Chapter 3

Adrian's POV

After I left the manor, something sat heavy in my chest.

A bad feeling circled overhead.

I kept seeing Elena in the rearview mirror, soaked to the skin, head down, arms wrapped around herself.

I remembered another time. The blood-soaked banquet, vampire nobles dead all around us, Elena filthy from head to toe.

But back then, the way she'd looked at me, her eyes had been bright.

She'd heard her mother screaming. She was crying hard. Yet the hand gripping my wrist was steady.

"Mother said if I get you out of here, she'll meet us outside and take us home!"

"Go, don't be afraid!"

Her voice had been shaking, but she never let go of my hand.

And just now, a little water on her dress had left her that crushed, that lost.

I pushed down the strange dull ache in my chest.

Of course. After all these years in the manor, climbing from a middling human noble to the heir's fiancée, she'd probably grown soft and spoiled.

My cousin was still chattering beside me, but I had no heart left for her words.

Before I left, Elena had said something about a ruby brooch.

I knew she'd spent years searching for one.

It was her mother's. To save me, her mother had stood in the doorway with nothing but her own body between us and the guns.

The hunters' shots had rung out, one after another.

Under the screaming, the image of Elena crying was burned into me.

I knew she might blame me.

If I hadn't taken her to the back garden to see the roses, she and her mother might never have been caught in the attack.

The old butler who'd served my father and me for years had betrayed us.

And what I'd never expected was that a human mother and daughter, strangers I'd met for the first time, were the ones who protected me.

By the time her mother was buried, the brooch had vanished.

Elena held onto me and cried for a long, long time, such a small thing.

She said her mother would blame her, that it was her fault for wanting to go to the garden.

She said that with the brooch gone, her mother's soul would never rest.

Her mother's chest had been riddled with bullets. The brooch had probably been burned to ash by the silver long before.

Back then I still wasn't free of the hallucinations. At the edge of my vision, hunters were always raising their guns at me.

I held Elena too, just as afraid to let go.

Because I was afraid the hunters would take my life.

And I was afraid they'd seize Elena and leave me to run through the heap of corpses alone.

But what I feared most was that Elena would blame me.

The hunters wanted only vampires. Their true target was me, the young heir to the Prince.

Most of the human nobles at the banquet had left long before; they had no standing to stay to the end.

If Elena hadn't happened to be holding my hand, walking to the back garden to look at roses.

If I hadn't, on a whim, wanted to show that pretty girl the things I loved.

Her mother would never have been forced to give up my whereabouts. She would never have been shot, one bullet at a time, where she stood.

My father said I was the heir. I couldn't be so weak. I couldn't show the hunters even a flicker of fear.

That day, so many of the royal line died on the floor, and half of it was because I'd failed to see the old butler's betrayal in time.

My father said that if this kept on, he could never trust me to become Prince.

I knew it was all my fault.

All I could do was hope Elena wouldn't blame me like the rest.

So I swallowed my fear and comforted her, gently.

"Don't worry. I'll find that brooch for you."

"I'll protect you."

"I'll take care of you. Anything you want, I'll give you."

The brooch, of course, was long gone.

I gave her dozens of similar ruby brooches, just to win a smile.

I only wanted her not to leave me, not to hate me for her mother's death.

Later, the hallucinations faded.

I went to find Elena, half wild with joy, to tell her I'd grow strong soon, that I could marry her soon.

But Elena didn't look happy.

She'd moved out of my rooms.

I asked my mother, and she only said the heir couldn't keep his fiancée at his side every waking moment. It would sound too ugly if word got out.

A middling noble's daughter, made wife to the heir of the Vampire Prince, would always invite ridicule.

I had no answer for that.

Maybe it would have been better if I'd never insisted on the engagement, never kept her at my side under that title.

I found Elena, meaning to comfort her, and heard her crying.

She was buried under the blankets, murmuring for her mother.

With the hallucinations gone, every time I looked at Elena I could see the grief in her eyes.

It was because of me that her mother had died at the hunters' hands.

Maybe I never should have kept a human girl trapped in a vampire's world.

It was after that I began, deliberately, to avoid her.

My cousin, seeing me silent so long, asked carefully what was wrong.

I blinked, pulled myself out of the memory, and said quietly that it was nothing.

Outside the window, the rain still came down in unbroken sheets, gathering and sliding off the glass.

Never mind.

If Elena still wanted a ruby brooch that badly, I'd buy her a better one. A gift.