What the Blood Remembers

Alya had started sleepwalking.

Not every night.

Just the ones where the moon hung too red and the ring on her finger burned too cold.

She’d wake on the edge of the forest, barefoot and shivering, hands stained with dirt she didn’t remember touching. Once, Lucien found her standing by the well behind the house, murmuring words in a language neither of them recognized—until he did.

It was Old Tongue. Royal vampire dialect.

Dead for centuries.

He never told her she was speaking it.

Just wrapped a cloak around her shoulders and said, “Come back to me.”

And she always did.

---

But it wasn’t just the sleepwalking.

It was the way the memories crept in now, like ink bleeding through old parchment.

Her grandmother’s death. The key. The mansion. The ring. The King.

They had all been doorways, pieces of a puzzle she hadn't known she was solving.

But now… now she remembered things she’d never lived.

The scent of blood-soaked roses.

The taste of iron wine from a silver cup.

A name she had once answered to that wasn’t Alya.

Sometimes, she saw a battlefield made of fire and frost.

Sometimes, a throne room where she knelt before a man with eyes like ruin.

But always—always—there was Lucien.

Sometimes at her side.

Sometimes far behind her.

Sometimes… kneeling before her, blood on his lips, whispering something she could never quite hear.

---

“I’m losing my mind,” she told him one night, her voice raw from a scream she hadn’t meant to let out. She stood barefoot in the hallway, trembling, sweat slicking her brow despite the cold.

Lucien didn’t answer right away.

He stepped close instead, hands hovering near her arms, never quite touching.

“You’re not losing anything,” he said finally. “You’re just… remembering what the world tried to bury.”

She laughed bitterly. “That’s not comforting, Lucien.”

“I wasn’t trying to comfort you.”

She looked up at him then, eyes shadowed but burning. “Then why are you still here?”

His expression didn’t change. “Because you remember me, too.”

Silence. Thick. Breaking.

Alya stepped forward, until his breath warmed her cheek.

Her voice was smaller now. “What if I remember things I don’t want to know? What if I remember… what I did to him?”

Lucien’s jaw tensed. “Then you face it.”

“And if it changes me?”

“Then I stay,” he said softly. “And change with you.”

Her throat closed. No words could fit past it.

So she just stood there, heart breaking for reasons she hadn’t remembered yet, shaking in a house built from rot and dust and memory, and let Lucien not touch her all over again.

---

Later, after she’d finally fallen into a dreamless sleep, Lucien sat in the armchair near her bed, one hand resting on the hilt of his blade, the other covering his eyes like he could press the ache back in.

He didn’t tell her this was the third night in a row.

Didn’t tell her that in one of her dreams, she’d said his name—but not as a warning.

As a prayer.

---

In the morning, Alya woke alone.

But the fire had already been lit. And there was tea on the table. Still hot.

Lucien had left no note.

But he always left warmth behind.

---

Far away, deep beneath a ruined fortress, a voice stirred in the dark.

“She’s awakening.”

“Let her. She’s not ready.”

“No… but she will be.”

And the bloodlines began to gather.

~~~

The book was waiting for her when she woke.

She hadn’t placed it there.

Hadn’t even seen it before.

Bound in dark leather, the cover was etched with gold symbols that shimmered in the morning light. Ancient, pulsing—alive. The same runes carved into her ring.

Lucien stood by the window, arms folded across his chest, eyes locked on the forest beyond the glass.

“You brought this?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “It was on the doorstep.”

Alya swallowed. “So someone wanted me to find it.”

“Someone who knows what it contains.”

She flipped it open with cautious fingers. The pages smelled of time and blood. The ink shimmered faintly, resisting her touch until the ring on her hand began to glow.

Only then did the script settle into something legible.

The Blood Rite.

For the Heir to rise, the chain must be restored. What was stolen must be returned. What was broken, bound in blood.

Lucien stepped closer, a tension in his shoulders that hadn’t been there the day before. “It’s dangerous.”

“So is breathing,” she murmured, eyes scanning the next lines. “It says it will unlock my full power. Not just memories. Not fragments. Everything.”

“You don’t know what that means yet.”

“I know I’m not strong enough like this.”

Lucien’s gaze was hard. “And I know the Rite requires a blood offering.”

Alya closed the book slowly. “I figured.”

“It has to be given willingly.”

She turned to face him. “And?”

He didn’t blink. “Take mine.”

Silence snapped between them like glass.

Alya stared at him, throat dry. “Lucien—”

“It has to be someone bound to you. Someone who remembers. Someone you trust.”

“Why would you—?”

“Because I’d rather bleed than watch you break.”

His voice was calm, measured—but underneath it burned something fierce. Something barely leashed. The same storm that had hovered between them for weeks.

Alya stepped forward. “And what if it changes me? What if it changes us?”

Lucien’s jaw flexed. “Then I’ll change with you.”

He said it again, just like he had before. Only this time, she could feel the weight of it settle into her bones.

He meant it. Every word.

They stood like that—close but untouched—until Alya whispered, “You really would bleed for me?”

He looked at her like she was the only thing that made sense in the world.

“I already have.”

---

The ritual began that night.

They built the circle in the ruined chapel behind the house—chalk, ash, old candles that sparked to life on their own. The book lay open at the center, glowing faintly.

Alya stood inside the circle, her breath shallow. Lucien stood across from her, holding a silver blade. His hand didn’t shake.

“You have to mean it,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “The Rite only works if the offering is... willingly given.”

Lucien held her gaze.

“I meant it the day I met you.”

He drew the blade across his palm.

The blood sizzled when it hit the stone.

The ring on Alya’s finger flared with light—and then the world turned inside out.

---

Fire. Wind. Screams.

A thousand voices—all hers—echoed in her ears.

She saw memories not just from her own life, but from those who had come before. Queens with fire in their bones. Kings with teeth like serpents. Blood spilled in her name. Thrones burned for her survival. And one face, always lingering just out of reach.

Lucien. Again and again. Always Lucien.

Her body convulsed. Her knees buckled. But Lucien caught her before she hit the ground.

She looked up at him, eyes glowing silver.

“I remember,” she whispered.

“Everything?”

She nodded slowly. “I was the key. Not the curse. Me. They tried to break me because I held the power that could unmake the old world.”

“And now?”

“Now I can remake it.”

Her ring pulsed once more—steady, alive.

But this time, it didn’t burn.

This time, it bowed.

---

Far across the continent, in a temple sealed by bone and spell, something ancient stirred.

“She’s awakened,” a voice whispered.

“And now?” asked another.

“Now we bring her to her knees.”