Page 7 of The Ballad of the Vampire Prince

Yes, that sad little life is hers. They can’t take that away.

I struggle against the Rhunhraefn. Han and Bas are doing the same thing.

“I love you.”

There it is. Three damning words that will haunt Bas for the rest of his existence. He never gets to say it back.

Vlad sinks his teeth into her neck and a soft gasp leaves her throat. He begins drinking, gulping until her heartbeat stops. Her eyes shutter close and her body turns limp in the vampire’s hold.

I hear a crack in the realm, like the snapping of a branch. Maybe it’s just Bas’s heart. He drops to his knees, his eyes turning hollow.

All the fight has left him.

“What have you done?” Han mutters, his voice quivering.

“They’re just cattle,” Vlad reminds him. Little did the bastard know, he too will fall hopelessly for one of these ‘cattle’. But that will be centuries from now. Right now, Vlad is a loyal servant to Lilith.

“You killed her!” Ruth suddenly barks at Vlad like a rabid dog. “I told you to leave her to me!”

“The mistress commanded it,” the other vampire replies calmly.

My brother drags his casket of horror to the centre of the room, the one he carries everywhere, and chucks out a pair of heated iron shoes from it. The metal hisses as it burns through the soft woolen rug. “You let her finish her speech but can’t wait five seconds for me to get her to dance?”

Perhaps it is a mercy that Vlad ended Gwyn’s life quick.

Lilith crouches next to Han. “I expected this from them, but not you. How disappointing.”

Ruth is still seething in his tantrum, prowling the room like a lion in its cage.

“You’ll get to play yet, my darling,” Lilith says in a musical voice.

Everything that follows is just a series of horrors and torture I can hardly remember. I hear the others’ screams of agony shattering the night. I feel their pain as if they are my own.

“Tell me where that little bitch crawled out from.” Lilith sinks her finger into my scalp, pulling my hair back.

I say nothing.

It’s not that I care much for the lives of the humans, but this feels like an act of defiance towards Lilith. Not one of us betrays the girl’s village despite the torture. Not even Han who hates pain more than anything.

Ruth’s torture is especially hard on me. The pain leaves me in spasms as I try to cling to the last vestiges of my consciousness. When he finally pours the silver down my throat, I lose sight of the world and everything turns black.

The next thing I remember is I’m chained to the ground with my mouth sealed shut and a mask covering my face. Lilith stands in front of us, her eyes alight with triumph and power as she casts a spell on our manacles.

Vlad lays Gwyn’s still body gently on the couch. He makes sure her pretty face is turned away from Bas. Another small mercy. Her decomposition days later will surely wreck him. For now, Gwyn seems peaceful, almost as if she is sleeping.

Bas tries to crawl to her.

“Look at that idiot.” Ruth snorts a cruel sort of laughter. “Short of cutting your own calves, there is no way out of the stone shackles.”

Bas would have done that in a beat, break every bone in his body to get to Gwyn. But that strange spell Lilith casted ties us to these enchanted fetters.

“I tire of this. Let us leave now,” she says to her two Strigons. Her eyes leer at us for a final glance. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll come back for you soon.”

Six months from now to be exact.

The witch will visit this desolated castle again to burn us into ashes. It took years for us to fully regenerate and become whole beings again. The long thirst has formed a madness in our brain. We turned into something feral and animalistic after the awakening, slaughtering anyone who stumbled upon our path. Perhaps that was always what Lilith wanted.

Han’s cries of torment pull me back to the present memory. He’s still stuck in that goddamn hound’s mask over his face. Bas and I have removed the filthy metal from our faces.