Sickly Sweet

Lucien:

I was wandering the graveyard again.

Drunk.

Not on wine. Not on whiskey.

On bloodlust.

It clawed at my throat, hot and aching, demanding release.

There was something laughably poetic about it—me, a vampire, haunting a cemetery like some poor cliché. A predator pacing a battlefield long after the war had ended.

I moved through tombstones like a phantom in my own right. The air was cool, the ground soft from recent rain, and my boots crunched over gravel and dried petals like old bones snapping underfoot. The wind whispered in Latin through the trees. A language only the dead remembered.

These were my people now.

Rot and ruin.

I used to fear death. Then I lost the luxury of fearing it.

Eternal death.

It’s a concept I no longer believe in.

And maybe that’s the problem.

Because if you stop believing in endings, you start doing dangerous things just to feel something close.

That’s why I came here. That’s why I kept coming back.

The hunger hadn’t gone away. It had only changed shape.

And then I smelled it.

Her.

It hit me low and hard, like a sucker punch to the ribs.

Sweetness. Not the sickly kind. No—this was heady. Addictive. Something made of honey and blood-red roses, soaked in midnight and secrets.

There was power in it.

A bloodline touched by something older than this place. Older than even me.

Ancient.

Timeless.

Wrong.

And yet—so damn right.

The craving sharpened to a blade.

I followed. Like a sinner chasing absolution.

Through the gravestones, past weatherworn angels and moss-covered names. Guided like a moth to flame, fully prepared to sink my teeth into whatever poor, fragile creature it led me to—

And then I saw her.

Isadora Gravelle.

Of course it was her.

Perched beneath a gnarled willow like some mourning goddess. Wrapped in black lace and silk, a funeral blooming in real time. Her hair a dark cascade, skin pale and opalescent under the moonlight—moonlight that spilled silver across her skin like a lover’s touch.

She didn’t belong here.

And yet she fit.

Like the cemetery had been waiting for her.

She had a book in her lap, fingers stroking the pages like it was a thing alive. Her aura was wrapped tight around her—like velvet… or a noose.

My hunger twisted into something darker.

Want.

She didn’t see me yet. Or maybe she did and didn’t care.

I moved closer. Slowly. My pulse thrumming in time with hers, though she didn’t know it.

She was humming.

A low tune. Melancholic. Faintly familiar.

Old.

My lips parted. Fangs sharp against my tongue.

I didn’t understand her—and that made her dangerous. Made her a threat. I’ve been doing this long enough to know: when something calls to you like this, it’s either fate… or a fucking trap.

But I didn’t care.

I was already too close.

Little girls shouldn’t be alone at night. Never know what monsters are lurking."

She turned to me, not even faking amused.

"I’m not alone," she said, raising my chin until her eyes met mine.

"No? You think the dead count as company?"

"He wasn’t a threat."

Of course she would think that. "No, He’s not. Yet."

“You know,” I said, voice like silk soaked in sin, “it’s terribly cliché for a girl like you to sit in a graveyard under a full moon.”

She didn’t flinch.

Of course she didn’t.

She turned her head slowly, eyes dark and endless, mouth curving into something between a smirk and a warning.

“And yet, here you are,” she said softly. “A walking cliché.”

Touché.

I stepped into the glow of the moonlight. Let her see what I was. Let her feel it. The weight of me. The ache.

She didn’t blink.

No fear.

Or maybe she knew fear so well, she wore it like perfume.

“Lucien Bloodsworth,” she said, as if testing my name on her tongue. “Should I thank you for stalking me so thoroughly, or do I owe you a restraining order?”

God, she was clever. Sharp as a dagger with the handle wrapped in lace.

I moved closer, crouched down in front of her, uninvited and unapologetic. Her book stayed open in her lap, but her eyes never left mine.

“You smell like trouble,” I murmured.

“And you smell like death,” she countered.

I laughed low in my throat.

She was right.

But she had no idea how much.

I reached out, slowly, letting the back of my fingers graze the underside of her jaw. Her pulse fluttered. Just once. But I felt it.

She didn’t pull away.

“Do you have any idea what you are?” I asked.

“Do you?” she whispered back.

That stopped me.

Because I wasn’t sure anymore.

I leaned in. Let my fangs slide just close enough to her throat that she’d hear the click, feel the danger. My mouth hovered near her aching pulse, just close enough for her breath to hitch.

She radiated it.

That richness. That pull.

I didn’t need to bite her to taste her.

But fuck, I wanted to.

Right here. Right now.

And I would’ve—

If it weren’t for him.

The second I felt it, I knew.

Cold. Ancient. A pressure in the air that made my bones scream.

Like winter wind through a crypt.

I staggered back—not physically, not really. But something surged up from the soil, through the willow, through her, and into me.

A ward.

An alarm.

A warning.

I turned.

And there he stood.

Silas Grimm.

Tall. Still. Ghostly.

He wasn’t wearing anything special, but he didn’t need to. His very presence stilled the air.

He looked like death incarnate.

Not just the absence of life—but the devourer of it.

His eyes locked onto mine. Flat. Unmoving.

Older than me.

Stronger? Maybe.

But colder? Absolutely.

He didn’t speak.

Didn’t need to.

The message was clear.

Back off.

I bared my teeth. My rage curled beneath my skin like smoke. I could still taste her on the back of my tongue and it infuriated me.

Isadora had risen quietly, like a shade dissolving into night. She slipped past me—past us—her gaze flicking once between us before she turned and walked toward him.

Toward Silas.

She chose him.

The taste of that betrayal burned hotter than blood ever could.

I didn’t follow. Didn’t speak. Just watched them vanish into the fog.

And then I was alone.

With the dead.

Again.

I ran my tongue over my fangs. Tried to cleanse the flavor of her—but it lingered.

She lingers.

Like a spell unfinished.

What is she?

I don’t know. Not yet.

But I know what she’s not.

Safe.

And I’m not done with her.

Not by a fucking long shot.