Chapter 1: The Bleeding Girl

Humans carry a specific scent when they are dying. It isn't the stench of rot—not yet. It is thinner, sharper. It smells like copper pennies left in the rain or a match struck in the damp chill of a cathedral. Most of my kind don't notice it until the final week, but I have ruled long enough to catch the first notes of the end months in advance.

The girl smelled like a funeral the second she stepped into my library.

She wasn't what I expected. The agency promised a cataloger: male, over fifty, with the dusty credentials of an Oxford academic. Instead, I was met with five-foot-four of blonde hair, scuffed combat boots, and a lab coat stained with what I hoped was coffee.

"Dr. Adler?" I asked from the darkness. I do not care for daylight, and I care even less for introductions.

She jumped, her satchel hitting the floor with a heavy thud. In her haste, she caught her hand on a sharp edge. She bled. A single, perfect bead of crimson welled up on her index finger.

The scent hit me like a physical blow.

Sangria Mortis.

It was impossible. Extinct. The last human with "death wine" in their veins had been burned at the stake in 1432. I had watched the smoke rise myself.

I crossed the room before I had consciously decided to move. My hand clamped around her wrist—not hard enough to snap the bone, but firm enough to ensure she couldn't run.

"Don't," I commanded, my voice sounding like gravel over a casket.

Her eyes were the color of a gathering storm. She wasn't trembling; she looked annoyed. "Don't bleed? I'll add that to my list," she snapped. "Right under 'don't get hired by creeps in castles.'"

She tried to pull away. I held fast, bringing her wounded finger to my nose. I inhaled.

The Vampire Court would execute me for this. The old laws were absolute: "death wine" must be destroyed, the human carrier burned, and any vampire who tasted it beheaded before the addiction could take root. Because it *does* take root. One taste, and you aren't a king anymore. You're a junkie.

I should have snapped her neck then. It would have been fast. Merciful. Instead, I leaned in and touched my tongue to the blood.

The world shattered into white.

For 0.8 seconds, I was mortal again. I felt the phantom warmth of the sun. I felt heat. My dead heart gave a single, violent **thud**, as if it suddenly remembered how to live. Then the sensation vanished. I was cold, dead, and empty once more.

But I was awake. Truly awake.

She wrenched her hand back, her face pale. "What the hell are you—"

"You're fired," I said, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears. "Get out."

She stared at my mouth—at the fangs I hadn't bothered to retract. "You're one of them," she whispered. "You're a—"

"Vampire," I finished. "And you are a dead girl walking."

That silenced her.

"Adler's Anemia," I continued, reciting her own history. "Diagnosed eight months ago. Prognosis: six months left. You're here because you need the money for an experimental treatment. A treatment that won't work."

The color left her face entirely. "How do you—"

"I own the hospital," I lied—though it was barely a lie. I owned half the city, her doctor's career, and every cent of her debt. "You have death wine blood. My kind kills people like you on sight. Right now, you're the only one left, which makes you both a miracle and a target. If anyone else finds you, you're dead."

She backed away until she hit a bookshelf. "So what? You're going to drain me?"

"No," I said, and God help me, I meant it. "I'm going to keep you."

She let out a brittle, sharp laugh. "I'm not a pet."

"No," I agreed, closing the distance between us. She didn't run. Stupid, brave girl. "You're a cure. I can make the dying stop. My blood will fix yours... for a while."

Her eyes narrowed. "What's the catch?"

"You stay here. In my castle, under my gaze. You let me feed from you, and in return, you feed from me. And you never ask why."

"And if I say no?"

I showed her my teeth in a smile that held no warmth. "Then you walk out that door, and you'll be dead in three days. Every nest in a hundred miles just caught your scent. They don't want a cure, Dr. Adler. They want a high."

She looked at me, and I saw the doctor in her calculating the odds. She knew death better than most. "Fine," she said. "But we have rules."

I almost laughed. Humans and their obsession with order.

"Rule one," she said, holding up her bleeding finger. "You don't take it without asking."

I looked at the blood. My heart echoed that phantom **thud**.

"Rule one," I countered. "I rule. You survive."

I took her wrist again—gently, this time—and I drank.

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