Chapter 1

Adrian and I grew up together. We were the match every old vampire family swore was meant to be.

Then he saved a human girl who had wandered into our territory while hunters were closing in.

After that, he became someone else. Cold. Distant. A stranger to me.

Then he knelt before the Elders and asked them to dissolve our engagement.

"The one I love is Clara. I can't marry Elena."

The Council was furious. They forced Clara back into the human world and warned her never to set foot in vampire territory again.

To keep her safe, Adrian married me anyway, and never saw her again.

After the wedding, I gave him everything I had.

I miscarried again and again. I nearly died bringing his heir into the world, his heart never turned to me.

Three years later, hunters came for us. I fought tooth and nail to save him, yet I still failed.

As he died, he held my hand, his voice barely there.

"If there's a next life, I hope I never meet you."

"All I ever wanted was to let everything go and be with Clara."

He died first. My own wounds took me soon after.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of the family council.

Adrian was kneeling before the Elders, begging them to let him be with the human girl.

Everyone expected me to fall apart.

But this time, I only slid the engagement ring off my finger and set it down in front of him.

"Adrian. You can have her."

Chapter 1

Elena's POV

Adrian was dying in my arms, two bullets buried in his chest.

The silver had pierced his heart, and blood had soaked through the whole front of his coat.

The guards had already driven the hunters back.

All that remained of the hall was the shattered crystal of the fallen chandeliers, the toppled long table, and the smell of blood, so thick it would not clear.

I knelt and pressed down on the wound with everything I had.

Blood kept welling up between my fingers anyway.

My own back had taken a few rounds.

The silver was lodged against bone, and the pain left me barely able to hold on.

But I didn't dare let go.

"Adrian. Stay awake."

I looked down at him, my voice shaking hard.

"The doctor's almost here."

"Just hold on."

He lay in my arms, his face a terrible shade of white.

Vampires were never warm to begin with.

But in that moment, I could feel him going cold, inch by inch.

He lifted his eyes to mine.

Those crimson eyes I had loved for so long finally lost their coldness.

There was exhaustion in them.

Regret.

And a guilt that had come far too late.

"Elena."

He said my name.

I bent close at once.

"I'm here."

I had said those words too many times.

When he fell apart after Clara was sent back to the human world, I stayed beside him.

When he shut himself in his study and wouldn't see me, I stood outside the door and kept watch all night.

I was always there.

But it had been so long since he had said my name with any tenderness.

Adrian's fingers stirred. He saw the tears gathering in my eyes, and only brushed the back of my hand, light as nothing.

"I'm sorry. I can't stay with you any longer."

My tears dropped onto his face.

"Don't talk like that."

"You're not going to die."

He only shook his head.

The movement was so faint I almost missed it.

"My only regret is that I ever married you in the end."

Everything in me went rigid.

The wound in my shoulder was still bleeding.

But in that instant, all of the pain went numb.

Adrian looked at me, his voice sinking lower.

"I used to think that since we grew up side by side, you would be the only wife I'd ever have."

"It wasn't until Clara that I understood what love really was."

My lips parted.

My throat was full of the taste of blood.

I wanted to ask him, what was I to him?

I had miscarried for him over and over, nearly losing my life just to bear his heir.

Countless times I had taken silver meant for him, kept watch over him without rest, even as he gave me nothing but a cold face.

And after all of it, he still regretted marrying me.

But I couldn't get the question out.

Because I already knew the answer.

Adrian looked at me, the last light in his eyes slowly going out.

"If there's a next life."

He said.

"I hope I never meet you."

My fingertips clenched hard. I could no longer tell which hurt worse, the silver in my body or the wound in my chest.

He no longer had the strength to make out my face.

"All I wanted was to let everything go and be with Clara."

As the last word left him, his hand slid out of mine.

I looked down at him.

For a long time I didn't move.

The noise of the hall felt very far away.

The guards were shouting for the doctor.

Someone tried to lift me off the floor.

But I only held Adrian.

I held the man I had loved my whole life, the man who, at the very end, had used his dying breath to deny everything I had been.

A great weariness came over me.

The wound in my shoulder bled and bled.

The burn of the silver bored along my bones, straight toward my heart.

I looked at Adrian's pale face, and at last the tears wouldn't come.

So it was true. He had never loved me, not even at the end.

I had once believed that if the Council sent Clara back, if Adrian married me, if I simply stayed at his side, then one day he would see how much I cared for him.

He never did.

In all our years of marriage, I gave him everything.

When he didn't want to attend a function, I went in his place.

Every time hunters came, I put myself in front of him without a thought for my own life.

When he said he didn't want children, I carried the Council's pressure alone.

Then he changed his mind and said he wanted a child after all.

I conceived, again and again.

And lost them, again and again.

The doctor said my body couldn't keep paying this price.

But I gave birth to that child anyway.

Because I thought that with a child, this household might finally hold something that was truly mine.

It didn't.

Even the way Adrian looked at our son carried that same faint distance.

His body stayed at my side.

But his heart had followed Clara back to the human world the day she left.

Yet all my life, I clung to nothing but an empty shell.

Blood ran out of my wounds.

The candlelight in front of me dimmed and dimmed.

At last I couldn't hold Adrian any longer.

As I fell, I heard someone call my name.

But I had no strength left to answer.

If there really was a next life.

I would never stand in his way again.

I would never wait for him again.

I would never throw away my whole life for a man who didn't love me.

I would let him have what he wanted.

And let myself go too.

Chapter 2

Elena's POV

When I opened my eyes again, I heard the bells of the Council.

It was low, ancient, and cold.

I came awake with a start.

What lay in front of me was not a bloodstained hall.

