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.Vladimir closes his eyes and lifts his hands overhead, his head tilting back as he snarls at the moon.My heart clenches with fear as I realize how purely animalistic he looks in this moment.Never before have I seen him feed.Not like this.Not in the open, where smoke and dim lighting shade him from sight as they did after our wedding.His bellow falls away as he lowers his gaze.I shrink back, my hands trembling against my waist, as he smiles and grabs the two girls before him, digging his nails into their necks so a fountain of blood spills over his hands.“You must go to him,” the man whispers behind me.A chorus of shrieks rises and falls as the music continues to play.Laughter turns to snarls, dancing turns to spasms and writhing upon the ground as the immortals begin to feast.“I cannot.” The tremor in my voice leaves little doubt as to the extent of my fear.I am paralyzed.I know these men and women are monsters.I could hear the screams of the blood slaves as they performed their nightly bloodletting from other parts of the castle, yet I was always safe within the walls of my room.Now I have nothing to save me from this moment.Nothing to cling to or hide within.“You must.” His tone has changed, become more insistent.“You will be punished if you do not.”A bitter laugh slips between my lips.“That will happen either way.”I nearly cry out as a hand clasps around my elbow, firm and demanding.“If you want to survive, you must learn to play their games.”His words sicken me and I try to pull away.He holds firm.“I am not like them.”“No.” The silence in this small hideaway feels palpable as I listen to his heart beat in time with my own rampaging pulse.He is unaffected by the scene before us.Neither drawn to the blood nor disgusted by it.He appears to be maddeningly indifferent.“You will soon learn that you must draw your friends near and your enemies nearer.”My lip curls into a disgusted sneer as I watch Vladimir tear out the throat of a shapely beauty.Her blood squirts nearly five feet, splattering Cassius in the back of the head.He turns as Vladimir tosses the girl aside and then leaps upon her, accepting his lord’s discarded offering.“And which are you?” I ask, feeling him shift behind me.I wait for him to answer on baited breath.The silence seems to stretch on for an eternity and I begin to fear he will not answer me at all.“I will be watching.”I turn on my heel and stare into darkness.He has vanished.TWELVEThe new moon has come and gone since I arrived at Castle Bran, though it feels as if a lifetime has passed.Vladimir has proven to possess an insatiable need that I have yet to fill.He comes to me each night when the moon is high and leaves me long after I have fallen unconscious.The masquerade is nothing more than a distant memory now, wrapped within a haze of pain and torment.The mysterious stranger a ghost, a figment of my tortured mind.A falsehood that I cannot bring myself to think upon during my waking moments.I stare at myself in the mirror perched atop my small vanity.Its frame is slightly warped and its glossy finish fading with age.My silver mirror has vanished and I have reason to suspect Cyra pinched it before leaving after the party.She did seem to have a keen eye for pretty things.My fingers tremble as I gingerly touch the bruised skin encircling my right eye.It is tinted with a mixture of blue and purple and is deeply painful.The swelling and discoloration extends over to my nose.My upper lip is split and seeping blood.My jaw feels as if it has been lodged within a vice.The back of my head is split and bleeding, matting my hair.My vision is blurred, though I have grown accustomed to this.I sit back, no longer able to stomach my image in the mirror, and absently brush my finger over the new flesh that replaced the deep gashes I carved into my wrists the week before.Whatever God my mother believed in has refused to hear my prayers.My mother would turn over in the grave, if she had been buried, at the thought of me attempting to take my own life.She would not understand the depths to which I have sunk.One beating melds with the next.I fear the day and cower from the night.Vladimir always comes for me.He flew into a rage when he entered my room to find me collapsed in a pool of my own blood after my first attempt to kill myself.I vaguely remember staring up at him as I felt my lifeblood draining away, watching as he frantically bit into his own wrist and tore a gash in his wrist, forcing me to drink.The beating I received after I had healed was by far the worst I have endured to this point.My brethren would have been mortified to see Vladimir in such a state.Even I was shocked by the fear I saw in his eyes.Why does he fear losing me when he so obviously despises having me near?I am nothing more to him than a body to warm his bed each night.I lie as still as possible until he is finished, praying that I can withhold my screams.They only make him more ravenous.I wake each morning with the light of the sun to inspect my wounds, ever ignoring the cup of blood left on the side table for me to drink.I refuse.If he finds me ugly, then so be it.I will not give him the satisfaction.A monster lives in the room beside mine, not a figment of my imagination nor devils playing in the shadows of a child’s room.Flesh and blood, just as my mother always feared.Vladimir Enescue is a demon clothed in beauty.My brethren are no better.I shudder as the memory of his brutality traipses across my mind, for I know all too well what wickedness lies within the depths of my husband’s eyes.I stare blankly across the length of my room toward the far wall, its uneven stone surface draped with a beautiful woven tapestry that reminds me far too much of the ones that were lost in my wedding pyre.A tear slips from the corner of my eye and trails down the curve of my cheek.When it splatters against the pale flesh of my upper chest, I don’t bother to wipe it away.I can hear the drop with perfect clarity 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