Chương 2: There Was Only Hunger

No matter how hard I struggled, I couldn't free myself. The men holding me had no reason to speak, because their hands communicated everything clearly enough. Thick fingers remained locked around my arms as though I were cargo that had made the inconvenient decision to breathe too loudly. At least they didn't force me into the carriage with Lord Silas Vane. That was the only mercy I received.

Instead, they threw me into the back of a cart and pinned me against the wooden boards while the wheels carried me farther from the only home I'd ever known. I hated that house, along with every wall, cold meal, and hallway where I had learned to lower my eyes. Even so, watching it disappear felt like seeing the last open door in the world close behind me.

If Elias had told the truth, I was being taken to a grave that still had bedsheets, a private torture chamber reserved for women unfortunate enough to belong to Lord Vane. In my first life, stories had often portrayed nobles as perfumed monsters, men with elegant titles covering rotten souls. I had assumed fiction exaggerated them for the sake of drama. Apparently, fiction had been generous.

I twisted again, desperately trying to wrench one arm free, but one of the men cursed before something hard struck the back of my head. The world flashed white, then vanished into darkness. A sharp slap dragged me awake sometime later, snapping my head to the side as pain spread across my cheek. For several disoriented seconds, I had no idea where I was. Then my vision cleared, and I saw the mirrors. Tall, polished mirrors lined every wall, surrounding me with reflections I couldn't escape.

No windows broke the room's darkness, and no witnesses stood beyond the glass. There was only candlelight, endless reflections, and one terrified girl trapped at the center of them all. That girl was me. I was lying upon a large bed, but my dress was gone. Someone had stripped me down to my underclothes, leaving me more exposed than I had ever been in either of my lives. In this era, a woman who revealed even this much of herself was considered ruined unless a husband owned the privilege of seeing it. Owned…

That word crawled over my skin. I pulled against the restraints around my arms, only for coarse rope to bite deeply into my wrists. The bedposts did not move, no matter how violently I struggled. My ankles were bound too, forced apart just enough to make panic tighten in my chest. I pulled against the restraints until the ropes burned my skin and pain spread through my shoulders, while the mirrors surrounded me with the same helpless image from every direction. No, this can't be happening.

After everything I had endured, after being reborn into this miserable world and spending eighteen years being corrected, ignored, starved, beaten, and finally traded away like an object with the nerve to resist, I couldn't accept that this was all a woman was allowed to be here. I had no claim to my own body, no right to refuse, and apparently not even the dignity of being horrified when a man decided he had a right to claim me.

Footsteps sounded beyond the door, and my heart lurched painfully against my ribs, a reaction that had become far too familiar since Lord Vane entered my life. The door creaked open, and Lord Silas Vane stepped into the room wearing a dark robe loosely tied around his thick waist. A pleased smile spread across his damp lips as he looked at me, savoring my fear before he had even crossed the threshold. Through the open doorway behind him, I glimpsed several guards standing in the hall.

They were waiting and watching, prepared to intervene if I caused more trouble than their master could handle. Vane closed the door, and the latch clicked into place.

"Is my flower ready for plucking?" he asked. For a moment, I could only stare at him. What in the hell was wrong with this man? He approached the bed with slow, deliberate steps.

"Do not look so frightened," he murmured.

"You will learn. They all do… eventually." Elias's whisper returned to me with sickening clarity. Vane's last wife had survived one week; the woman before her had thrown herself from a window, and another had simply disappeared. My stomach twisted.

"No," I managed, though the word emerged weak and breathless. I hated how frightened it sounded. Swallowing hard, I dragged air into my lungs and tried again with every scrap of strength I still possessed.

"No! Get away from me!" Vane's smile widened and the sight of his pleasure made something inside me recoil so violently that it hurt.

"There she is," he murmured.

"The lively ones are always the most satisfying to break. Scream as much as you wish. I paid well enough for the noise." Paid… Another word that reduced me to something bought and used. My father's satisfied face flashed through my mind, followed by my mother's silence and Elias smiling beside the open chest. My life had cleared his debts, purchased his house, and secured a future for him, while mine had been stolen before I ever learned what I wanted from it. What was love?

