The Choice

 

Raven brought me to his quarters in the West Tower—three floors below mine, in a room that looked like it had been forgotten by the rest of the academy.

The walls were bare stone, no tapestries or decorations. A single bed with gray sheets. A desk covered in weapons—daggers, stakes, crossbow bolts. And in the corner, a worn leather bag that looked ready to grab and run at a moment's notice.

"You live like you're always about to leave," I said. My voice still sounded raw, scraped thin.

"Because I am." Raven locked the door behind us and checked the window—already barred from the outside. "I've been ready to run from this place since the day I arrived. The only reason I've stayed this long is..." He stopped. Turned away. "Doesn't matter."

But through the bond, I felt a flutter of something from Caspian. A flash of knowing, like he'd just understood something important.

I pressed my bandaged palm against my chest, trying to muffle the sensation. "How long have you been here? At the academy?"

"Twenty years." Raven pulled out a chair for me, then leaned against the desk. "I came when I was eight. My mother died, and I had nowhere else to go. Dhampirs aren't exactly welcome in either world—too vampire for humans, too human for vampires. The academy took me in because they needed someone to do the jobs pure vampires thought were beneath them."

"Like protecting a sacrifice?" The words came out more bitter than I intended.

"Like protecting someone who deserves better than this." Raven's amber eyes met mine, and there was something fierce in them. "You're not a sacrifice, Sera. You're a person who got dealt a shit hand, and I'll be damned if I let these monsters take any more from you than they already have."

"Why?" I asked. The same question I'd asked before. "Why do you care so much?"

Raven's jaw tightened. He looked away again, and I watched the muscles in his neck work as he swallowed. "Because someone should. And because I made a promise a long time ago."

"To who?"

"Your grandmother." His voice was barely above a whisper. "I told her I'd watch over her line. Make sure when the time came, her descendant would have a choice. A real one, not the trap the council's trying to spring."

My breath caught. "You knew her that well?"

"She saved my life." Raven's fingers gripped the edge of the desk so tight his knuckles went white. "When I was a kid, before I came here, I was on the streets. Starving. The vampire side was starting to come out, and I nearly killed a human for blood. Your grandmother stopped me. Fed me. Taught me control. And when she died..." He stopped, pressing his lips together like he was physically holding back words that wanted to escape. "She made me promise. Said someday her descendant would come, and they'd need someone who wasn't bound by the academy's rules. Someone willing to help them run if necessary."

"Is that what you think I should do?" I asked. "Run?"

"I think you should survive." Raven finally looked at me again. "However that looks. If that means running, we run. If that means fighting, we fight. But I won't let you die just because some ancient vampires decided your life is worth less than theirs."

Through the bond, I felt Caspian's presence spike—a flash of something that felt like pain mixed with resignation. Like he'd expected this. Like he'd known Raven would eventually offer me a way out.

"I can feel him," I said quietly. "Caspian. Through the bond. His emotions. It's like he's in my head."

"That's what ward bonds do." Raven pushed off the desk and started pacing, that restless energy making him unable to stay still. "They create a connection that goes both ways. You feel what he feels. He feels what you feel. It's supposed to protect you, but it's also a leash. He'll always know where you are now. What you're feeling. If you're in danger."

"Or if I'm planning to run."

"Yeah." Raven stopped pacing, his silver-streaked hair falling across his face. "That too."

The bond pulsed again. This time, what I felt from Caspian wasn't pain or resignation.

It was guilt.

Deep, crushing guilt that made my chest ache.

I stood up, my legs shaky. "I need to read the journal. All of it. That's what Dorian said—read it tonight, and tomorrow he'd show me what really happened. Maybe there's something in there that explains the loophole."

"Then read it." Raven gestured to the bed. "I'll stand watch. Make sure no one interrupts."

I sat down cross-legged on his bed, my grandmother's journal heavy in my lap. The leather was worn soft from age, and when I opened it, the pages crackled like dried leaves.

The first entry was dated three weeks before the massacre.

"The vampire nobles are planning something. I've intercepted their messages, decoded their intentions. They want to enslave humanity entirely—turn us all into blood cattle. The other hunters don't believe me. They think I'm paranoid, seeing threats that don't exist.

But I know what I saw. And I know what I have to do."

I kept reading, my hands trembling as I turned each page.

My grandmother had been brilliant. Strategic. She'd spent weeks setting up the perfect trap—making the vampires think she was betraying the hunters, when really she was creating a failsafe that would activate the moment the massacre began.

The curse wasn't meant to be broken by sacrifice. It was meant to force future generations to confront what had been done. To choose between continuing the cycle of violence or breaking it through truth.

But there was more. Hidden in the margins, written in different ink, were notes about the blood bond.

"The bond is more than connection. It's transformation. When a vampire and human bond deeply enough—soul deep, not just blood deep—they become something new. Something that can bridge both worlds.

The prophecy speaks of willing sacrifice, but sacrifice doesn't always mean death. Sometimes it means giving up who you were to become what's needed."

I read that line three times. Four times.

