I hide from the light, curled up in my reading chair by a window that I can’t even open. My favourite books rest at my side, but the words on the pages mean little to me anymore. It’s nothing more than meaningless ink scratchings.

This is my little sanctuary.

I can hear everything from here, from my uncle’s boisterous laughter to the servants’ nervous rumourmongering. They think that I’m the one who did it. They think I killed my family, and all the servants too.

The one who I ordered to keep the curtains closed has not only disobeyed me but now is spreading rumours about my unusual disposition against the light.

I knew that they were worthless, but I didn’t know that they were this ill-mannered. I truly will have to clean this place of pests from the top floor to the bottom.

This is my home.

My brothers and sisters should be sitting at the table for dinner, my father telling stories of his day in the court, and my stepmother listening attentively. Instead, my uncle and his family now spread their ill humours through this estate, still haunted by the scent of blood and death.

Patience.

A knight may stand firm, and strike down their foes with a sword, but a lady must plan and act with every decency. Even against such foul creatures, I must take great care not to spoil my reputation with ill temper.

Also… There’s another part of me, a new part of me, power thrumming through my dry veins. The veins that no longer carry blood, but instead guide the dark æther that has corrupted me.

I want to see them afraid.

Father’s eyes, cold and scared, as he watches the monster cut at mother’s eyes. My siblings and I all frozen in our seats, held down by a terror so thick that it manifested itself as tangible chains around us.

That fear I felt in the moment flushes through my memory, tasting so sweet. So precious. So distant.

I want to make these pests feel that same fear. I want them consumed by terror, trembling in the dark, crying and weeping. I want them to see hope burn before their very eyes, and I want to taste them, at the peak of their fright. I want to taste them in the very moment that their hearts burst in their chests.

My breath flows shallow as I taste the air, my æther singing in delight for the darkness surrounding me, but… I must refrain. I am still weak; I need practice if I am to act at all. I need to understand these new abilities granted to me by the red-eyed monster at the moment of my death.

What magic can this æther summon?

Before even seeing that… I think I might sneak myself a small meal.

Even from here I can smell the food that uncle’s family gorges on, the filthy corpses roasted and spiced, may as well have been tossed in the mud. No, what I need is something else.

While I was lost in brooding, the sun has finally retreated. The lanterns don’t harm me quite the same. The new æther running through my veins may not like the light, but these torches and lanterns aren’t powerful enough to garner the same intense reaction as from the sun itself. It’s merely unpleasant.

The guards at the front door move to stop me but freeze when I turn my gaze to them. I draw upon my new power and can feel it glow in my eyes. It’s not something so powerful as what the red-eyed man could do, but it’s a threat, and that’s enough to have the guards stand down.

I continue through the night, bright as day to my corrupted eyes, and pleasantly cool with only a faint glow of moonlight shining from above. It’s through the yard and along a fair distance that I finally come upon the small stain that is the slave’s hovel.

I still don’t fully understand father’s insistence on keeping them. By any right, they’re illegal property even for us. After our kingdom bargained a peace with the tribes of the north, we were obligated to release any slaves of their race in our lands.

Many nobles, my father among them, were offended at the prospect of obeying such an unsightly treaty.

‘It is comparable to surrender,’ is what he’d say. ‘We should have continued to fight, and we would have won.’

While I never thought it at the time, keeping the animals here in our own home for such a silly reason is an outrageous idea, and I still find the very thought of it disgusting. They used to frighten me, but now…

It does not matter, their presence here is the reason that I have something to eat. I hope their blood isn’t completely unpalatable.

Why blood?

How do I know it will satisfy me?

Questions that flee from my mind before I dare to consider them. The cold dread that fills my unbeating heart warns me against such thoughts.

The door to the hovel is locked, and the guard watching over them with a bored expression takes in the sight of me with wide eyes and a small shout. I suppose that most people would be carrying a lantern with them at this time of night, but that would only be a bother.

