Chapter 6

Elena's POV

I had assumed that once the exchange was agreed upon, the month before the wedding would at least be quiet.

But Ryan Valemont came more often than he ever had in my last life.

To the outside world, he was simply calling on the woman he was about to marry.

He just didn't know yet that the woman standing beside him on their wedding day would be Vicky.

I had to keep up the performance for Stepmother and Vicky's sake.

Ryan and I had been secretly together for two years. Before he pulled me out of the frozen lake, we had already spent many nights hidden from the world.

He used to come to my window and rap softly on the glass.

“Elena. Come out and see me.”

Vampires couldn’t enter a human's private dwelling without an invitation.

So he could only wait outside for me.

The old me couldn't bear to make him wait. The moment I heard his voice, I'd throw on my coat and slip away with him without a second thought.

He took me to the lake in the moonlight, to a rose garden where no one ever passed.

We had grown as close as two people can be, far too close for what we were supposed to be, a pair of lovers who could only meet in secret.

So when he pulled me from the frozen lake at the annual vampire gala, declared his intentions in front of the entire room, and announced he would make me his bride, I had been completely undone.

I thought he was finally ready to give me a real place at his side.

I thought the day I had been waiting for, the day someone chose me firmly, had finally come.

But after dying once, I understood. It had only been his plan reaching its next stage.

After the wedding date was set, Ryan came by the house often. Vicky would push her way to his side every time, full of chatter, asking how large the royal family's castle was, whether the bride would be allowed to live on the top floor of the main residence.

“Of course. Whatever my bride asks for, I'll make it happen,” Ryan answered pleasantly.

But his gaze kept drifting to me.

I sat to one side, quietly drinking tea, smiling when appropriate, doing my best to look obedient and unobtrusive.

Yet his gaze lingered on me longer and longer.

No wonder he found it odd.

The Elena who had clung to him, who had loved him so carefully that his slightest attention could sustain her for days, had gone cold.

I no longer reached out to him. I no longer responded to the hints and suggestions he wove into his conversation.

He had come at night several times before.

When I heard the soft knock at the glass, I lay in bed with my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep.

“Elena.”

“I know you're awake.”

“Open the window. Let me see you.”

I pulled the blanket over my face and refused to give him anything at all.

Every time he appeared at my window, the way he had in our past life, I felt nothing but hatred and pain.

All I could see was the expression on his face as he watched me die, cold and indifferent.

If I could, I would never look at him again.

Outside, silence stretched for a long time.

I knew he was still there.

No matter how powerful he was, that rule held: without an invitation from me, he could not come in.

The next day, he sat in the sitting room with his usual mild smile.

But when those blood-red eyes turned to me, there was something new in them, a barely-contained pressure.

“Elena, are you sleeping well lately?”

I set down my teacup.

“I'm quite well, Mr. Valemont. Thank you for your concern.”

He heard the formal address and his brow creased slightly.

Before, I had only ever called him Ryan.

I would flush when he came near. I would close my eyes and hold my breath just before he kissed me.

Now I treated him as a dangerous acquaintance to be managed carefully, kept always at a distance.

My coolness seemed to spark something in him.

He began checking in on me more often.

“Elena, you look thinner.”

“Don't be anxious about the wedding. I'll take care of you.”

“Once you're married to me, you won't have to watch anyone else's expression ever again.”

In my last life, each of these lines would have moved me.

Now they only tasted like mockery.

He found every opportunity to close the distance between us.

When Vicky talked about the wedding, he would suddenly ask whether I liked the jewelry he'd had sent over.

When Stepmother praised how Vicky looked in her gown, he would glance at me and ask which set I'd like to wear tomorrow.

Sometimes when Vicky interrupted him, something briefly crossed his face, a flash of irritation.

It was very faint. But it didn't escape me.

I watched it all with cold eyes, feeling nothing but disgust.

In my last life, he had sent me to my death for Vicky's sake.

Now that I had so much as cooled toward him, he wanted to tame me back into his hands.

This cheap, disposable kind of interest only fills me with revulsion.

One afternoon, Vicky went upstairs to get a hair pin, leaving Ryan and me alone in the sitting room.

He set down his teacup and asked quietly:

“Elena, why are you avoiding me lately?”

I looked at him, keeping the polite expression in place.

“You're imagining things, Mr. Valemont.”

He stood and crossed the room toward me.

A vampire's speed: by the time I registered what was happening, his hand was already at my waist, practiced and natural, carrying the ease of two years of intimacy.

I stiffened, then stepped aside quickly.

“Vicky will be down soon.”

Ryan's hand stopped in midair. His eyes darkened.

“You never used to pull away.”

I looked at him, the same polite smile, but the warmth he had always seen in my eyes had gone.

“I only heard Vicky's footsteps.”

He watched me for a long moment, then suddenly laughed under his breath.

He caught my chin in his fingers and, too fast to avoid, pressed a fleeting kiss to the corner of my mouth.

I couldn't stop myself from frowning. He saw it.

“Are you angry with me?”

“Because Vicky keeps coming to me and I haven't put a stop to it?”

His tone was too familiar, indulgent, with a certainty underneath it.

He believed all he had to do was coax me a little and I would fold back into his arms.

I gave him nothing.

Ryan seemed to take that as confirmation of his theory.

He softened his voice. “Stop sulking.”

“After tomorrow, you'll be my wife.”

“I'll make it up to you properly.”

I looked down, almost laughed out loud.

In my last life, he had said he would make it up to me too.

He had made it up to me with a knife through the heart.