Chapter 2

Silence suffocated the room.

Valentine’s fingers dug so hard into the armrest that the wood splintered with a sharp crack, but he didn't even notice.

A cold laugh suddenly rumbled in his chest.

He closed his eyes, a mocking smirk twisting his lips. Through the lingering echo of our mind-link, I caught his telepathic whisper to Cecilia: "You get the Rose Estate. You win."

His crimson eyes snapped open, pinning me down. "Cecilia called it. She said you’d use breaking the Blood Pact as a threat."

"I'm not bluffing!" I shot to my feet, rage boiling in my blood.

"Enough," Valentine snapped, rolling his eyes. "If you actually ran off with some mutt werewolf or a human, it would be less pathetic than this childish tantrum."

I slapped him. Hard.

My whole body shook. "Do you even remember the silver scars on your back?" I breathed.

Seven years ago. The Cambridge library. He was just a boy in a white shirt, shifting his chair to block the glare of the sun from my eyes.

We fell in love. But purebloods don't marry mortals. His mother sent assassins. On that torrential rainy night, backed into a dead-end alley, Valentine tore a fellow pureblood to pieces to save me.

Spilling pureblood was the ultimate sin.

To appease the Elders and keep me alive, he willingly walked up to the executioner's block. Seven pure silver nails driven straight through his joints. Three years of agonizing, bone-piercing torture.

For three years, I sat outside that prison, listening to his raw screams. While he bled, his mother was slaughtered by hunters.

When they finally cut him down, he was a mangled mess. But he held me and smiled. "Don't cry. As long as you're safe, I don't care if I die."

Back then, he would have bled out just to keep me safe. He had looked at me like I was his entire reason for breathing, willing to burn the world down if it meant I survived.

Now, standing right in front of me, those same crimson eyes held nothing but cold, exhausting annoyance. I was no longer his world. I was just a chore he couldn't wait to get rid of.

Valentine’s brow furrowed, irritation flashing in his eyes. "What is your point, Evelyn? Stop holding the past over my head."

He wiped a drop of blood from his lip, his voice turning to ice. "I was twenty. Blinded by a stupid romance. I didn't even care when my own mother died. I'm the Duke now. I have to think about the family's survival."

"You meet someone who makes your heart beat, and you blindly promise them forever," I whispered, the words grating against my throat. "But how many twenty-year-olds do we get in one lifetime?"

He froze for a second. Then, he scoffed. "You really haven't grown up. Humans are so damn naive, thinking love is everything. Cecilia gets it."

He turned his back on me.

"Leave the past in the past. Forget those ridiculous vows."

"Were they ridiculous?!" I screamed at his back.

When he lost his inheritance, he started at the absolute bottom as a Night Watchman, hunting feral rogues.

Every night he dragged himself home with wounds down to the bone. I let black-market witches test agonizing potions on my own body just to pay for his healing salves.

My human friends begged me to leave. They asked what kind of dark, twisted future I could possibly have with a disgraced, blood-stained exile. I told them I didn't care.

It took him five brutal years. He clawed his way up to Border Lord, crushed three rebellions, and finally forced the Elders to give him back his Dukedom at twenty-eight.

He held me that night, his voice thick with promise. "Evelyn, I'm going to make my love the force that lifts you up. I'll make sure the whole world knows you are my Duchess."

Valentine paused at the door. He didn't even look over his shoulder.

"That was your choice," he said flatly.

The door slammed shut.

Suffocating grief morphed into a frantic drive. I pulled the silver blade from my drawer. I was going to sever the pact. Right now.

But as I practically sprinted down the hall toward Cecilia’s chambers, a voice stopped me dead.

Through the crack in her door, I saw them. Cecilia was in his lap. Valentine was kissing her neck.

"I want all the vampires to know..." Valentine murmured, his tone dripping with a tenderness I hadn't heard in years. "My love is the force that lifts you up."

The silver blade bit into my palm.

The exact same words. What he promised me at twenty, he was feeding to her at thirty.

"What are you doing here?"

I spun around. Luke stood behind me. I shoved the blade into my pocket and fled down the corridor without a word.

...

The next evening, my bedroom door was kicked open.

Cecilia stormed in, Valentine right behind her.

A sharp smack echoed through the room as Cecilia’s hand cracked across my cheek.

"You shattered my crystal vial!" she sobbed, clutching Valentine’s arm. "That was my mother’s last possession! It wasn't expensive, but it meant everything to me! Why would you break it?!"

I shoved her back, calmly wiping the blood from my mouth.

"I went looking for Valentine last night to break the pact. I didn't lay a finger on your stuff."

I took a step forward, my eyes locking onto hers. "The corridor has Blood Servants on watch. We can summon them right now and pull their memories."

I lowered my voice to a lethal whisper. "If we find out you broke it yourself... under Vampire Law, framing the Duke's wife is defamation. They'll toss you in the Silver Prison."

Cecilia’s breath hitched. The color drained from her face, and she swayed, panic flashing in her eyes.

Before she could speak, a shrill voice echoed from the doorway.

"Mom broke the crystal vial!"