“Open the door,” I say, letting my new magic flood my eyes as I stare at him. The man trembles, and messes with his keys and in mere moments the lock snaps open.

Entering the small wooden building, I close the door behind me, and the guard nervously waits outside for me to be done, whispering worried thoughts aloud.

“Now, what shall we do with you…” I say, turning to gaze over the gathered creatures. They look like humans at a glance, but even with their animalistic features sliced off, they still stink like the animals that they are.

It should put off my appetite, but the shining little eyes that stare at me in horror, fill my mouth with the sweet taste of anticipation. My noble bearing is decaying as I can smell the fear in the air, it thickens around me into a sweet ichor, and I fill my eyes with dark æther to deepen their fright.

Is this what he felt, what he tasted, as I trembled?

My teeth ache pleasantly as my incisors grow in length, sharpening into tiny daggers. The shadows lengthen in the room around me, magic stirs at my demands, strengthened by the atmosphere of terror.

Pressing æther into the shadows that cling to the edges of the room, I form phantasmal hands and claws from the nothingness, crawling out from the darkness to pry at the flesh of the slaves. The claws barely have strength enough to track white lines across the slaves’ exposed skin, but it causes the younger ones to startle and leap to their mothers. Their fear fuelling my magic further.

“My lady?” A girl, a creature, of nearly my own age, stands up. Her incredible calm pushes away the shadows that I send crawling towards her feet, the magic unravelling in much the same way my æther bursts away in the light.

“Why aren’t you afraid?” I ask, taking a step back as my power wanes. Her bravery is infecting the others around her, and without their fear, the magic is too weak to form.

“What more can you do to me, my lady, that hasn’t already been done?” She asks, meeting my glowing eyes without fear.

Her face is covered in dirt and filth, and her hair is a knotted mess that covers the wounds where her cat-like ears were cut off. The rags she wears are covered in stains both new and old, and torn by overzealous whippings.

“I can do anything I please to you,” I say, confused. They are not meant to be like this, speak like this. They are meant to be animals, barely more than beasts.

They shouldn’t be so brave.

“And what is that?” She asks. “What do you want to do with us? Why have you come here tonight?”

“I… I’m here for your blood,” I say, standing up straight and repairing my noble bearing. What was I thinking coming here and doing such things? This is not noble, not by any measure…

I meet her eyes and instinctively flash my fangs, but she still shows no fear of me.

“Is that all…? I bleed every day because of the whippings.” She says, kneeling on the ground before me and placing a claw on her wrist. “Like this?”

The blood that pools on her wrist, dripping down to her cupped hand, is an enchanting thing. Suddenly it feels wrong to stand over her, my new instincts, no longer violent, scream at me to kneel at equal height.

She offers herself to me freely.

It’s not the same sweetness that I taste in the air thick with terror, but something else. Something warm.

She doesn’t hesitate, slashing her wrist deeper, and filling her cupped hand with fresh blood. I take what she offers, and I sip from her fingers.

The warmth of the blood soothes my parched throat and settles in my stomach for a moment before it flushes through my body like a fever. I drink all that’s bled from her and then drink straight from the wound as I look up into her violet eyes.

“Are you done, my lady?” She asks, looking a little pale.

I cannot harm her. My new instincts demand that I repair her injury, but it takes a moment for me to realize how. The dark æther in my veins forces me to bow and press my fangs to her wound, injecting the magic formed.

I can heal her because I feed from her. Knowledge seeded into my mind after my death, or perhaps, upon my rebirth.

“Thank you,” I say, feeling so flush with vigour that it takes me a moment to realize what I have done. “I…”

I forgot that she was a slave, an animal. She was, for a moment, something else and now I can’t quite see her the same.

 Even as I leave, her violet eyes stay on my mind and her blood boils throughout my body.

For but a moment my mind returns to my family, now gone, but the thoughts slip away before they can settle. There is no meaning to such remembrances.

The dead do not mourn the dead.

The gods must be laughing at such a silly thought.