All Chapters of THE ECHO OF YOUR BLOOD: The Vampire Kings Fake Fiancée : Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

The machine never stopped talking.Beep. Beep. Beep.Aria Linley had memorized its voice the way other people memorized a lullaby, except this one didn't sing her to sleep. It counted. Every beep was a coin dropping into a jar that was almost empty. Somewhere behind that thin, patient sound, her mother's heart was still choosing, again and again, to keep going. Aria didn't know how much longer it planned on making that choice."The treatment is working, Aria. I want you to hear me say that first." Dr. Evans didn't look up from the clipboard. He had the practiced gentleness of a man who delivered this particular kind of news often enough to have worn all the feeling out of it. "But the hospital board has a threshold, and your mother's account is past it. Fifty thousand, cleared by tomorrow night, or we begin transitioning her to palliative care." A pause, the smallest flinch of something almost human. "I'm sorry. It was already unusual that we kept her on this long after what happened

The rain had turned to needles by the time Aria stopped feeling her feet. Somewhere back near Liam's building she'd lost a shoe, and she hadn't even noticed until the broken asphalt started tearing at her skin. It didn't matter. Nothing hurt as much as the hollow place in her chest where her whole life used to sit.No phone. No money. No home. No father's legacy left to fight for. In one night, every single thing holding her upright had been kicked out from under her at once.Headlights swept across the wet street behind her, slow and patient, the kind of slow that wasn't looking for a parking spot. Aria's heart slammed into her throat. A black SUV crawled along the curb, matching her pace exactly, like it already knew she had nowhere left to run.They won't just shut off your mom's machines. They'll make sure you disappear too.Liam's voice, still fresh in her ears, snapped something awake in her legs. She ran. Her soaked dress dragged against her knees and she ran anyway, ducking in

Ten minutes.Aria stared at the pen in his hand like it was the blade the cartel man had pressed to her throat an hour ago. Different metal. Same choice."You'll want to read it," Valerius said, and there was something almost generous in the way he said it, the way a man might offer a condemned prisoner a last cigarette. "Most people don't bother. Most people are wrong to skip that part."She read it. Every clause, every line of black ink promising away pieces of herself she hadn't known she still had. Her hands shook so badly the paper rattled, but she made herself finish it, because if she was going to lose everything tonight, she wasn't going to lose it blind.At the bottom, above the signature line, was a blank space labeled ADDITIONAL TERMS."There's room here." She looked up at him for the first time since he'd handed her the pen. "For me to add something."Something flickered behind his eyes, brief and unreadable. "There is.""My mother is never told what I am to you. Not the t

The flashbulbs were still bursting behind Aria's eyelids long after the car pulled away from the Obsidian Room. The ring sat cold and unfamiliar and impossibly heavy on her finger, like it had been carved from something older than metal. She sat pressed against the window, the city sliding past in smears of neon and rain, and let herself, just for the length of the drive, stop performing.Valerius didn't speak. He never did on the way home from these things, as if the mask took something out of him that needed silence to rebuild. But his hand found hers on the seat between them, cool fingers curling loosely around her knuckles, and he didn't let go the entire ride back.For three days after that, something in the mansion softened.She woke without the immediate lurch of panic, without needing a full minute to remember whose sheets she was tangled in. There was coffee waiting on the balcony most mornings, dark and unbearably strong, exactly the way she liked it though she'd never once