Nor Adrian's crimson eyes, already gone dim.

It was the council chamber of the Prince's domain.

The black marble floor caught the candlelight.

At the far end of the long table, the members of the Council sat with grim faces.

And Adrian knelt before them.

His black formal coat was immaculate, his shoulders straight.

He was not wounded.

He had not died in my arms.

I looked down at my own hands.

The fingers were slender and pale, and on the middle one I still wore that engagement ring.

I had been reborn.

Back to the day of the family council.

The day Adrian first knelt before every Elder and asked to end our engagement, all for Clara.

"The one I love is Clara. I can't marry Elena."

Adrian's voice rang out.

Calm, certain, without a trace of hesitation.

"I've only ever seen Elena as a sister. There has never been love between us."

The chamber fell into dead silence.

The Elders' faces could not have been darker.

My father stood a short distance away, his expression like iron.

My mother gripped her fan, her eyes darting to me in a panic.

Everyone was waiting for my reaction.

In my last life, this was the place where I threw away my dignity and my name.

I rushed over and seized Adrian's hand and asked if he had lost his mind.

I asked how he could destroy our engagement over a single human girl who had simply wandered in.

He had kissed me at my coming-of-age ceremony.

He knew exactly how I felt, and he had agreed to the engagement himself.

I pressed him word for word, laying out every trace of our fragile ambiguous tenderness as leverage to confront him.

I wept without a shred of grace that day.

Every vampire noble in the room saw how pitiful I was, how broken.

And the Council despised Clara all the more for it.

They decided the human girl had bewitched the Prince's heir and turned an ancient noble engagement into a joke.

Not long after, the Council, in its fury, forced Clara back into the human world and warned her never to enter vampire territory again.

To keep her safe, Adrian never saw her again.

And in the end, he still married me.

But that marriage was a cage I had forced into being from the very first day.

He lost Clara.

I lost the love I had imagined into existence.

For an entire lifetime, not one of us was ever truly happy.

Now the same scene was unfolding all over again.

Adrian still knelt there.

He still begged to break the engagement, all for Clara.

But this time, I did not rush to him.

I did not cry.

I only watched him, quietly.

I watched the man I had loved too long, who’d hurt me so deeply that I dared not love him anymore.

The head of the Council brought his staff down hard.

"Absurd."

"A mere human girl, fit to interfere with a noble vampire engagement?"

Adrian raised his head.

"Clara has done nothing wrong."

"She only wandered in by accident."

"I am the one who fell in love with her."

"That is why I cannot marry Elena."

The Elder sneered.

"Do you understand what you are saying?"

"I do."

Adrian's tone did not change.

"I'm prepared to bear the consequences."

Everyone looked at me again.

My father warned in a low voice, "Elena, don't be willful."

They all assumed I would cling to Adrian the way I had in my last life.

Because everyone in vampire society knew that I loved Adrian.

I loved him enough to take silver for him, enough to give up my pride, enough to throw away even the dignity of a highborn vampire lady.

At last Adrian turned his head and looked at me.

There was something conflicted in his eyes.

There was guilt in them, and reluctance.

But that habitual way he had of avoiding me, of bracing himself against me, sent a sharp ache through my chest.

I knew he was probably getting a headache already, certain I was about to make a scene, about to cling and beg him not to call off the engagement.

I looked into his eyes, and suddenly it all struck me as absurd.

In my last life I spent a lifetime proving I loved him, a lifetime waiting for him to turn back.

And to his dying day he said he wished he had never met me.

So in this life, what was left to fight for?

I slowly raised my hand.

I slid the engagement ring off my finger, and the bareness it left behind hollowed out something inside me.

In my last life, all I remembered was the tenderness in his eyes the day he slid this ring onto my finger.

Yet after only a few meetings with that human girl, he had grown cold toward me.

Unwilling to accept it, I clung to this ring day and night, certain that one day his heart would turn back to me.

Only later did I understand that this ring proved one thing only: that I had trapped a man who didn't love me, and trapped myself along with him.

I walked up to Adrian.

Everyone held their breath.

Adrian looked up at me.

Perhaps he thought I would clutch the ring and ask him through tears why he was doing this.

But I only bent down and set the ring on the cold floor in front of him.

"Adrian."

My voice was very calm.

"You can have her."

The chamber went abruptly silent.

Adrian's pupils contracted slightly.

"What did you say?"

I straightened.

I did not look at the ring again.

"The one you love is Clara."

"And you said it yourself. You only ever saw me as a sister."

"So there's really no reason for this engagement to continue."

My father's face changed in an instant.

"Elena."

I didn't turn around.

I only looked at Adrian and said, word by word:

"From this day on, I am no longer your fiancée."

His expression finally shifted.

At first there was an instinctive flicker of relief, even gladness, but it was quickly overtaken by something stunned.

He had finally gotten exactly the result he'd knelt to beg for.

Yet he didn't look nearly as happy as he should have.

I knew he didn't understand.

He didn't understand why I wasn't crying.

He didn't understand why I wasn't throwing away my dignity to hold on.

But I no longer cared to explain.

I turned to face the Council.

"Since Lord Adrian sees me only as a sister, I am willing to end the engagement of my own accord."

"This has nothing to do with Clara."

"I ask that the Council not take its anger out on her because of me."

With that, I gave the Elders a bow.

It was the most dignified exit a highborn vampire lady could make.

No tears, no clinging, nothing left but the calm of a stranger.

Adrian sat frozen.

"Do you know what you're saying?"

I raised my eyes to his.

"I do."

"This is your wish."

"And it's my decision."

His thin lips pressed together.

"You don't have to say these things just out of spite."

I gave a soft laugh.