"Raven," I said slowly. "What happens if a vampire and human complete a true bond? Not just ward bond or feeding bond, but a real, soul-deep bond?"

"It's mostly myth." Raven came closer, his shadow falling across the pages. "The stories say the vampire becomes more human—regains their mortality, their heartbeat, their ability to walk in daylight. And the human becomes... something else. Stronger. Faster. Able to see truth and lies. Basically immortal."

"So they trade places."

"Sort of. More like they meet in the middle." Raven's eyes narrowed. "Why? What did the journal say?"

I showed him the passage. Watched his face go pale as he read.

"That's the loophole," he breathed. "She didn't mean sacrifice yourself by dying. She meant sacrifice yourself by changing. By becoming something neither fully human nor fully vampire."

"But it requires a true bond." I pressed my bandaged palm against my chest again, feeling Caspian's presence through the ward bond. "Not this. Something deeper."

"A true bond requires mutual love." Raven's voice was flat. "Soul-deep, unconditional love. The kind that makes you willing to give up everything for the other person."

Through the bond, Caspian's emotions spiked—fear and longing tangled so tightly I couldn't separate them.

"He knows," I whispered. "He already knows this is the answer. That's why he's afraid. Because completing the bond would make him human. Would take away his power, his immortality, everything he's been for two hundred years."

"Would you do it?" Raven asked quietly. "If you had to choose—die and break the curse through sacrifice, or bond with Caspian and break it through transformation? Knowing that either way, you'd never be fully human again?"

I looked down at the journal, at my grandmother's cramped handwriting. At the blood still seeping through the bandage on my palm.

Three days. That's all I had to figure this out.

Three days to decide if I was willing to transform into something new, to bind my soul to a vampire prince I barely knew, to give up my humanity for a chance at survival.

Or three days to accept that maybe Magnus was right. Maybe the simplest answer was the right one. One death for thousands of lives.

"I don't know," I admitted. My voice cracked, and I hated it. Hated feeling this lost. "I don't know what I'd choose."

Raven sat down beside me on the bed. Didn't touch me, just sat close enough that I could feel his warmth. "Then we have three days to figure it out. Together."

A knock at the door made us both jump.

Raven's hand went to the dagger on his desk. "Who is it?"

"It's me." Caspian's voice, muffled through the wood. "Let me in. Please."

Raven and I exchanged a look. Through the bond, I felt Caspian's desperation. His need to explain something. To say something he couldn't hold back anymore.

Raven unlocked the door.

Caspian stood in the hallway, his perfect composure shattered. His black hair was disheveled like he'd been running his hands through it. His gold eyes were wild, almost feverish.

"I need to tell you something," he said, looking directly at me. "Before you make any decisions. Before you read the rest of that journal. I need you to know—"

He stopped. Swallowed hard. I watched his throat work, saw his hands clench and unclench at his sides.

"Three hundred years ago," he said, his voice barely above a whisper, "I didn't just execute your grandmother because the council ordered it. I did it because I loved her."

The world tilted sideways.

"What?" The word came out strangled.

"I loved Elara Ashford." Caspian's gold eyes were bright with something that looked dangerously close to tears. "And she loved me. We were planning to complete a true bond, to use it to break the curse without anyone dying. But the council found out. They gave me a choice—kill her and maintain my power, or complete the bond and lose everything."

"And you chose power." My voice sounded hollow. Dead.

"I chose wrong." Caspian took a step forward, and I'd never seen him look so broken. "I've spent three hundred years living with that choice. And then you came here, looking so much like her, carrying her blood and her power and her fire. And I thought maybe—maybe I could do it right this time. Maybe I could choose you over power. Choose love over duty. Choose right over wrong."

The bond between us flared so hot I gasped. I felt everything—his love for my grandmother, his guilt, his growing feelings for me that he'd been desperately trying to hide.

"But there's one more thing you need to know," Caspian said, and his voice broke on the last word. "The true bond doesn't just require mutual love. It requires trust. Complete, soul-deep trust. And I already broke that once. So even if you were willing to try, even if you wanted to bond with me to break the curse..." He stopped. Pressed his fist against his mouth like he was trying to physically hold back the words.

"It might not work," Raven finished quietly. "Because she can't trust someone who already chose wrong once before."

Caspian nodded. A single tear tracked down his perfect face, and I watched it fall.

"So that's why you tied your life to mine," I said. Everything was clicking into place now. "Not to protect me. To punish yourself. Because you think you deserve to die if I do."

"Yes," Caspian whispered.

The bond pulsed between us—his love, his guilt, his desperate hope that maybe, somehow, I could forgive three hundred years of wrong.

And in that moment, I knew.

I knew what choice I'd have to make.

But before I could speak, before I could tell him anything, the door behind Caspian burst open.

Elysia Vane stood there, her emerald dress torn and bloody, her face streaked with tears.

"They're all dying," she sobbed. "Everyone. The curse just accelerated. We don't have three days anymore."

She looked at me with desperate, wild eyes.

"We have until sunrise. That's it. Choose now, or we all die."