I had never truly known it in my first life. In this one, love had been little more than a rumor other people were allowed to enjoy. It was something mothers gave their sons, something fathers invested in their heirs, and something men spoke of when they meant possession. Vane loosened the belt around his robe, causing my entire body to turn cold before a wave of heat rushed beneath my skin and left everything feeling terribly uncomfortable. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve.

Read this novel on Royal Road. He climbed onto the bed with a strained grunt, pressing his weight over me while I fought uselessly against the ropes. I turned my face away, but his hand closed around my chin and forced me to look at him.

"Do not be difficult," he whispered as his foul breath touched my face. Something inside me just… snapped. It wasn't my heart, because that had been broken too many times to matter anymore. Something else had finally given way, something buried so completely inside me that I had never known it was there. Whatever had broken inside me didn't leave behind courage, hope, or an answer to my desperate prayer. There was only hunger. The entire room sharpened around me.

Candle flames hissed as every reflection grew painfully bright, and sounds that should've been impossible thundered into my awareness. I heard the guards breathing beyond the door, the tiny movements of their clothing, and Lord Vane's pulse beating beneath the skin of his neck. More than anything else, I heard his blood moving through him, warm and alive. His mouth descended toward mine, but I no longer saw his face. I saw only his throat. The force rising through me wasn't a thought or a decision.

It was a command written into something far deeper than reason. Before his lips could touch me, I twisted my head and bit down. Pain exploded through my mouth, but it was not mine. Something pierced far deeper than human teeth should've reached. Flesh tore beneath my bite, and hot blood flooded across my tongue with enough force to make my entire body arch against the restraints. Vane attempted to scream, but the sound died in his ruined throat.

My mouth remained locked against his neck while he thrashed above me, clawing at my hair, face, and the bed. I bit down harder as blood spilled across my chin, ran over my chest, and soaked into the sheets beneath us. It should've sickened me. I should've gagged at the taste and recoiled from what I was doing. Instead, it filled me. Warmth tore through my veins, followed by a terrible and beautiful strength that made the ropes around my wrists seem suddenly thin, pathetic, and almost imaginary.

Vane's struggles began to weaken, but I continued drinking as though the hunger had been waiting eighteen years for permission to exist. Somewhere among the countless reflections, the frightened girl on the bed disappeared, and something else fed in her place. Through the red thunder pounding inside my skull, one command remained. Drink. The restraints snapped away from my body before I fully understood what I had done, tearing apart like damp threads. The sudden freedom barely registered.

Any sensible part of me would have scrambled away from Vane, grabbed the nearest sheet, and fled before his guards realized what had happened. Instead, I surged toward him. Lord Vane tumbled backward from the bed, but my mouth never left his throat. I followed him to the floor and crashed down on top of his body, driven by something that had no interest in escape. A change was sweeping through me, but even that felt too simple. I wasn't merely transforming; I was becoming something else.

His blood poured across my tongue, hot and thick, moving through my body like fire discovering what it had been created to burn. Strength flooded every limb while my skin tingled and my bones ached. My heart struck once with enough force to shake my chest, then disappeared beneath a deeper and stranger rhythm. Disgust should've overwhelmed me. Terror should have torn a scream from my throat. Instead, a terrible thrill raced through me. My teeth remained buried in his neck, although they were no longer merely teeth.

They were fangs. The realization came with cold certainty, and some fractured part of my mind wanted to laugh. Of course I had fangs now. Why should my second life settle for cruelty when it could descend into complete absurdity? Vane's hands struck weakly against my shoulders, but I barely noticed them. His body jerked beneath me before gradually becoming still. His breath rattled wetly within his chest, and the pulse against my tongue fluttered once, then twice, before collapsing into nothingness.

Even then, I didn't stop. I drank until there was nothing left for the hunger to take. Only when its hold finally loosened did I release him. Lord Silas Vane lay motionless beneath me, his mouth hanging open and his eyes frozen wide. The wound in his throat had been torn beyond anything human teeth should've been capable of inflicting. He was dead, and I had killed him. I stared at his body for several heartbeats before slowly lifting my head and seeing myself reflected across every mirror in the room.