So in his eyes, even letting go was nothing more than spite.

He still didn't know I had already died for him once.

Didn't know I had held his stiffening body and listened to him wish he had never met me.

Didn't know those few words had ground the last of my love into ash.

"Adrian, I'm not spiting you."

"I'm only tired."

He stood there, falling silent for the first time, and for a long while.

I knew he had come here today, before the Elders and the nobles, fully intending to humiliate me into backing down, into quietly giving up the engagement on my own.

Yet now, without the slightest effort or a single word of argument, he had made me take off the ring.

He looked at the ring on the floor, at a loss for what to say.

The woman who had once watched him so eagerly no longer waited for his answer.

I turned and walked out of the chamber.

The heavy doors closed slowly behind me.

Chapter 3

Elena's POV

When I returned to my room, my maid was waiting at the door.

She saw my bare finger, and her face changed openly.

"Miss, your ring..."

"I took it off."

I walked past her.

"Don’t ever mention Adrian in front of me again."

The maid froze where she stood, not daring to answer for a long while.

I paid her no mind.

The room was still arranged the way it had been before the engagement.

The wardrobe was full of gowns my mother had chosen herself.

On the vanity sat the ruby coronet that only a vampire bride would wear.

In a desk drawer lay the letters Adrian had sent me long ago.

They were all relics of a much earlier time.

I opened the drawer and took the letters out, one by one.

The first was written for my tenth birthday.

That year, too nervous at my first vampire banquet, I had missed a step in the dance, and a few noble girls had laughed at me all evening.

Adrian had stepped in front of them on my behalf.

He said, "Elena will be my wife one day."

"Anyone who laughs at her laughs at me."

That night, he sent this letter.

In it, he had marked out the dance steps with simple symbols and praised how beautiful my gown was.

At the end of the second page, there was only a single line.

"Don't be afraid. No matter what, in my eyes you dance the most beautifully of anyone."

I had once read that line hundreds of times.

Later, after we married, I brought it up, and he only said with cold indifference that it had been an older brother comforting a younger sister.

He had simply been too young to understand, mistaking concern for love.

Back then I was the only one still lost in the dream, unwilling to wake.

The second letter was written before he left to drive hunters from the northern territories.

He told me to wait for him to come home.

And so I waited.

Waited through the snow.

Waited into spring.

Until he came back wounded, and I kept watch at his bedside for three days and nights without leaving for a moment.

The first thing he said when he woke was:

"Elena, why are you crying again?"

His tone was helpless, but indulgent.

Back then, I thought that was love.

So when he said he didn't love me and wanted to end the engagement, how could I have accepted it?

Now, thinking back, all of it was laughable.

I threw every letter into the fireplace.

The flames swallowed the pages almost at once.

Those words I had once treasured curled and blackened, bit by bit, and finally turned to ash.

The maid watched, her face going pale.

"Miss, Lord Adrian wrote those by his own hand."

"I know."

I watched the fire.

"That's exactly why they should burn."

From this day on, I didn't need these things to prove that he had once loved me.

Because it was never real. From start to finish, it was only my one-sided longing.

That evening, word came from outside.

In the end, the Council did not punish Clara immediately.

Because I had ended the engagement myself, there was room now to maneuver.

Adrian, as the Prince's heir, vouched for her, insisting Clara had only wandered into vampire territory by mistake, that she had never tried to seduce him, that she deserved neither exile nor death.

The Council, though furious, conceded for the time being.

Clara was brought into the Prince's domain, kept under Adrian's personal watch.

When I heard this news, my maid was pressing an ice pack to my shoulder.

The bullet wound that had killed me in my last life was gone now, of course.

But my body remembered the pain.

The place where the silver had passed through still flared, now and then, like fire.

The maid watched my expression carefully.

She probably expected me to throw something, to cry, or to rush off to find Adrian at once.

But I only nodded.

"I see."

She hesitated a moment.

"Miss, you really won't go and look?"

I asked back:

"Look at what?"

She lowered her head and said nothing more.

At how Adrian shielded Clara, at how he defied the Council for the sake of another woman.

I had witnessed all of this in my last life, bearing endless humiliation and ridicule.

I had no desire to look at it again.

But the next day, I ran into them anyway, at the end of a corridor.

Adrian was leading Clara out of the council chamber, her hand in his.

Clara wore a pale dress.

She was human, her color far warmer than a vampire's, her eyes a clear, pure blue.

When she saw me, she instinctively shrank back behind Adrian.

Adrian moved at once to block her from view.

That look was far too familiar.

I had seen it countless times in my last life.

The moment Clara's name came up before the Council, he would look at me like this, his eyes full of guarded suspicion.

He always assumed I would be jealous of Clara, that I would harm her.

Yet the Council had spared the human girl and only sent her back, forbidden from vampire territory, and that mercy had come largely from my own pleading.

Adrian's coldness and disdain had hurt me, truly, but I had told myself it was only that he hadn't thought it through, that he'd simply forgotten his feelings for me for a while, and none of it was the human girl's fault.

Later Clara was sent away, and he never saw her again.

But from that day on, the whole of him began to crumble.

After I married him, all I had beside me day in and day out was nothing but this empty shell of a man.

His body present.

His heart kept apart by a human he could never see again, a human he loved.

"Elena."

Adrian spoke first.

There was a slight tension in his voice.

I stopped and gave him a perfectly correct noble's bow.

"Lord Adrian."

A faint movement passed through his brow.

I had never addressed him that way before.

I had called him Adrian.

Called it warmly, sweetly.

Now this title of Lord swept away all the closeness we had built up since childhood.

Clara peeked out from behind him and said softly:

"Are you Miss Elena?"

I looked at her and gave a small nod.

