Chapter 1

The first thing I did after coming back was turn down my family's monthly elixir shipment and go borrow a batch from an underground guild instead.

My name is Lyra Ashveil. The Ashveil family is one of the oldest bloodlines in vampire society. By birth, my bloodline depth should put every peer in this Court to shame.

Should.

For the past year, no one here believed that.

Because someone had put a Blood Binding Curse on me.

The mechanics are simple: every drop of bloodline energy and every resource I receive gets rerouted automatically to whoever holds the curse. My aura reads as nearly depleted, always. Every elixir shipment my family sent — the amount that actually hit my ledger was a fraction of what they sent. The rest quietly slipped into someone else's pocket.

That someone was my roommate, Talia Grenn.

In my past life, I had no idea. I just kept trying to prove myself.

Shipments came in one after another. The ledger always showed scraps. I went to the reading station to verify my bloodline — still depleted. I found people willing to vouch for me; one by one they got tangled up in some excuse and never followed through. My body kept getting worse. There was a hollow feeling in my chest that never went away, like something pressing down and holding there. Meanwhile, Talia stood in the center of the Court draped in my bloodline, hailed by everyone as a rare ancient awakening, publicly arm-in-arm with my ex, Cael.

Every few days someone told me to my face how lucky she was.

In the end, Cael finished me off himself.

I disappeared from this Court in a way that wasn't pretty.

Then I opened my eyes and came back.

Everything I couldn't prove last time — I won't need to say a word about it this time.

The noise around me was the same familiar kind that made my skin crawl.

"Lyra! Who do you think you are? Talia spent her own money buying you training elixirs every month and you traded them for beauty balm?!"

"No work ethic, no ambition — and you have the nerve to complain about your weak aura?"

"After everything Talia's done for you, this is how you repay her?"

I snapped back to the present. Right. This was that day.

The day Talia pinned me as an ungrateful leech in front of everyone, and nobody spoke up for me again after that.

She stepped out of the crowd, soft-faced, like she was coming to my rescue.

"Everyone, let's not jump to conclusions. I know Lyra. She's not like that."

Then she turned to me, her voice all reluctance and regret.

"I know you want to say the elixirs actually came from your own family — that this is all one big misunderstanding. So why not settle it right now? Have your family come, or prove your bloodline on the spot. Then we'd all know the truth, wouldn't we?"

She said exactly what I'd been about to say, then handed me a loaded gun.

That was exactly how she got me last time.

Go to the reading station — the curse tanks my aura on the spot, proves nothing. Have my family send shipments — the curse skims off the bulk and leaves scraps in my name, and every transaction becomes evidence that "she only ever received this little." The more desperately I tried to prove myself, the more resources I pumped directly into Talia's hands, and the more thoroughly I boxed myself in.

Before I could say anything, Cael spoke up.

He walked over and leaned down, voice low but pitched just right for everyone nearby to hear. "Parading around on someone else's charity and still playing innocent." He straightened up. "Ever wonder why I dumped you?"

He shoved me to the ground.

People cheered. Nobody batted an eye.

I got up. His bringing up the breakup made something unrelated surface — back when we were together, he'd once said he wanted to engrave something on my family crest brooch. A secret just between the two of us. I thought that was sweet of him.

Talia drifted closer, eyes damp, voice barely above a whisper. "Lyra, I really didn't think it would come to this. All you have to do is own up in front of everyone. I'm not trying to make you look bad — you know that..."

She stood right in front of me and didn't reach out.

"You're right." I put together a smile and got to my feet. "Trading training elixirs for beauty balm — that was on me. Careless. I shouldn't have."

The room went quiet for a beat.

Nobody saw that coming.

"As a show of good faith, I'll be donating all my personal belongings to the Court's charitable auction house for professional handling."

Something shifted in Talia's expression.

Just for a second — the satisfaction drained out of her eyes and something more urgent moved in.

"There's no need to bother the auction house." Her words came a little faster. "Why not convert everything into elixirs first, then donate those directly? More practical for whoever receives them."

She needed the elixirs to pass through my hands. That's how the curse would intercept the value. Auction house handles it, she walks away with nothing.

"I trust professionals to handle professional work." I smiled and made my exit.

That afternoon I went to an underground guild in the south quarter and signed the smallest possible elixir loan — just one vial, a test run.

I opened the contract.

Debtor line: Talia Grenn.

I read it twice to be sure.

The curse didn't just reroute incoming resources — it swapped out the debtor, too. Borrowed under my name, owed under hers.

I closed the contract. I almost laughed.

Talia. You're done.