Chapter 2

Isolde was in the bed next to mine. We didn’t speak for a long time.

She had heard everything—Caelum’s accusations, his contempt, the way he hung up without letting me finish a single sentence.

She forced herself to sit up and reached for my hand. Her grip was weak. Her face had lost all its color since the attack, and Caelum’s words had drained whatever was left. Tears ran down her face and dripped onto my wrist.

“We shouldn't have agreed to be turned into vampires and married them.” She whispered.

She was thinking about me, but my mind was entirely on her.

Before she met Dorian, Isolde had just graduated from Harvard Law. Top of her class, offers from three of the best firms in New York, a future most people could only dream of.

She had thrown all of it away the night Dorian asked her to accept his blood. She walked away from her career, her friends, her entire human life—because she believed he loved her.

Now her vampire abilities were permanently destroyed. She couldn’t go back to the human world. But in the vampire world, without powers, she was nothing. Less than nothing. She’d be classified at the bottom of the hierarchy, no different from a servant.

Trapped between two worlds, belonging to neither.

I was about to say something when her phone rang. Dorian.

“Caelum tells me Seraphina wants a divorce? Let me guess—your idea? Is it physically impossible for the two of you to not cause drama for a single day?”

“I already explained this—I’m dealing with the hunters who tracked Vivienne. It’s life and death. I told you not to contact me. Do you just not listen?”

“You know what, I honestly can’t even remember why we turned you two. All you ever do is conspire and threaten to leave. So leave. Nobody is begging you to stay.”

The line went dead.

Isolde dropped the phone on the bed and gave me a look that said “see? nothing new.”

Ten seconds later the tears came back.

I gripped her hand. “We’re still breathing. That’s what matters. Maybe this is just fate telling us it’s time to go.”

“Let’s heal first. Once we can stand on our own, we walk out. Deal?”

“Deal,” she managed, barely.

And then neither of us could hold it in any longer. She pressed her face into my shoulder and we cried until there was nothing left—every ounce of terror and heartbreak and humiliation emptied out at once.

We had given up everything for these men. Everything.

I kept thinking about the night we were turned.

The whole Blood Court had gathered. Hundreds of vampires watching as Caelum cut his wrist and offered me his blood. The act that would end my human life and begin my immortal one.

“Two human sisters, chosen by both princes,” everyone had murmured. “This bloodline will be unbreakable.”

I remembered drinking from Caelum’s wrist and looking into his eyes. The way he held my face afterward. I was so certain it was love. Across the hall, Dorian was doing the same for Isolde, and she looked at him the way I looked at Caelum—completely trusting, completely surrendered.

We believed we had been chosen. We believed it meant forever.

That illusion lasted until three months ago, when Vivienne came back.

Vivienne was the girl both princes had grown up with. The one they had begged to accept their blood, to be turned, to stay with them forever. She refused. She wanted to remain human. She left the Court and dated a human man instead.

When that relationship ended, she returned. And the moment she walked back through the manor doors, our husbands vanished.

Caelum stopped picking up my calls. He was out every night, gone before I woke. Dorian drank until dawn and pretended Isolde didn’t exist.

That was when we finally understood what we were. The princes had wanted Vivienne. Vivienne said no. So they found two human sisters and turned them instead—a performance, designed to make Vivienne regret her choice.

Every tender word, every promise of eternity—none of it had ever been real.

For three months we had husbands who didn’t see us. No warmth. No company. Not even a question about our pregnancies. They spent every spare hour around Vivienne—fetching things for her, checking on her, treating her like the only person who mattered.

We had chosen not to see it. Or maybe we saw it and told ourselves it wasn’t true.

Either way, the lie was over now.

Isolde’s voice came out muffled against my shoulder. “The healer confirmed it. My powers are gone permanently. I’ll never get them back.”

I smoothed her hair with my fingers. “And I’ll probably never carry another child.”

A long silence.

“We gave up being human for them,” she said. “And now we’ve lost the only things they gave us in return.”