"I am."

She bit her lip.

"I'm sorry."

"I didn't know you and Adrian were engaged."

"If I'd known, I never would have—"

"Clara."

Adrian cut her off.

"This isn't your fault."

I watched the two of them.

One shielding her too eagerly.

One apologizing with too much fragile guilt.

A perfect match.

In my last life, this was the scene I dreaded most.

Because every time I saw it, I felt like an outsider who didn't belong.

Now, strangely, I felt only relief.

Since they loved each other, they could face whatever came next on their own.

I no longer had to stand between them, correcting their mistakes and shouldering the cost for nothing.

"It truly isn't Miss Clara's fault."

I said calmly.

"The engagement has been dissolved. Whoever Lord Adrian chooses to be with is none of my concern."

Yet Adrian's face did not ease at this.

He stared at me, his expression grim.

"Do you have to talk like this?"

I genuinely didn't understand, and I looked at him openly.

"Did I say something wrong?"

He seemed caught for words.

Clara gave his sleeve a careful tug.

"Adrian, don't fight with Miss Elena because of me."

Adrian looked down at her, and his voice softened at once.

"I'm not."

Then he looked back at me.

"You just ended the engagement. It's natural that you're upset."

"But Clara is innocent."

I nearly laughed out loud.

So he thought I was upset.

He thought my calm was nothing but resentment.

He still believed I loved him too much to ever let go.

"Don't worry."

I said.

"I won't make things hard for her."

"And I won't pester you anymore either."

Adrian's eyes darkened.

"Elena, that isn't what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?"

He was silent.

He couldn't say it himself.

Because he wanted me to set him free.

And he didn't want me to slip away so easily.

He wanted Clara standing at his side.

And he expected me to keep standing where I was, looking at him, waiting for him, aching for him, wasting a whole lifetime in that quiet torment, as if that were only natural, as if that was how I ought to behave.

In my last life I didn't understand. I thought those occasional moments of closeness came from how much he cherished me.

This life, I saw it clearly.

I didn't wait for his answer.

"I have things to do. Excuse me."

With that, I walked past them.

As I passed, Adrian suddenly raised his hand.

But this time, he didn't catch hold of me.

His hand stopped in midair.

I didn't look back.

Behind me came Clara's uneasy voice.

"Adrian, does she hate me?"

Adrian didn't answer right away.

It was a long time before I heard him say:

"She doesn't."

"She just hasn't worked it out yet."

I didn't slow my steps.

But inside, something gave a cold, quiet laugh.

He was wrong.

This time, I had worked it out perfectly.

Chapter 4

Elena's POV

On Clara's third day in the Prince's domain, Adrian held a small banquet for her.

Ostensibly, it was to introduce her to vampire society.

In truth, everyone understood what it really was: Adrian announcing to all of them that Clara was someone who mattered to him, that no noble had better dare to slight her or gossip about her.

But how could a single banquet hold back the talk?

A human girl.

No bloodline.

No family.

She didn't even understand the most basic vampire etiquette, which meant she was bound to become a target of ridicule.

Except that in my last life, having just thrown away my dignity before the Elders begging Adrian to come back, I had attended this banquet too, and absorbed most of the mocking looks for her.

Back then, only recently cast aside, I still refused to let go.

I wore my most magnificent gown and the ruby earrings he'd given me at our engagement, and I sat stubbornly in that banquet hall.

I thought that if I was only dignified enough, noble enough, I could make Adrian remember who truly belonged at his side.

But that whole evening, he tended to Clara.

Clara wasn't used to vampire fare.

He had the blood wine taken away and replaced it with juice she could drink.

She was frightened by the nobles' stares.

So he stood in front of her and coldly warned everyone to mind themselves.

In the end, he took her hand and led her out of the hall himself.

And I sat where I was, listening to countless laughs pitched low all around me.

They said Elena had lost to a human.

They said childhood sweethearts meant nothing, that the one Adrian loved was never her after all.

Back then I gripped my wine glass until my nails nearly cut into my palm.

I told myself I hadn't lost yet.

But now, living it again, I only saw how pitiful and foolish that version of me had been.

Before the banquet, my maid came to ask which gown I wanted.

I pointed offhandedly to a deep blue dress.

Simple, dignified, nothing to fault.

The maid hesitated.

"Miss, won't you wear any jewelry?"

I glanced at the vanity.

Most of those pieces were tied to Adrian.

He had given me earrings.

A brooch.

And many beautiful ruby necklaces.

In the past, every time I attended a banquet, I would carefully choose one of them to wear.

As if carrying some trace of him on me would tell everyone that he and I were still the perfect match.

Now, thinking back, there was really no need.

"No."

I said.

"Tonight isn't my stage. I won't steal anyone's thunder."

The maid lowered her head and didn't press further.

The banquet hall was bright with light.

By the time I arrived, Adrian was already standing in the center of the crowd with Clara.

Clara wore a white dress.

It was a color vampires rarely chose.

Standing among a crowd of pale, coldly beautiful vampires, she looked especially fragile.

Adrian stood at her side.

He bent his head slightly, listening patiently to whatever she said.

His posture gentle, careful.

The nobles around them watched with varied expressions.

Some curious.

Some scornful.

Some simply waiting for the spectacle.

I took a glass of wine and went to sit in a corner.

I didn't go to disturb them.

A short distance away, a few noble girls clustered together, talking under their breath.

"That's Clara?"

"She reeks of a lowborn human. She wouldn't even be fit to serve as my blood slave."

"And the Prince's heir really dissolved his engagement for her."

"Miss Elena is here too."

Their gazes fell on me.

They were probing, bright with the thrill of watching a scene about to unfold.