The woman staring back at me wasn't the girl Lord Vane had purchased. She was no longer the daughter my father had sold, the disappointment my mother constantly corrected, or the ordinary shadow Elias had spent years mocking. My skin had changed first. The dull, unhealthy paleness I had always hated was gone, replaced by something smooth and almost cold beneath the low candlelight, as flawless as polished porcelain. My hair had become silver-white.

It was neither gray nor faded with age but brilliant silver that fell across my shoulders in soft waves where black hair had hung only moments earlier. It should've made me appear ghostly. Instead, it transformed my face into something impossible to overlook. That frightened me nearly as much as the corpse beneath me.

My features remained recognizably mine, though they had become more defined and striking, as though an unseen hand had stripped away everything forgettable and revealed a face that didn't belong in a room such as this. Blood covered my mouth, chin, throat, and chest, streaking across my skin and soaking into what little clothing remained. By all appearances, I ought to have looked broken or ruined. Instead, I looked monstrous. Then I noticed my eyes.

The ordinary brown eyes that had always appeared nearly black were gone. In their place, a brilliant violet light stared back at me. They were not merely violet but also glowing. Pink-purple light burned within them, bright enough to reflect from every mirror surrounding me. Vane had kept the chamber dim for whatever vile purpose he intended, filling it with low candles and shadowed glass, but the darkness only made the glow more obvious and impossible.

I raised one trembling hand toward my face, and every reflection copied the motion.

"What..." My voice emerged hoarse and unfamiliar.

"What am I?" The door burst open before any answer could come. Vane's guards flooded into the room. One shouted in horror, another crossed himself, and a third swung something hard into the side of my head. My face turned with the impact, but the pain barely registered. It felt no more threatening than a fly landing against my skin. Another blow struck my back, followed by a fist driven into my stomach.

Hands seized my arms, hair, and shoulders while one man screamed that I was a demon and another called for more rope. Fighting or running never crossed my mind, because my attention remained trapped by the mirrors and the impossible reflection staring back at me: silver hair, violet eyes, blood everywhere, and Lord Vane lying dead on the floor. The world broke apart into scattered pieces. Rope scraped against my wrists while men shouted over one another.

Cold air bit into my exposed skin, wheels rattled beneath me, smoke filled my nose, and somewhere above it all, a bell rang again and again. By the time my thoughts finally gathered themselves, I was no longer inside Lord Vane's house. I had been taken to the village square and suspended above a pile of wood. Thick ropes circled my midriff section and dug beneath my ribs, with more restraints binding my wrists and ankles.

They had used enough rope to restrain a horse, and then added iron chains as though terror had inspired their creativity. The square below churned with faces. There were people I knew, people I had passed in the market, and people who had watched me grow from an unwanted child into an unwanted woman. Somehow, none of them had ever cared enough to help me, yet they had discovered endless passion now that they had gathered to watch me die.

"Witch!" A stone struck my shoulder.

"Monster!" Rotten fruit burst against the wood near my feet.

"Demon whore!" Something wet struck my cheek as the crowd screamed, spat, and threw whatever their hands could find. Food, mud, stones, and scraps of wood rained against the platform while their hatred rose in waves. For a moment, I wondered why they had bothered gathering firewood when their rage seemed hot enough to burn me on its own. A man stood beneath the platform with a scroll stretched between both hands. When he began reading, his voice boomed across the square.

"Helena of House Merrow stands accused before God, law, and village witness of murder, witchcraft, blood-drinking, corruption of the flesh, seduction by infernal power, and the slaughter of her lawful husband, Lord Silas Vane." Lawful husband… I scoffed internally. My fingers twitched against the ropes. The crowd erupted in boos, but the man continued reading, each accusation uglier than the last and every word eagerly devoured by villagers who had come to witness my execution. I barely heard him.

My gaze had fallen upon the crowd, where three familiar people stood among the shouting faces and raised fists. The sight of them made my newly changed blood run cold.