Rey could feel it in his skin.

Prickling and crawling. 

Something was squirming inside of him. It felt alive.

His violet eyes darted frantically from guest to guest. The world felt molasses slow. The guests around him dangled flutes of champagne between gloved fingers, unbothered. Their predatory eyes seemed like they were glowing. A living, writhing mass of violence.

Someone else had to be feeling this too, right? This uneasy energy? This…

“My Lady.” 

On the dais a man with sleek, silver hair had one hand raised. In the faint yellow light of the ballroom, the red glow — cloistered tenderly between his fingers — was barely visible. Sophia’s head was tilted up. Her expression was reverent.

“Yes,” Sophia breathed. The itch under Rey’s skin grew more insistent. He locked his eyes forward, panting. 

Aden glanced at him, his mouth opening just a fraction. “My Lo —”

It happened all at once. Rey body curled in on itself, a violent spark flashing in his vision. Somewhere, vaguely, Rey felt his knees hit the ground. He knew there was screaming. He didn’t know if it was him or another guest.

This must’ve been what it felt like to be struck by lightning — an impossible and sudden heat. It curled around his wrists, drew him to the peak of agony. There were hands on him now. He willed them away. Could he make them? He wished someone would rip them off of him? Leopold —

“Let him go!” Aden? There was an authority in his voice. “You dare lay your hands —” 

“He’s —”

“Sophia! You need to send for his Majesty, now.”

The pain was fading. Leeching down his body, pooling in his fingertips. In its wake Rey itched. Something clawed just beneath his consciousness. Begging him to remember.

He drew a wet breath between his lips. In his mouth the taste of blood lingered. His eyes fluttered open, the faces swimming in front of him in doubles. Sophia reached a delicate hand out to him and drew away like she’d been slapped. “He —”

Aden stood up from his crouch, pointing to the groups of huddled aristocrats. Somewhere in the corner of his eye, Rey could see Lord Laurent smiling. “Guards! Please escort our distinguished guests to their carriages. Lord Anthony requires urgent medical attention.”

Sophia clenched her teeth, then sighed and bit her wrist with a wet crunch. Her blood, black, dribbled to the floor. With a quiet incantation, it disappeared in a cloud of golden smoke. “We can’t move him. It won’t let us touch him anymore. He must’ve unconsciously…Leo will need to calm him.”

It? “What’s happening?” He burbled. More blood gushed from his throat, splashing on the cold marble of the floor with a wet splat. Aden’s nose twitched. 

“Take deep breaths,” Sophia told him. “Try to clear the blood from your throat. Your mana is awakening, Rey. Your body needs to adjust.”

Mana? Mana had abandoned humans two hundred years ago. That’s what the books said. That’s what everyone in the castle said. The defining confidence for their eventual victory against the palace down south was the knowledge that the mana had taken the vampire's side in the war.

Why would he have mana? “Only vampires…” he managed, before choking. The last guest had long since been ushered through the door, the…priest?…among them. He could hear the murmuring just outside. The insistence that something be explained. 

“That’s why we need Leo,” Aden explained with a frown. “He’s the only one of us who’s lived long enough to have known any humans with mana. He’ll be able to confirm my suspicions.”

Rey spread his fingers on the cold floor, focusing his eyes on the growing puddle beneath him, red and tacky in the yellow light.