Chapter 1 – The Night I Sold My Soul

The fluorescent lights in the hospital corridor flickered like dying stars.

I sat on the plastic chair outside ICU Room 407, clutching Jamie’s tiny stuffed bear so hard my knuckles turned white.

He was only eight.

Eight years old and fighting for every heartbeat.

The doctor’s words from an hour ago still rang in my ears:

“Congenital heart failure. He needs a transplant within thirty days. Cost: two million eight hundred thousand dollars. Insurance covers nothing. After thirty days we remove him from the list.”

I had forty-seven dollars and thirty-two cents in my checking account.

My waitress tips from the last two weeks were already spent on rent.

That’s how I ended up at Club Crimson at 11:47 p.m. on Halloween night.

The bouncer at the hidden entrance took one look at the black invitation Madame Rouge had slipped under my apartment door and waved me through without a word.

Inside was another world: velvet walls, crystal chandeliers dripping blood-red light, and music that pulsed like a living heartbeat.

Madame Rouge found me the second I stepped inside the private lounge.

She wore a crimson gown and a smile sharp enough to cut glass.

“Lot 13,” she purred, circling me. “Twenty-three. Virgin. Desperate. Perfect.”

I wanted to run.

But Jamie’s face flashed in my mind—pale, smiling through the pain.

I let her lead me backstage.

They gave me a black silk mask that covered half my face and a red dress that clung to every curve.

My hands shook so badly I could barely tie the corset.

“Remember,” Madame Rouge whispered, painting my lips blood-red, “no names, no questions, no marks. One night. Ten million is the record. Break it, darling.”

The stage lights blinded me.

The auctioneer’s voice boomed through hidden speakers:

“Lot 13. Twenty-three years old. Untouched. Starting bid five hundred thousand dollars!”

Paddles shot up like gunfire.

Seven hundred fifty.

One million.

One million five.

My knees buckled.

Then silence fell so complete I heard my own heartbeat.

A voice drifted down from the royal balcony—velvet, ancient, and lethal.

“Ten million.”

The room actually gasped.

Madame Rouge’s eyes went wide. “Ten million going once… twice… sold to the gentleman in the royal box!”

Security grabbed my arms before I could collapse.

The private elevator shot upward so fast my stomach flipped.

The doors opened into a suite of black marble and candlelight.

A man stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, back to me, silver hair cascading to his waist like liquid moonlight.

He turned slowly.

I forgot how to breathe.

He was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen—high cheekbones sharp as blades, lips stained red, eyes glowing crimson in the darkness.

And fangs.

Real, elegant, deadly fangs.

He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring.

“You smell like sunlight and terror,” he murmured, voice accented with something ancient. “Exquisite.”

He crossed the room in a heartbeat, cold fingers lifting my chin.

“Scared, little mortal?”

I tried to speak. My voice cracked.

He smiled, slow and devastating.

“Good.”

His mouth claimed mine before I could scream.

I remember silk sheets sliding against bare skin.

I remember ice-cold hands turning burning hot.

I remember fangs grazing my throat, my collarbone, the curve of my breast—never breaking skin, only promising.

I remember crying out a name he never gave me.

I remember pleasure so intense the world shattered into stars.

When I woke up, dawn was trying to creep through black-out curtains.

The bed was cold.

Only a single black rose on the pillow and a note in handwriting that looked carved by moonlight:

Thank you for the most exquisite night in five centuries.

The money is yours.

Forget me, little sun.

I didn’t forget.

Nine weeks later I sat on my bathroom floor staring at two pink lines while Jamie laughed in the living room, his new heart beating strong and steady.

I was twenty-three, single, and pregnant by a vampire who paid ten million dollars to disappear.

Then, on the night of the winter solstice, my front door exploded off its hinges.

He stood in the wreckage wearing a crown of black diamonds and murder in his glowing crimson eyes.

Prince Valerian Nocturne.

“You’re carrying my heir,” he snarled, fangs fully extended, voice shaking the walls. “And you, Harper Quinn, are coming with me—whether you walk willingly or I carry you in chains.”