I turned to see King Aldric leaning against one of the obsidian pillars, arms crossed, a quiet grin tugging at his pale mouth. Even in the darkness, his presence commanded attention, ancient power radiating from him like heat from a forge.

“You fight like your mother,” he said, his voice carrying that strange mixture of pride and sorrow I’d grown used to.

I sheathed my blade and arched an eyebrow. “That supposed to be a compliment?”

“It’s the highest one I’ve got.” He chuckled, the sound hollow in the night air. “Mara was… formidable.”

Darian stepped forward, offering me a silk cloth. I took it, wiping blood from a small cut on my brow as the King motioned for me to follow.

“I take it I passed the physical trial?” I asked as we walked along the garden’s stone path, past blood-red roses that bloomed only in moonlight.

“With distinction,” he replied. “Now it’s time you learned to use the sharper weapon.”

“What, sarcasm?” I shot back, earning another chuckle.

“Politics,” he said with a grin that revealed just a hint of fang. “Same thing, really.”

I laughed, but it faded quickly as the weight of his words sank in. “You mean alliances. Treaties. Manipulation.”

“Influence,” he corrected, stopping beside a marble statue of some long-dead vampire lord. “The court is full of bloodsuckers wearing human masks. Knowing how to read them, how to move them, that’s how you rule without lifting a sword.”

I fell silent for a moment, glancing at the high moon glowing above the palace towers. Everything here was sharp angles and dark beauty, built to intimidate and inspire awe.

“You’ll be expected to meet with certain coven lords soon,” Father continued. “Negotiate. Charm. Command.”

I exhaled unnecessarily. “Let me guess. Including Shadowmere?”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, those ancient irises glowing faintly in the darkness. “You already saw Lucien in the court.”

“Yeah.” My voice came out lower than intended. “I saw the look on his face when I walked in. He looked like a man who just realized he tossed away a crown.”

“He did. Literally.” Father’s smile was sharp as a blade. “Poor bastard probably thought I’d forgotten about his little bride.”

“Did you know?” I asked, stopping under a vine-laced archway where night-blooming jasmine created a canopy of stars. “That he was my husband?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

“And you still let him kneel in front of you like nothing happened?”

He turned to face me fully, his expression shifting to something more serious. “Do you think power lies in public punishment? No, Vera. Power is in letting a man realize what he’s lost, and letting the world watch him lose it.”

I blinked. “That’s… darker than I expected.”

He shrugged. “That’s the game. That’s survival. That’s what it means to hold a throne that’s been bathed in blood for a thousand years.”

“And what about me?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. “Do you know where I’ve been? What I went through?”

His expression softened, and for a moment, I saw something almost human flicker across his features. “Every step. I knew the moment your bond broke. I felt it in my own veins, like ice water replacing fire. I’ve had watchers in Shadowmere since the day you were placed there. I saw everything.”

“You saw everything,” I repeated, my voice flat. “And you let me go through it.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” The word came out strangled.

“Because had I pulled you out too soon,” he said gently, “you’d have never awakened. You needed to be forged. To learn what weakness feels like before you could understand your strength.”

“That’s cruel.”

“It’s survival,” he said. “It’s the way of the throne. Your mother understood that.”

We stood in silence, the wind brushing through the trees around us. The scent of night blooms floated between us, sweet and cloying.

“I wanted to hate you when those vampires came for me,” I admitted quietly. “But it came at the right time, when I had nowhere else to go.”

“I expected that.”

We walked again, our footsteps silent on the stone path. A rustle in the trees above told me the guards were still nearby, ever-present, watching from the shadows.

“When your mother died giving birth to you,” he said softly, “the prophecy was clear. Your power would awaken under a blood moon, and with it, the fate of the fractured covens would change forever.”

“And what does that even mean?” I asked, frustration bleeding into my voice.

“That your very existence threatens the hierarchy. That your bloodline, your power is unlike any seen in a thousand years.”

I paused mid-step.

Something warm pulsed deep in my chest, like a heartbeat I no longer possessed.

“Do you feel it?” he asked, his voice now low, reverent.

“Yes.”

The moon overhead, once silver, was shifting, bleeding red like spilled wine across black silk.

“The blood moon,” I breathed.

He nodded. “It’s time.”

My breath caught as a strange heat swept through me, rising from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. My skin tingled. My fangs, dormant for days, suddenly ached in my gums.

I fell to one knee.

“Vera,” Father said, stepping back, giving me space. “Let it happen.”

My fingers curled into the soil beneath me as my back arched, pain and fire tearing through every joint. My vision blurred as power spilled across my skin, radiant and golden, like sunlight trapped in darkness.

I was struggling with the awakening. I figured it was because this was no ordinary transformation.

My hands pressed against the earth and gasps echoed from the ramparts above. The guards watching dropped to one knee.

A sound tore from my chest, rising up through wind and stone, echoing off the mountainside, not quite a scream, not quite a roar, but something else entirely.

I glanced up at my father to see him shaking his head, confusion replacing expectation.

It hit me like a physical blow.

I hadn’t awakened.

The power was there, burning beneath my skin like molten gold, but it remained trapped, unreachable.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered, my voice raw.

Aldric’s expression was grim. “Neither do I.”