Chapter 2 Chapter Two

Nyra's POV

My head hurt like hell, and my brain seemed to be bouncing against the walls of my skull as I sat up. I ground my teeth against each other, groaning softly in pain.

Just what the hell had happened?

My mind was still a fog, my eyes misty. Amidst all that, a soft voice trailed through. It was the softest voice I had ever heard, yet it sounded male. “Finally, you are awake, witch,” the person said.

That sounded nothing like Victor. I jerked upright on whatever I was sitting on. The warmth and softness of the massive king-size bed beneath me was the first hint that things weren't right. The second hint was much bigger, perhaps the most beautiful man I had ever seen, and the most dangerous looking.

He strolled closer, and my lips parted in a soft gasp. He was big, with broad shoulders and pale skin that made him look a bit sickly, and yet, when paired with the faint silver streak of veins on him, he looked devastatingly handsome.

His crimson eyes landed on me like an impossible weight, and his lips curled with disgust.

I had never seen him before, yet for some vague reason, he looked oddly familiar.

He moved closer now, throwing long, powerful legs in my direction, his eyes firm on me.

That was when my gaze drifted low, and I saw, stretched before me on the bed, ankles bound in chains, long, beautiful legs that weren't mine.

A cold shiver snaked up my core. I adjusted to stare at the rest of my body, too. My hands were different, my hips too. I shifted hurriedly to the four-foot-long mirror at the vanity stand in the room.

I gasped in shrill horror when my eyes fell on a face that wasn't mine. It wasn't that ugly, freckles-ridden face that had gotten me bullied since I was a kid.

The face staring back at me was younger and dangerously beautiful, with sharp amber eyes against smooth, olive skin. She had curves I had always wished for and never gotten.

“Will you quit staring at the mirror, witch?” the man snapped, his voice a roar through the room.

He leaned low and braced one hand beside my chained ankle, face tight with a frown. There was a stifling heat from his body, and it caused a strange feeling in me. The chains were long, so I yanked my legs from anywhere near him.

“Who are you? ” I asked cautiously. “And what am I doing here?”

“Are you joking, witch, or are you truly dumb?” he demanded.

“I am not dumb.” I fired back, already weary of his stare. He might be beautiful, but that doesn't excuse his language. “All I just asked is where I am and who the hell you are. And why am I chained to this bed?”

He grunted, huffing a loud scoff. He looked like he was about to dump a slew of insulting words on me when the door squealed open.

I expected it to be Victor. So the bastard can explain why the hell I was being bound like a thief to a bed, but what came in was another elegantly dressed male. His presence snuffed out the protest I was about to make.

Just as big as the other male, but with narrower shoulders, and they were so identical, they had to be twins.

The white, golden blond hair packed in a little ponytail behind him was probably his principal feature, or the expressive, golden red eyes that dissolved in a smile at me.

“You are awake already, Miss Evelina Ashborne, Mistress of Ruin.” He spoke curtly.

Unlike the first male, this one hid his hate behind the veneer of civility and courtesy, though his eyes hinted at the same prejudice.

“Who are you both, and why am I being chained to this bed?” I demanded. I refused to think about the strange name and title he had just called me. The chains on my ankle were already beginning to irritate me.

He forced a slight smile. “Miss Evelina, perhaps you don't remember; I am Duke Kaelen Valecrest, and my brother here is Duke Cassian Vale—”

Cassian grunted, jaw ticking hard, frown tighter. “Cut it off, Kaelen. She knows who we are. She is just pretending. Remember she bound us herself, to this damn mortal fate of breath and death.”

I looked away from his scrutinizing glare, my brows narrowed in heavy concentration. The situation was slowly beginning to feel and sound familiar to me.

Twins, pale-skinned men, Valecrest, Mistress of Ruin, and Evelina Ashborne—by the time the realization came, I’d turned cold on the bed. They kept it hidden, but the slight, almost invisible nudge against their mouth gave them away. They were vampires, and I was a witch. All characters from the book.

