Chapter 3

Elena's POV

On Vicky's first night in the house, I slept alone, as expected.

Vampires don't need sleep.

But before this, every night, Jason would come and lie beside me. The lights off, he couldn't see my face clearly, which made it easier, I imagined, to pretend I was her.

The room was very quiet.

I lay alone in the wide bed, the space beside me empty.

I'd thought I had long since made peace with his coldness.

But in that moment I understood: even a little charity, if given enough times, can become something you depend on.

Even warmth that wasn't meant for you.

Even closeness that only existed because of your face.

I had cherished it anyway, in my small, quiet way.

In the first year of the marriage, nightmares came often.

I'd dream of the day my mother died — my stepmother walking through the door with her daughter on her arm. My father cradling his new child and laughing. Turning to me with eyes that went cold, like I was a problem he hadn't solved.

More often I'd dream of kneeling in the rain.

My father on the steps above me, telling me that old man had agreed to invest in the family. My stepmother beside him, coaxing me gently.

“Elena, you're already lucky. Someone like you, marrying into that family is more than fine.”

My stepsister hiding behind her mother, laughing at what was left of my dignity being ground to dust.

I'd wake from those dreams gasping, cold, fingers too unsteady to hold the bedsheet.

The first time Jason found me like that, he didn't ask.

He just pulled me against him from behind, his cold hand resting against my back.

“Sleep. No one here can touch you.”

His voice was very low.

I cried then, silently. It wasn't much of a promise. But I carried it with me for a long time.

After that, whenever the nightmares came, he'd hold me like that.

He didn't say much. Didn't kiss away my tears the way a husband who truly loved you would.

But he stayed.

In the moments I was most afraid, he let me know I wasn't alone in the room.

So even when he stayed could by day, I'd always coax myself late at night.

Maybe Jason simply struggled to voice his feelings and was used to restraint. Maybe in those dark hours when faces blurred, he'd felt something for me after all.

Now I could see how foolish that was.

He had always understood what my eyes were saying when I looked at him.

Jason had always known what it was I longed for.

He simply chose to save his warmth for someone else.

And I had only ever caught a shadow of it.

I closed my eyes and couldn't sleep.

My gaze drifted to the painting by the wall.

I'd made it in the first year here.

A quiet lake. A few white trees along the bank.

When I painted it, Jason had stood behind me for a long time.

I was so nervous my palms were damp. I thought he'd scold me for wasting time.

In the home I came from, painting was never considered worthwhile. My father said a fallen noble's daughter had no business with things that served no purpose. My stepmother rarely allowed the cost of paint and paper. My stepsister would ruin my work on purpose, then laugh and claim she hadn't meant to.

I had no studio. No table where I could spread paper and focus for hours. Sometimes I'd hide in the storage room with the cheapest pencils I could find. When someone discovered me, I'd be told I didn't know my place.

After I married Jason, I had my own studio for the first time.

That day he brought me to the third floor, the room with the best light, newly prepared. A fresh easel inside. Rows of paint. An entire cabinet of paper.

I stood in the doorway and couldn't move.

Jason said simply:

“The butler mentioned you like to paint. This room is yours now.”

He said it and left. No sentiment, no waiting to be thanked.

But I stood there, and my eyes burned for a long time.

I painted many things after that. The lake, the garden, the night sky, the trees outside.

Jason almost never praised me. But he'd have my work framed and hung in the corridors, the study, the sitting room, even his own bedroom.

Once I saw one of my paintings hung in the most visible spot in the main hall, and my heart raced.

I asked him:

“That one hangs up too?”

He looked up from his papers, voice flat:

“Yes, it works well there.”

Just that one sentence.

I couldn't sleep that night.

For the first time, I felt like I'd left something of myself in this house.

Vicky didn't care for painting. But Jason never grew tired of mine. He never corrected me and said I wasn't enough like her.

I had thought, then, that he kept my paintings and hung them in his room because he was finally seeing me. Elena. Not a copy of Vicky.

I'd gotten too comfortable in these three years.

Comfortable enough to almost forget how I came to be here in the first place.

No one here bullied me. Meals came on time. When I was sick, there was a doctor. When paint ran out in the studio, someone replenished it.

Even if Jason didn't love me, he gave me a place to breathe.

Even after the miscarriages, he never sent me away.

I held onto those tiny scraps of stability and pieced myself back together.

But tonight, Vicky had just come back.

And the ground I'd built, so carefully, felt like it had never truly been mine.

I lay there imagining Jason pushing open the bedroom door, lying down beside me in the dark, holding me the way he used to.

A long time passed. The door didn't open.

Voices from downstairs, very faint.

Vampires spoke quietly. Through the thick floors I couldn't make out words.

But I could pick out Jason's voice.

Low and patient, gentle with a care I had never truly owned.

Occasionally, Vicky laughed.

Softly. But it felt like a needle in my ear.

I buried my face in the blanket.

The tears came fast.

I didn't want to make a sound.

The servants in this house were mostly kind. I didn't want them to hear, didn't want anyone's pity.

But the tears wouldn't stop.

I suddenly remembered being very small.

Not long after my mother died, my father remarried. The house was full of noise that day. My stepmother in a beautiful dress, holding my stepsister's hand beside my father.

My father bent down and made his new daughter laugh. When he looked up at me, his eyes went blank.

Everyone was smiling.

Only I stood at the top of the stairs, holding the old doll my mother had left me.

That was the first time I understood I didn’t belong in this house at all. No one asked me to leave. No one needed me to stay.

Years later, in Jason's house, I felt it again.

No one was sending me away.

But the moment Vicky came back, I understood.

I had no reason to be here.

I was a substitute. Now the true mistress had returned, and it was only right for the substitute to slip away silently.

I didn't know if Jason had taken her to the garden. If he'd poured her tea himself. If he'd held her the way he used to hold me in the dark and patted her back through the grief of her divorce.

I couldn't let myself think about it.

Every time I tried, something dull cut into my chest.

But in that long night, one thing finally became clear.

If Jason asked for a divorce, I wouldn't fight it.

I wouldn't beg. Wouldn't ask what the three years had been worth.

Wouldn't use those unborn children to make him feel guilty.

Each time I'd gotten pregnant, I'd told myself: if I just tried harder, if my body was stronger, maybe this time the family would hold together.

But now I understood.

No child should be used to save a loveless marriage.

And I couldn't keep trapping myself inside the safety Jason had given me out of obligation.

I wiped my face.

The blanket was suffocating, but my heart went very still.

If he asked.

I would say yes.

I would give back the title of Jason's wife to the one he truly loved.