In my last life, looks like that would have mortified me.

This life, I only lowered my eyes and drank.

The wine carried a faint scent of blood.

It was stronger than anything from the human world.

It was colder, too, and it settled me better.

Before long, music rose in the hall.

By vampire custom, the host opened the first dance by inviting the most honored lady present.

Every time before, Adrian had invited me.

We'd grown up together so long that we knew each other without a single word of prompting.

He knew the moment I would turn.

He knew the moment I would lift my hand.

I had once believed that wordless understanding was the proof of us that no one could ever replace.

But tonight, he took Clara's hand.

Clara was visibly flustered.

She said in a small voice:

"Adrian, I can't dance."

"It's all right."

He murmured.

"Just follow me."

The words made my fingers go still.

He had once said the very same thing to me.

At my first ball, I was so nervous I nearly stepped on my own hem.

He had taken my hand and said:

"Elena, don't be afraid. Just follow me."

I let those words make my heart race for years.

So it turned out the same line could be given just as easily to someone else.

So it turned out the same line was so worthless after all.

Clara followed him onto the floor.

At first it went smoothly enough.

But noble dances are complex, the rhythm quick.

Before the music was half over, she had missed two steps.

On the third, she stumbled straight into Adrian's chest, her face gone white.

Faint laughter rippled through the room.

Clara's eyes reddened in an instant.

"I'm sorry."

Her voice trembled.

"I really can't learn it."

Adrian frowned and swept his gaze across the crowd.

The laughter stopped at once.

He steadied Clara, his voice turning colder.

"That's enough for tonight."

The music cut off abruptly.

An awkward silence filled the hall.

Several Elders already wore very dark expressions.

A vampire banquet was not some game from the human world.

The Prince's heir, cutting a dance short in front of everyone for the sake of a human girl.

This was neither thoughtfulness nor youthful devotion.

It was simply disrespect.

Clara clearly sensed the shift in the air.

She panicked further and clutched at Adrian's sleeve.

"Did I do something wrong again?"

"No."

Adrian said at once.

"They're simply too harsh."

But as he said it, his gaze passed over the crowd and landed on me.

I was lowering my head, cutting into the red meat on my plate.

Feeling his eyes, I looked up at him.

He was watching me.

There was a familiar meaning in his eyes.

In the past, whenever a banquet slipped out of control, I was the one who smoothed it over for him.

I would rise with a glass in hand.

I would draw everyone's attention away with the right words.

I would manage the Council on his behalf.

And turn his breach of etiquette into something that could be forgiven as an honest slip.

I had done it too many times in my last life.

So many that even he came to take it for granted.

But this time, I only set down my knife and fork and gave him a small nod.

Then lowered my eyes again.

I would not clean up his mess.

I would not be the one who always understood, ever again.

Adrian's face sank, bit by bit.

Clara was still crying quietly.

He had no choice but to lead her out of the hall.

The moment the doors closed, the talk could no longer be held back.

The Council members' faces were like iron.

Someone came over to me, his tone cool.

"Miss Elena, do you really not intend to talk some sense into Lord Adrian?"

I raised my eyes to him.

"Lord Adrian and I have already ended our engagement."

"His affairs are not mine to meddle in."

The noble was taken aback.

He probably hadn't expected me to refuse so flatly.

I stood and smoothed my skirt.

"Excuse me."

When I stepped out of the hall, the night wind was cold.

At the end of the long gallery, I saw Adrian.

Clara was no longer with him.

He stood alone at a window, a glass of blood-red champagne held between his fingers, not a drop touched.

I was about to leave when he suddenly turned and looked at me.

"Elena."

I stopped.

"Lord Adrian."

He frowned.

"Do you have to call me that?"

"We've ended the engagement."

"There should be some distance in how I address you now."

He looked at me, irritation pressed beneath his eyes.

"You could easily have helped me tonight."

I watched him quietly.

So he truly believed I ought to help him.

Even after he ended our engagement in front of everyone for Clara.

Even after he had just stood with Clara in the center of the floor and given another woman every bit of the tenderness once meant for me alone.

After leaving my heart in tatters, after grinding my dignity into the floor, he still believed that whenever he needed me, I should step forward.

"Why?"

I asked.

Adrian was startled.

"What?"

"Why should I help you?"

At the question, his face finally changed.

I looked at him, my voice calm.

"You chose Clara."

"So you should bear the consequences of that choice yourself."

"Not every mess is mine to clean up for you."

Adrian's thin lips pressed tight.

It was a long time before he said, low:

"You weren't like this before."

I gave a small laugh. "Before, I was your fiancée. Now I'm not."

"When someone's place changes, their heart changes too."

He looked at me, and for a moment his gaze went blank.

Perhaps he was finally realizing I wasn't throwing a tantrum.

That I truly had no intention of turning back.

But he still refused to believe it.

He only said:

"Elena, I know you're still angry."

"But Clara doesn't understand any of this."

"There's no need to target her like this."

A sudden weariness washed over me, along with a strange bafflement.

"I'm not targeting her."

"I simply stopped helping you."

With that, I walked past him.

This time, he didn't stop me.

For a long while, there was no sound behind me.

It wasn't until I had nearly reached the stairs that I heard him call out, low:

"Elena."

I didn't look back.

And he didn't go on.

The candlelight wavered in the gallery.

My shadow fell across the floor, stretched long.

In my last life I had always walked toward Adrian's retreating back.

I followed it so long I nearly forgot who I was.

This life, I was the one who walked away first.

And he stood where he was.

Tasting, for the first time, what it was to be left behind.

Chapter 5

Elena's POV

A week after the banquet, something happened in the Prince's domain.

