Page 124 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

Where she stayed the whole of the next day.

And the day after that.

And after that.

“My dear, you have to nourish yourself,” Ravenna, uncharacteristically somber, said as she sat on the bed beside Pandora, holding a cup of human blood.

“I don’t want anything.” Pandora rolled over and pulled the covers over her head. She wondered what might happen if she never drank again. Would she just dry up and turn to dust? That sounded preferable to living endlessly in her misery and regret.

“Aunt Ravenna, allow me,” Dante said as he walked into her room.

“Do try to get her to drink,” Ravenna said, reaching out to give Pandora’s ankle a squeeze through the blankets before she made her way out, closing the door with a quiet click.

“I don’t want it,” Pandora said.

“I have the synthetic blood,” he said, and she heard the click of the cap being twisted off.

“I don’t want that either.”

“You have to drink. Mum and Dad want to talk to you. And I don’t think you’d have enough strength to walk downstairs at this point.”

“I don’t want to talk to them.”

“I know you must blame them for some of this. But they’re family. You have to speak to them.” Pandora rolled over in the bed, looking at her brother from under swollen lids. He made a sighing sound, pushing the bottle toward her. “Please, just hear them out. Then if you want to rot in bed, so be it.”

“Fine,” she said grumpily, trying to pull herself up against the headboard, finding the task nearly impossible. Dante was right about her not being able to walk downstairs in her current state. “How long has it been?” she asked as she reached for the bottle of fake blood, finding it almost intolerably heavy.

“Two weeks,” he told her, watching as she sipped her drink.

Two weeks.

It felt longer and shorter at the same time.

She’d done nothing but cry and think herself sick, trying to figure out when she should have talked to Victor, told him the truth. But not sure that, if given another chance, she would ever have felt comfortable doing so.

“There, don’t you feel better?” Dante asked when she set the bottle on her nightstand.

She did feel much more alive, whether she actually wanted to or not.

“I just want to shower,” she said as she threw off the covers. “Then I will speak to them.”

With that, Dante left her alone and she washed, put on fresh clothes, and made her way downstairs.

The house was unusually quiet after weeks full of activity and noise. She didn’t know how many of her family members were left, save for Ravenna and Reginald. Butwhoever was still around was staying out of sight as she made her way down to the sitting room.

“Pandora,” her father said, sounding relieved. “Come sit down. Your mother and I need to speak to you.”

Pandora walked on numb legs, still feeling horribly exhausted. But with blood in her system, she suspected it was more mental and emotional tiredness.

“You were right,” Ophelia said. “When you told us that we were being old-fashioned and stubborn and patri­archal. You were right. While we do cling to our old ways, and we both think there is some virtue in that, we also have to understand that you have grown up in a different world than we did, that your ways are going to be different from our own.”

“OK,” Pandora said, nodding.

“As such, we are going to give you your inheritance on your birthday,” her father told her.

It was what she’d always wanted.

But now, it suddenly felt completely pointless.