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“Don’t try to act all high and mighty, princess,” she said. “Not when that was your intention all along.”

Vesper

Was this some type of tantrum?

That was the only word for it. I had gotten a short break from the princess’s games, but I guess one could only hold her off for so long until she came back full force.

A tantrum.

Being woken up in the middle of the night and forced to go down in my sweatpants and loose T-shirt to a part of the garden I had never seen before was jarring.

For a moment, I thought maybe I had been exposed. That somehow I hadn’t been careful enough. That my tattoo had been seen, and someone reported it to the king.

As soon as my eyes opened, I went through every possible exit procedure I had learned throughout the years.

Fight my way. Run. Last resort, kill myself. But I still valued my life far too much to entertain that last thought for long.

For the first time, I was panicking. Unable to figure out what to do. Any other “contractor” like myself would have jumped into action right away. But not me. There was something holding me back.

I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but something felt off from the moment I woke. It had me in a fight-or-flight, tryingdesperately to put the pieces together and try to make out the dark blobs that resided in my room. All of them murmured, but none of the words registered in my mind.

Until I made out the familiar form of the head guard and heard him utter something I never imagined he would.

He said they needed myhelp.

The sky was dark, save for the brightly shining moon hidden behind a curtain of gray clouds. The light of the intricately woven iron lamps in the garden was just enough to cast a warm glow off the hundreds of flowers that surrounded us. I had gotten used to the sweet smell of them since arriving at the palace, but that night they seemed to smell extra sweet.

Perfectly laid brick muted our footsteps as we approached. I could hear the sound of rushing water from a fountain three times the size of an average swimming pool that stood at the center.

It was beautiful. Made of what looked like marble and had small lights that turned the water bright blue.

The night was calm. No sign that there was actually anythingwrong.But the number of guards, along with the tenseness in the air, told me there was.

“We’ve tried everything, but more than once, she took a chunk out of the fountain and hit one of us right on the head,” a head guard said from my side. His face was tired, the circles dark under his eyes. “We even tried her handmaiden, but she had an even more violent reaction. If it weren’t for one of my men pulling her away at the last second, she might have been killed instead of left with a small concussion.”

He wasn’t my head guard, but I had seen him talk to mine on occasion. He was human like me and had the years spent working for the prince sewn onto the sleeve of his uniform. More than ten, but my guess was that he had been working in this typeof job for longer, given the small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

“And why not just leave her?” I asked with a raised brow. “Can’t a princess do whatever she wants?”

He gave me a sidelong look before letting out a sigh. I knew the sigh all too well. I had caught myself making the sound multiple times since having to deal with the royal vampires.

We are all too tired for this shit.Yet, for whatever reason, we stayed. We let the vampires beat us down. Let them have their little tantrums. Let them sink their fangs into our skin.

And for what?

“The prince and her father would like to save themselves the embarrassment,” he answered, shifting on his feet.An uncomfortable topic for him then. It made me wonder just how many times he had done this same thing before. “There will be some guests in the morning, and there’s no telling just how long she’ll be out here. Last time we justlefther to her own devices, it was almost a full day before she was back in her room.”

So this is a pattern.

Not very like the princess, though. Given what happened at the sex party the previous week, I would assume she hated any type of embarrassment. Including something like what the guards had hinted at.

Up until then, I had done my duties like a regular guard. I had been at her side as she frolicked around the palace. Watched as she met with more friends. Accompanied her to her seamstress appointments.

It was a little boring, in all honesty, but what I assumed was very normal for someone of her status. And there was not a single sign that anything was bothering her. She was still her same spoiled self.

And then I was woken up in the middle of the night.

I couldn’t make out where the princess was from our position, but as we got closer, I was able to make out the dark brown of her hair in the water. The long tendrils moved with the light waves the falling water produced.