A hunter disguised as an attendant slipped into the side hall.

That day had begun as nothing more than an ordinary council session.

Several members of the Council were present.

Adrian was there too.

He had brought Clara with him, seated in the place nearest the head of the table.

She was plainly out of place there.

As the vampires discussed territory, taxation, and the purging of hunters along the borders, her face stayed pale the whole time.

Adrian soothed her in a low voice more than once.

Only then did she manage not to leave her seat.

I sat at the other end of the long table, listening quietly to the Council argue.

After the engagement ended, my father had begun bringing me back into family affairs.

He said that since I was no longer Adrian's fiancée, I ought to plan for my own future.

The words were practical.

And they were the most welcome thing I'd heard in a long while.

At last I was no longer simply someone's fiancée.

I was still Elena.

A daughter of an ancient vampire house.

Someone who should have had her own place in that council chamber all along.

Halfway through the session, I caught the faintest trace of silver.

The scent was buried under blood wine and incense, almost impossible to detect.

My fingers stilled. I raised my eyes toward the door.

An attendant was walking in, carrying a tray of wine.

His steps were steady.

His head bowed at just the right angle.

But his hand gripped the tray too tightly.

The next second, his arm shot up.

Beneath the tray was a small silver crossbow.

And its target was Adrian.

"Watch out!"

Someone screamed.

The side hall dissolved into chaos.

The guards drew their swords.

The Elders rose.

Clara’s face drained of color, and her first instinct was to shrink back.

She knocked over a chair, caught her hem on her ankle, and fell to the floor.

Adrian threw up a hand and knocked the first silver bolt aside.

But the second was already upon him.

In my last life, it had been the same.

Not the same day.

But the same kind of danger.

A hunter had hidden by a side door of a banquet hall, firing a silver bolt at Adrian then too.

Back then I was close to him, with no time to think.

I threw myself over and shoved him out of the way.

The bolt drove into my shoulder.

A burning pain ignited in my flesh, scorching until my whole arm went nearly numb.

Adrian steadied me and frowned.

"Elena, that was reckless."

I was in too much pain to keep the color in my lips, yet I forced a calm and asked whether he was hurt.

That day, he was silent for a long time.

Afterward, I thought it meant his heart ached for me.

Only now do I understand that he simply couldn't grasp why I kept clinging to him, knowing he didn't love me.

Couldn't grasp why I kept throwing myself in front of him, knowing it would only hurt.

This time, I did not move.

I sat at the other end of the long table.

I watched calmly as the guards rushed in.

I watched Adrian twist aside.

The silver bolt grazed his shoulder, tore his coat, and drew a thin line of blood.

Not fatal.

Hardly even a serious wound.

But the hall went still for a heartbeat.

Because everyone had seen it.

Clara had bolted under the table, hidden herself completely, without a single glance at her fiancé.

And I, the childhood sweetheart who had always been willing to die for Adrian, only sat quietly where I was.

The hunter was subdued quickly.

The guards pinned him to the floor.

The Council's faces were grim.

Adrian stood where he was, blood seeping from his shoulder.

But he didn't look at the wound first.

His gaze cut through the chaos and found me.

I knew what he was thinking.

He was wondering why I hadn't rushed forward.

Why I hadn't thrown my body in front of his to take the danger, the way I always had.

But Adrian.

This time, why should I save you?

A handmaid helped Clara up, and she was shaking all over with fright.

She threw herself into Adrian's arms, her voice thick with tears.

"Adrian, I was so scared."

"That man almost killed me too just now."

Adrian looked down at her.

His hand lifted, then in the end settled on her back.

"It's over now."

Clara cried harder.

"This place is terrifying."

"I want to go back."

"I don't want to stay here anymore."

The Council's faces went colder still.

A human girl, saying such things in a vampire council chamber.

It was not merely cowardice.

It was an outright insult.

Yet Adrian did not reproach her.

He only looked at me.

That one look was heavy.

It held accusation, along with a flicker of resentment I couldn’t comprehend.

I stood and gave him a bow, exactly as custom required.

"Lord Adrian, you're injured."

"Please have the doctor see to it quickly."

The words were perfectly proper.

And perfectly distant.

Adrian's face darkened further.

"That's all you have to say?"

I asked calmly:

"What else would there be?"

He stared at me.

"You weren't like this before."

That line again.

It seemed to be the only thing he could use to prove that he and I were still tangled together.

But the Elena of before was already dead.

Dead beneath a hunter's gun.

Dead in the moment he said he wished he had never met me.

I looked at the blood on his shoulder.

There was no satisfaction in my heart.

And no ache either.

Only a tired sort of calm.

"What I used to be doesn't matter anymore."

Clara lifted her tear-filled eyes to me.

Perhaps she expected me to mock her for being a coward.

But I didn't.

She was human.

It was natural for her to be afraid.

It was natural for her not to save Adrian.

What wasn't natural was the version of me from my last life.

Who knew perfectly well she would be burned.

Who knew perfectly well he might not be moved at all.

And who still threw her life in front of him, over and over, to be his shield.

Adrian said in a low voice:

"Elena, do you really have to be this petty with me?"

I laughed.

"I just didn't take a bolt for you. Any normal person would do the same. Does that really count as being petty?"

He went still.

No one in the hall spoke.

Every noble was watching us.

In the past, I dreaded nothing more than embarrassing Adrian in front of a crowd.

I would smooth it over for him, protect his face.

I would swallow my own grievance and shame, every last drop of it.

But not now. Now I didn't want to.

I looked at Clara.

"Miss Clara has had a fright. Lord Adrian, you should take her back."

"As for the hunter, the Council will look into it."

With that, I turned and left the side hall.

