All Chapters of The Vampire Prince's Human Bride Has No Heartbeat : Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

Nine days is a strange amount of time. It's too short to fix anything and too long to pretend you're not counting.Dad wrote to the mayor on the first day. The mayor wrote back that he was "deeply sympathetic" and could do nothing. Dad wrote to the regional council. They didn't reply at all. By the fourth day he'd stopped writing and started fixing things instead. The loose gate hinge, the squeaky stair, the leaking gutter he'd ignored for two years. I'd catch him on a ladder at dusk, hammering at nothing, and I'd pretend not to see his shoulders shake.Mum cooked. She made every meal I'd ever loved, one after another, until the kitchen smelled like my whole life. Apple dumplings. Lamb with rosemary. The ugly brown stew she used to make when I was sick. I ate all of it, because refusing would have broken her.The neighbours came too. Mrs. Corran brought a loaf and couldn't look at me. Old Mr. Bell from the market pressed a tin of tea into my hands and said, "You'll be all right, girl,

"Down," Hallis said again, and I dropped low in my seat without thinking.The sound came again, closer, and the driver called out something short and sharp. Then, just as fast as it had risen, it stopped. The birds settled. The trees went still.I stayed frozen, waiting for the world to end.It didn't."It's gone," Hallis said after a moment, straightening slowly. He let out a breath through his nose. "A forest hound. They roam close to the road sometimes. Nothing more.""That didn't sound like a hound.""No," he admitted. "It didn't." He didn't offer anything else, and I didn't push. My hands were still shaking, and I pressed them flat against my knees until the shaking stopped.We came out from under the trees a short while later, and the light returned all at once, grey and ordinary, like nothing had happened at all.By the time we reached the outer walls of Bloodmoon City, the sun was low and orange behind the hills, and an escort was waiting to meet us. Six riders in dark cloaks

The doors opened onto light and warmth, and for a moment I forgot to be afraid.The Grand Hall was full of candles, hundreds of them, throwing gold across a floor so polished I could see my own pale reflection in it. Nobles lined the walls in dark, elegant clothes, watching without whispering. At the far end, on a raised dais, two thrones waited, and the man and woman seated in them were already looking at me."Miss Everhart," the steward announced, and every head in the hall turned at once.I made myself walk. One foot, then the other, down a floor that felt twice as long as it should have been, until I reached the base of the dais and remembered, at the last second, to curtsy."Rise," said the King.I straightened. King Lucien Veyr looked nothing like I'd imagined, and everything like what I feared. He wasn't a monster in a story. He was elegant, composed, his hair a deep silver-black, his eyes a red so dark it looked almost human by candlelight. He smiled at me, easy and warm, the

Seraphina led me down a corridor lined with portraits, their subjects all pale and beautiful and watching me pass with painted eyes, until we reached a smaller dining room than the hall I'd just left. A single long table had been set with more silverware than I'd ever used in my life."Sit, sit," she said, waving me toward a chair near the head of the table. "I'll have something brought up. You look like you're about to fall over.""I might," I admitted.She laughed, a real laugh, and swept out to speak with someone in the hall, leaving me alone with the portraits and the candlelight and my own thundering heart.I hadn't been alone for more than a minute when the door opened again."You're new," said a voice, warm and easy, and I turned to find a young man leaning against the doorframe like he owned it. He looked close to my own age, maybe a little older, with dark blond hair pushed back carelessly and blue-grey eyes that crinkled at the corners like he found the whole world faintly a