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Roan listens quietly, eyebrows drawn together in concentration or disapproval depending on the tale.

One evening, after the fire has burned low and the forest is hushed with that particular silence that only comes just before midnight, I gather the nerve to talk about my mother.

“My mother’s name is Lysara,” I say, voice barely above the crackle of the embers. The name lingers on my tongue like old blood—sharp and cold and too familiar. “She’s the High Matriarch of the Crimson Court.”

Roan doesn’t move, but I can feel her attention shift toward me like the slow tilt of the moon. I don’t dare look at her yet.

“I never knew my father,” I continue. “She said he was a mistake. A thing she needed at the time.” I let out a breath, bitter and too loud in the quiet. “Apparently, he gave her exactly one thing she wanted. Me.”

There’s a difference between those who arebornvampires and those who areturned. The turned ones—mortals who were given the gift, or the curse, depending on who you ask—cling to scraps of their former humanity. Some of them resist the hunger for years, even centuries, before it fully consumes them.

But the born vampires? We were never human to begin with. We are raised with teeth already bared, hungering not for milk but blood. There is no “before” for us. No other life to remember.

To some, that makes us even more monstrous than the things turned vampires eventually become.

I look up, but not at her. Just past her, at the shadows shifting along the tree line. “I used to admire her. I thought she was strong because she never showed mercy, never let anyone question her authority. I thought that made her powerful.”

I swallow the tightness in my throat, my fingers curling into the fabric of my cloak. “But strength without compassion… that’s not power. That’s fear.” My voice wavers. “And the day she turned that fear on me—really turned it on me—I realized she wasn’t powerful at all. Just cold. And hollow.”

The fire snaps, sending a thin spray of sparks skyward.

“She tried to break me,” I whisper. “Because I questioned her. Because I hesitated to hurt someone she said deserved it.”

“He was new,” I say quietly, staring into the fire as if it might swallow the memory whole. “A bloodslave. Barely two days into captivity.”

Roan doesn’t speak, but I can feel her eyes on me, steady and listening.

“He was still fighting. Still screaming that he didn’t belong there. Kept calling for help, for anyone who might listen.” My voice tightens. “They caught him trying to escape. Dragged him back in chains.”

I swallow hard, my throat suddenly too dry. “He couldn’t have been more than sixteen.”

Roan mutters something under her breath, a curse, maybe. I glance at her. Her jaw is clenched.

“They brought him into the courtyard,” I go on, the words slipping out like splinters. “Bleeding. Terrified. He looked at me with wide, terrified eyes, and I remember thinkinghe still believes someone might save him.And she—my mother—she handed me a blade.”

Roan’s expression darkens, but she doesn’t interrupt.

“She said it would be a lesson,” I murmur, voice cracking. “That he needed to understand what happens to those who defy the clan. She told me to carve the warning into him myself.”

I look down at my hands. They’re trembling.

“And when I didn’t… when I just stood there, she smiled. Like she’d been waiting for it. Like she’d always known I’d fail her.”

I shake my head, breath shuddering.

“In her eyes, mercy is weakness. And weakness is betrayal,” I finish.

The silence stretches between us. Heavy, but not empty. It’s Roan who finally breaks it.

“You got out,” she says quietly. “That’s something.”

The words are simple, but they land like a blow and a balm all at once. She doesn’t say it like a throwaway comfort. She says it like a fact.

I glance at her, and the firelight catches her jaw, her cheekbones, the dark sweep of her lashes. She’s watching me, not with pity or fear—but with something heavier. Something steadier.

And something shifts inside me.

It’s the way she holds still when I speak, the way she doesn’t interrupt or prod. The way she listens with her whole body. Like she’s memorizing me, piece by piece.