Behind me came the muffled sound of Clara crying.

And Adrian's voice, calling my name.

"Elena."

I didn't look back.

As I stepped through the door, the night wind brushed my shoulder.

The place that had been wounded in my last life was whole now, yet it still ached faintly.

I lifted a hand and pressed it.

That spot had once been pierced by a silver bolt, scorched by daylight.

It had once been struck by a silver bullet.

Every scar was proof that I had loved Adrian.

But no amount of proof could buy a single shred of his sincerity.

This life, I would never use wounds to prove love again.

And I would never again use my life to save a man who had long since stopped being mine.

Chapter 6

Elena's POV

Not long after, my father arranged a new engagement for me.

The news came while I was in the study, sorting through the estate ledgers of the past decade.

Ever since Adrian and I ended the engagement, my father had finally stopped treating me as some future appendage of the Prince's domain.

He began drawing me back into the family's affairs.

It was practical.

And ironic.

In the past, to marry Adrian, I had willingly set aside so much that should have been mine.

Power.

Land.

My place in the family succession.

I had thought that becoming Adrian's wife was the best fate this life could offer me.

Only in the end did I learn it was a grave I had walked into with my own two feet.

When my father pushed open the door, he held a black letter in his hand.

A silver wax seal was pressed into the envelope.

It bore the crest of House Blackthorne.

"Lucien Blackthorne."

My father set the letter down in front of me.

"A vampire duke. The current heir of House Blackthorne."

I had heard the name.

House Blackthorne was ancient nobility as well.

They held the northern territories and had balanced against the Prince's domain for centuries.

Lucien rarely appeared at banquets.

Rumor held that he was cold by nature, indifferent to society, yet steady in his methods and heavy with power.

My father looked at me.

"He knows you've just ended your engagement with Adrian."

"He knows what people are saying out there too."

"And still he's proposed an engagement to you."

I lowered my eyes to the letter.

"Why me?"

My father was quiet for a moment.

"He says House Blackthorne needs a mistress of high enough birth, and clear enough of mind."

I gave a soft laugh.

Clear of mind.

Set against the woman I used to be, the phrase hardly fit.

All of vampire society knew I had loved Adrian until I lost every shred of dignity.

But now, having died once, I supposed I had finally earned those words.

My mother sat to one side and said gently:

"Elena, if you don't want this, we won't force you right away."

"But you should understand that the matter with Adrian has already blown far out of proportion."

"You need a fresh start."

Of course I understood.

The dignity of vampire nobility never gave anyone room to breathe.

I had just ended my engagement with the Prince's heir, and I had ended it of my own will.

But the people outside wouldn't care about the truth.

They would only say Elena had lost.

Lost to a human girl who had wandered into vampire territory by mistake.

I asked, "And the wedding date?"

My father said, "If you agree, one week from now."

I lifted my eyes.

My mother explained at once:

"It isn't that we're rushing you. House Blackthorne is willing to make the engagement public quickly, to put down the gossip for you."

One week.

Soon.

Soon enough that everyone would assume I had grabbed the first man within reach just to spite Adrian.

But Lucien's standing was high enough that, if he wished, and if I were willing, we could dress our marriage up as a beloved tale whenever we liked.

I thought for a moment, then laughed softly.

"I agree."

My father was visibly startled.

"You've thought it through?"

"I have."

I closed the ledger.

"Please reply to Lord Lucien that I'm willing to meet him."

That same evening, Lucien came.

He wore a dark grey coat, tall and broad of frame, the cuffs marked with the sigil of House Blackthorne.

His eyes were a deep red.

When he looked at someone, he was very still, with neither pity nor disdain.

He nodded to my father, then turned to me.

"Miss Elena."

I returned the courtesy.

"Lord Lucien."

Over dinner, he and my father discussed the hunter purges in the northern territories.

Now and then he asked for my view.

When I finished speaking, he listened seriously.

He would take up my point and carry it further.

In that moment, I felt oddly unfamiliar with the experience.

In my last life, after marrying Adrian, I had once tried to help him with matters of governance.

But he always said:

"Elena, you don't need to concern yourself with these things."

"Just be a good wife to me."

And later, when something went wrong, he would look at me in silence.

As if I were the one who had failed in my duty.

But Lucien was not like that.

He didn't treat me as anyone's appendage.

And he didn't treat my broken engagement as a joke.

After dinner, he stopped at the edge of the garden.

"The wedding date is very soon."

He said.

"If you're unwilling, I can postpone it."

Lucien's voice was even.

"I know you've just come out of a long relationship."

"I won't ask you to love me right away."

My fingers stilled.

He went on:

"You can treat this engagement as a partnership."

"If, in time, you come to truly accept me, I'd be honored."

"And if not, I'll still give you all the respect you deserve."

The night wind moved through the garden.

Standing there, I felt something in my chest go suddenly light.

It was the first time a vampire noble had ever treated me as an equal like this.

Not charity.

Not taking my love for granted.

But respect.

I said in a low voice:

"Thank you. But there's no need to postpone it."

Lucien looked at me, and slowly, he smiled too.

"All right. Then in one week, I'll come to marry you."

Before long, word spread through the Prince's domain.

Elena was going to marry Lucien Blackthorne.

Adrian didn't come to me. But just when I'd assumed he was wholly bound to Clara, he sought me out before my wedding.

When the door swung open, my maid dropped to her knees in fright.

Adrian stood in the doorway.

His face was cold, the wound on his shoulder not yet fully healed.

But his eyes were fixed hard on me.

"You're getting married?"

I waved the maid away.

Only the two of us were left in the room.

I nodded calmly, adjusting the ruby necklace at my throat.

"Yes."

Adrian stared at me.

