Chapter 4

Adrian's POV

The tour of the southern domain was almost over.

For days, my parents had paraded vampire noblewomen in front of me.

Each one matched my station, fit to be the heir's wife.

I didn't refuse the meetings. But I chose none of them.

Elena and I truly weren't a match.

For years I'd kept her at a distance, and every time she came to me, she wore that meek, careful, long-suffering look that made my chest go tight.

For all the lavish comfort the Prince's domain gave her, she never learned to behave herself. When she looked at me, the smile on her lips was always stiff, and she'd grip the hem of her dress and say nothing.

I shouldn't have chosen her for my wife.

It really would sound too ugly.

Not only because she was human.

But because the whole noble world knew the state I'd been in after the blood-soaked banquet.

For three full years I was lost in hallucinations, suspicious of everything, refusing to let a single servant near me.

They all said it: the heir to the Prince, frightened out of his mind by a pack of hunters.

To choose Elena as my wife was to tell them the heir had never escaped that year's shadow.

That he could never lead them to wipe the hunters out for good.

So all I could do was push the wedding back, and back, and no one seemed to mention the fiancée I kept tucked away in a corner.

Elena never once asked me when I'd finally marry her.

Every time I saw her, she had that delicate, just-finished-crying look that only vexed me.

I held a proper smile on my lips and took each noblewoman's hand in turn, accepting every barely-disguised advance, trying to drive Elena out of my mind.

Without Elena, I could have married a wife who matched my station with ease, without all this hesitation, without becoming a laughingstock.

The tour was nearly done. There was only one stop left, an orphanage for vampire children.

Most of the children here had survived that blood-soaked banquet, the small ones of noble families.

The butler's betrayal had nearly wiped out the vampire nobles of the core domain.

With no parents and no kin to take them in, these vampire orphans were gathered into the orphanage, to wait until they were grown and the Council assigned them respectable work befitting their birth.

Thinking of them, I felt only pity.

Some of those children had been three years old when it happened.

They had no claim to saving the heir, the way Elena did, no place in the Prince's domain to enjoy a servant's care.

"Young Master Adrian, thank you for honoring us today, on the Prince's behalf."

The one speaking was a vampire woman with a settled, mature air.

She looked after most of the children here.

I studied the way she dressed, wondering whether she skimmed from the Council's stipend, whether she mistreated the children. Nobles were greedy by habit.

Then a girl came running over from a swing in the distance, laughing.

"Mama!"

She wasn't even afraid of the armed guards behind me. She bounded over to the matron, clung to her leg, and refused to let go.

"Mama, the flowers I planted last time all bloomed! Come see them with me, please?"

The matron smiled and stroked the girl's hair, helpless.

"Jasmine, how many times have I told you? Mama has an important guest today. You mustn't interrupt."

The girl kept up her little act, all sweet and willful, burying her face against the matron and refusing to look up.

I didn't press it. I kept my gentleman's smile in place.

"Is this your daughter? It's all right. There's no need to send her away."

The matron looked at me, and for a moment her red eyes hesitated.

The girl felt the silence and looked up, curious.

She had blue eyes. She was human.

Not a vampire's child.

And yet she laughed, easy and warm, calling a vampire noblewoman her mother.

For no reason at all, I thought of Elena's face.

The matron soothed the girl, promised her candy after dinner, and only then did the little one go skipping off to find her friends.

Among them were a few other human children, mixing with the vampire children as if it were the most natural thing, close, without a trace of rank between them.

"My apologies, young Master Adrian."

"That child's always been lively. Forever climbing on things, planting flowers, kicking a ball around."

She glanced at the children playing in the distance, and her voice dropped.

"Her parents were killed by hunters too, by mistake. Over the years, I've taken in a good many human noble children."

"At first they all cried. But after a while in my care, one by one, they started calling me Mama."

The matron lowered her eyes and smiled, all the warmth of a mother in her face.

I listened, watching the children, and said nothing.

I was thinking of Elena.

It had been a long time since I'd seen her laugh like that.

The matron said children loved to climb and clamber. Elena never had.

She always seemed to be tucked in a corner, staring blankly out a window.

The children sat on the grass and played, never minding the dirt on their clothes.

Elena always held the front of her dress so carefully, always stood so straight.

She never wanted to be around the vampire nobles. Every time, they only mocked her.

Why?

She lived at my side, in lavish comfort, in the Prince's domain.

Why wasn't she happy?

Watching the matron wave to the children, I suddenly understood.

It was me.

It was all those years I'd shown her nothing but cold indifference.

All those years I'd said nothing, when my mother called her "only human," when the nobles sneered at her at banquets.

I'd considered everything. My image as the heir. The thought that Elena might hate me for her mother's death.

Everything except Elena herself.

It had never occurred to me that keeping her safe and settled at my side took more than the manor's servants, more than the title of fiancée.

It took my care. My attention. My love.

All these years, I'd failed to see what she needed.

A dull ache went through my chest. I called for my men and ordered us back to the domain at once.

I had to see Elena.

I had to make up for these years.

There was still time. There had to be.

I could make her happy, like those children.

I could make her smile at me again.