Chapter 4

POV Vaelira

I didn’t discover my magic in a blaze of glory.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t ceremonial. No prophecy cracked the sky open to announce it.

I discovered it the way I discover most of the worst things in my life—by wandering somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be and bleeding on something ancient.

I was eight years old and deeply convinced I was indestructible.

Maereth had taken me beyond the wards, into the dead hills where nothing grew unless it had fed on violence. She was digging for roots that only surfaced where wars had ended badly. I was bored, sun-warmed, and very tired of being told to stay still.

So I didn’t.

I wandered downhill, boots crunching through bone-dust and broken stone, following a low hum that vibrated behind my ribs. The air felt tight there, like the world was bracing itself.

That’s when I ran into him.

Literally.

I turned too fast and collided with another body, knocking both of us backward into the dirt.

“What the—” I started.

He stared at me.

He was my age. Maybe a year older. Pale in a way, sunlight hadn’t quite decided what to do with yet. His hair was white—Silver or Snow-Kissed—neatly tied back, as if someone cared very much that it would behave. His eyes were a cold, startling gray-blue, sharp and watchful in a face that hadn’t learned how to hide emotion yet.

Not a human.

I knew that instantly.

Not a wolf either.

He smelled like stone after rain. Like old halls and cold blood and something disciplined enough to hurt.

A vampire.

A young one—but already composed, already dangerous in that quiet way.

We sat there for a second, both frozen.

Then his gaze dropped to my eyes.

Both of them.

His breath caught. Just slightly.

“You’re not—” he began, then stopped himself.

I scrambled to my feet. “You shouldn’t be here.”

He rose more smoothly, brushing dirt from his clothes like he’d been taught better manners than me. “Neither should you.”

Fair.

Up close, I could see the details—his skin unmarked, unscarred, untouched by the violence vampires usually wore like jewelry. He wasn’t cruel yet. Not soft either. Just… restrained. Like something sharp kept carefully sheathed.

“Who are you?” he asked.

I hesitated.

Names attract attention.

“I’m not anyone,” I said.

He studied me, eyes narrowing—not unkindly, but intelligently. “That’s a lie.”

Before I could reply, the hum beneath my feet spiked.

Pain flared sharp and sudden as I slipped on loose stone and scraped my palm open on a jagged rock.

Blood welled up.

Bright. Warm.

The ground answered.

The earth pulsed like a living thing.

My blood sank into the soil, glowing faintly as roots twisted upward, thick and pale, curling toward me like fingers that recognized what I was.

I screamed.

The boy moved before I could think.

He grabbed my wrist, pulling me back hard enough to stumble, his grip cold and unyielding. Then the feeling of shocks were sent up and down my arm. His eyes widened—not in fear, but in something dangerously close to awe.

“What are you?” he whispered.

“I don’t know!” I yelled back.

The roots surged higher. Stone cracked. The hill shuddered.

Then Maereth was there.

She slammed her staff into the ground, voice cutting through the chaos like a blade. Cold magic flooded the space, crushing the movement, forcing the earth back into stillness.

The roots recoiled. The ground sealed. The hum died.

Silence slammed down hard enough to ring.

I collapsed.

When I came back to myself, I was in Maereth’s arms. My head throbbed. My skin buzzed like I’d swallowed lightning.

The boy stood a few paces away.

Maereth looked at him once.

Just once.

Whatever she saw made her spine go rigid.

“Go,” she said flatly.

He hesitated—eyes flicking to me, unreadable.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Now,” she snapped.

He obeyed.

Before he turned away, his gaze met mine again.

Curious. Controlled. Already learning how to hide what he felt.

That was the last time I saw him.

For years.

Maereth didn’t yell afterward.

That terrified me more than if she had.

“That wasn’t vampire magic,” she said once we were safe.

“It didn’t feel like it,” I muttered.

“And it wasn’t wolfcraft.” She continued

“What was it then?” I asked.

Her mouth tightened. “Inheritance.”

She trained me after that. Hard. Relentless.

Magic, I learned, doesn’t care about good intentions. It cares about fuel. Mine responds to blood, emotion, proximity. Anger makes it violent. Fear makes it wild.

Desire makes it dangerous.

Now, decades later, it lives under my skin like a second nervous system. I don’t cast spells—I listen. I suggest. The world does the rest.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to that boy in the hills.

What kind of vampire grows out of restraint and silence.

Then I feel the city hum beneath my feet, blood and stone and old magic layered together, and I stop wondering.

Some questions don’t need answers.

They find you anyway.