"To Lucien Blackthorne?"

"Yes."

"You only just ended things with me."

I looked at him, calm.

"And?"

He seemed caught on the word.

After a moment, his voice dropped lower.

"Do you understand him?"

"Do you know what kind of place House Blackthorne is?"

"You're marrying a stranger out of spite. Doesn't that strike you as absurd?"

A sudden laugh rose in me.

"Adrian, I'm not spiting anyone."

"I'm getting married in a week."

The room fell quiet.

Adrian's expression finally broke.

Shock, anger, and a kind of panic that couldn't accept what it was hearing.

He stepped forward.

"A week?"

"You're really going to marry him?"

"Yes."

I looked at him.

"By then, I'll be Lucien's wife, and I'll go north."

Adrian's breathing turned heavy.

Watching the seriousness on my face, he realized I wasn't using this engagement to force him back.

I truly meant to leave.

After a long while, he spoke suddenly.

His voice low and rough.

"Didn't you say you would love me forever?"

Chapter 7

Elena's POV

I looked at Adrian.

For an instant, I almost thought I'd misheard.

He stood before me, the wound on his shoulder still unhealed.

His face pale, his eyes stubborn to the point of absurdity.

That he could even say such a thing.

I was quiet for a long time before I asked:

"I did say it. And?"

Adrian froze.

I looked at him.

"Because I once said I loved you, I have to stay rooted in place for the rest of my life?"

"Because I once loved you, then even after you knelt before the Council and told everyone I was only your sister, that the one you truly loved was Clara, I should keep waiting for you?"

His face darkened, bit by bit.

"Elena, that isn't what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?"

He pressed his lips tight.

"I just want you to calm down."

"You only ended the engagement a moment ago."

"Marrying someone else immediately does you no good."

I laughed.

"No good for me? Or no good for you?"

Adrian didn't answer right away.

His silence was answer enough.

He had always been like this.

He wanted Clara.

He also wanted me to keep standing in place.

He wanted his freedom.

And he wanted me to keep that promise to love him forever.

He had always been this way, forever wanting every advantage at once, unable to make a clean choice.

And it was precisely this flaw of his that, in my last life, led him to marry me despite his lingering hesitation.

"Haven't you already gotten Clara?"

I asked.

"Didn't you say she's the one you truly love?"

"You ended our engagement for her, in front of the whole Council."

"Now I've set you free."

"What more could you possibly be unhappy about?"

Adrian's eyes flickered, lost for a moment.

"Clara is different from you."

"Of course she's different."

I nodded.

"She's the one you love."

"I'm only the one you saw as a sister."

"You said that yourself."

Adrian's throat moved.

This time, he didn't argue.

He couldn't.

I turned and picked up the bridal veil my maid had left on the table.

Seeing the movement, Adrian suddenly reached out and pressed his hand down on the delicate lace.

"Don't marry him."

My hand went still.

It was as if he could no longer hold his feelings down, and his voice dropped much lower.

"We grew up together all these years."

"Elena, all that affection and shared history can't just be erased with one ended engagement."

"You're only doing this to spite me."

"Once you calm down, you'll regret it."

I looked at his hand pressed to the table.

In my last life, he had rarely tried so hard to keep me.

Back then I stood outside his door, again and again, waiting for him to open it.

Waiting for him to turn back.

Waiting for him to tell me he'd finally understood, that the one he'd loved all along had only ever been me.

But I never got it.

Not until he died in my arms.

And what he said instead was that if there were a next life, he hoped he had never met me.

That line rose up again, suddenly, in my ears.

He'd said it so lightly.

And ground the last hope of my last life into nothing.

I lifted my eyes to Adrian.

The final ripple inside me settled.

"Adrian."

"You and I have ended our engagement. What I do, who I marry, none of it has anything to do with you."

His fingers went slightly rigid.

"What?"

"You said you love Clara, that you can't marry me."

I went on, word by word.

"So I'm giving you back to her."

"So, I don't want you anymore."

Adrian's face went pale.

"I never said you should marry someone else."

I laughed softly.

"Of course you didn't."

"Because it never once occurred to you that I would leave you, that I would ever truly belong to someone else."

As the words landed, a flicker of panic finally surfaced in his eyes.

He reached out to grab me.

"Elena."

But before his hand could touch me, another hand caught it.

The door had been pushed open at some point.

Lucien stood in the doorway, the chill of the night wind clinging to his dark grey coat.

He didn't look at Adrian.

He only looked at me.

"Elena."

"The wedding bells will ring soon."

I nodded.

"I know."

Adrian looked at him coldly.

"This is between Elena and me."

Lucien's voice was very flat.

"She's already made herself clear. This wedding has nothing to do with you."

Anger pressed beneath Adrian's eyes.

"She hasn't married you yet."

Lucien finally looked at him.

"But she's already chosen me."

The room went dreadfully quiet.

Adrian's hand slowly tightened.

If this were my last life, I would surely have been afraid of his anger.

I would have rushed to explain, then gone to him without a second's hesitation.

But this time, I only walked to Lucien's side and took my groom's arm.

Adrian's eyes reddened in an instant, almost splitting with the strain, full of a grief he had no idea how to turn into anything that might keep me.

"Elena."

He said my name.

And this time, at last, there was unease in his voice.

I turned back to look at him.

"Adrian, you're free."

I paused, then said softly:

"And so am I."

Far off, the wedding bells rang out over the old castle.

One toll after another, low and solemn.

At the end of the black gallery, the doors of the wedding hall opened slowly.

I walked forward, step by step.

And the familiar gaze behind me was finally shut out beyond the doors.

I didn't look back.

This time, I truly walked toward a future with no Adrian in it.