I was in the book. It must have sucked me into its world. According to the book, I was their mate, the witch who had brought their deadened vampire hearts back to life and made them breathe, but whom they hated because I was the daughter of the witch rumored to have killed their father.

I had never quite read the book, but Miss Robert, the old lady at the bookstore who recommended the book, told me it was the greatest of tragedies, that someone died, and Evelina had to kill someone she loved, that...

I shook my head. All that was irrelevant. The book might have saved my life from the bastard, Victor, but I had to leave wherever this was before it ruins Father’s businesses, which I had sworn to him to protect. The company wasn’t going to survive the brutal terrains of the corporate world in my absence.

Kaelen’s calm voice broke through my thoughts. “So, Mistress of Ruin. You are being chained to the bed with the magic dampening chains because we need you to break the fate between us.” His bright golden red eyes hinted at false calm.

“What fate?”

“What do you mean, witch? You—” Cassian was yelling. He grunted and turned away with a hiss at the slant of a stare from Kaelen.

“We would like to go back to what we were before you mated us yesterday. We are vampires. We don't want the curse of breath, and we don't want to be tethered to one female. And surely, you can avail us, and yourself, of this cursed fate. I trust you don't want this as much as we do.”

As Evelina Ashborne, yes, he was right, but as Nyra Vale, I wasn't so sure. “I am sorry, Duke Valecrest, but you kind of have the wrong woman,” I said. “I am no witch. I have no magic with which—” The words died slowly in my throat when my palm began to blaze with dark red light.

Cassian stared down at me with wide eyes. “She could still use magic even with the dampening chains.” He grunted.

“What do you expect? She is the daughter of the Last Great Witch and the queen in diaspora. There must be a reason why the coven wants her as badly as we do." Kaelen answered.

“Then I am chaining her with as many of the dampening chains until not even an ounce of magic can come from her.” His jaw ticked with resolve, his expression tainted with disgust.

He reached for a couple of chains by a wall in the room, and he charged for me again. Panic struck through me with a staggering force. I didn't know what came over me. I threw my hand up, and a volley of deep red balls of fire shot off from my palm to him.

He traced fast and skillfully through them, approaching faster now with the chains. That was until a large, massive fireball burst from my palm and went off like an explosion before his face.

That threw him off his feet, blasting him against the nearest wall like a rag doll.

Kaelen looked to the fate of his brother, now whimpering softly in pain, and he growled, dropping all his previous courtesies. “Control your magic, witch. You cannot—.”

I wished I could. I tried to stop them, but the fireballs just kept blasting off my hands. They shot at him when I turned to him.

He dodged, shifting and tracing through the room.

I shot a blast of light at the chain to my ankles, and once I was freed, I jumped off the bed.

By now, the medieval-styled room was a fog of plaster dust and falling stones from the ruined walls. Kaelen dragged Cassian away before a falling stone could crush him. “I am sorry,” I whispered. “I didn't mean to do this.”

The fireballs from my palm cackled off and died as abruptly as they had begun. Then I knew I had to run…

I bolted fast out of the room, tearing down the maze of corridors with a speed that should be impossible. I couldn’t break whatever bond they were talking about, and I had an idea they wouldn’t believe me. But I couldn’t let them catch me. I had to go. I had to find my way back to the real world.

I stumbled out of the large manor to find battalions of what looked like vampire soldiers gathered before me like an impossible wall. Damn. What the hell was happening?

That thought froze when my gaze landed on the figure leaning an arm toward me and crouched on the walls of the castle. “Here, witch,” he yelled, urgency shaking his voice.

Fury bobbed hot in my veins when I recognized the dark eyes and smile. The bastard—Victor. He was reincarnated here, too. I stared at the red armor he wore, and cold swept through me. He was reincarnated as the King of Hades, the vampire hunter in the story.