Chapter 4

I leaned back in my seat, exhausted, but my mind wouldn't stop dragging me back to childhood.

I was three when our parents died in that lab explosion. They had been commissioned by a vampire clan to develop an affordable drug that would protect vampires from holy silver and crucifix burns. It threatened the profits of the old pharmaceutical giants, and a rival had detonated the laboratory before dawn.

When the explosion hit, Silas and Julian threw themselves over me. They were left on the brink of death-saved only because a passing Vampire King turned them just in time. I survived too, but with permanent damage. My lungs were scarred, and I'd been physically frail ever since.

Those first years after being brought to the vampire castle were the most terrifying of my life. I was at the age when human blood smells sweetest. As newly turned, bottom-tier vampires, my brothers walked me into a predatory world filled with hungry stares. Powerful old-blood vampires wanted to snatch me away as a premium blood source.

My brothers were still weak then, but every single time, they hid me inside a battered coffin and fought those monsters tooth and nail-literally.

Silas once had half his shoulder torn off. Julian nearly had his heart ripped out. But they always smiled and told me: "Don't be afraid. We'll get stronger. No one's ever going to touch you."

I was just a three-year-old human child, terrified of the darkness and the bats in the castle. So Silas and Julian slept beside me every night. These two ice-cold fledgling vampires would suppress their thirst for blood and patiently pat my back, murmuring old bedtime stories until I drifted off.

To ensure my transformation at eighteen would go smoothly, they trained with me from the time I was small.

"Come on, little princess, one more lap," Julian would say with a grin, wiping the sweat from my forehead. "Once you're stronger, the First Embrace won't hurt as much."

They'd even spent every last coin they had, scouring half of Europe, to find that legendary calming serum.

Vampire territory had no sunlight. As a child, I didn't understand vampire taboos. I saw the Caribbean on television and begged to go. I was so desperate for the sunlight of the human world, but vampires simply couldn't survive under that kind of light.

I remembered Silas's deep frown. But in the end, he just sighed: "If that's what you want, we'll find a way."

To make my dream come true, they began training obsessively to resist ultraviolet light, enduring the agony of their skin being slowly scorched away.

Now they'd finally grown strong enough to walk freely in the sun. But the person they were taking wasn't me anymore-it was Elena.

The "orphan" left behind by the human hero who had tried to save our parents in the explosion before being killed.

It took Silas and Julian fifteen years to find her in a rundown orphanage. But fate had a cruel sense of humor.

Six months after Elena was brought to the castle, I ran into the orphanage director at an off-campus restaurant-dead drunk. She grabbed my hand, sobbing and confessing: the real hero's child had died of heart disease at the age of three. The current "Elena" was just a replacement-another girl who couldn't afford heart surgery. The director had swapped her identity so my brothers would foot the bill, and maybe even grant her immortality through the transformation.

I'd stormed back to the castle in a frenzy and caught Elena rummaging through my room.

The crash was deafening. Our last family photo-the only picture with all five of us-shattered on the floor. As always, Elena had deliberately cut herself on the glass and was sitting there looking pitiful, waiting for Julian to come to her rescue.

I lost it. I grabbed her arm and screamed, "Take your lies and get out!"

That was the first time Julian ever turned on me. Even Silas, normally so reserved, looked at me with disappointment. "Alice, you're too selfish. Rein in that princess attitude."

I told them the truth. I saw the panic flash across Elena's face. She was healed now-she had no right to steal my home, to destroy my memories.

But Julian's response hit like a wrecking ball:

"Enough, Alice! Why do you have to pick on an orphan?"

"Her father was blown to pieces trying to save Mom and Dad-she's all that's left of him! You'd make up such a vicious lie just to get rid of her? Don't you feel even a little guilty?"

After that, the house went cold. A month ago, Elena struck again-she smashed the necklace I always wore, the one that held my mother's ashes. I chased her to the top of the stairs and slapped her in a blind rage. She let herself fall.

I lunged to catch her, but my weakened body betrayed me-I tumbled down the stairs after her. My arm was torn open against the hard stone steps. I was still struggling to get up and explain when-

Slap.

Julian hit me. The first time in his life.

Silas, usually the calm one, stood over me with ice in his eyes and revulsion in his voice:

"Alice, if you can't get along with Elena, get out of this house."

They carried the uninjured Elena to the hospital and left me bleeding on the cold hallway floor.

That was when I finally understood. The brother who once promised to take me to the sea, who swore to protect me forever-he was already dead.