Like Rosemary, books never changed. Not when they were well cared for, kept in cold conditions. Minerva used to chastise Rosemary about her reading technique, how she should keep her fingers toward the corner of the page and away from the ink. How she should carefully cradle the old books or prop them open on pillows, so that the spines would not crack. 

Rosemary had perfectly learned her techniques. Perhaps, had she refused to use them, Minerva would still pay her some attention, wandering over to move her hands, to reposition the open book so as not to damage it. 

Today, Rosemary had made the small concession of a cup of blood. Minerva had long ago warned her against bringing any sort of drink near the oldest books, but today she had taken one of the new ones on a whim. Rosemary had never bothered with the new ones before; why, when she had ancient, illustrated tomes of parchment, decorated with rich inks and gilded so that every page shimmered in the light?

This new book was not made of sturdy parchment but of cheap, flimsy paper. The script wasn’t even hand written! Where was the art in this? The touch of another being, sewing and inking and painting and binding their love into every other page? 

Rosemary looked at its cover. There was a lack of illustration, but gold lettering informed her of its title: Caught in the Grasp of the Alpha. Odd.

Taking a sip of blood, she flipped it open. Before Rosemary set to read, she remembered Agnes’ accusation. Shutting her eyes, Rosemary allowed the blood to settle, warm, against her tongue. It was a type A, and had a good heat to it, with sweet notes of... well, Rosemary had no idea what, as she had not consumed anything but blood in centuries. Oh well. She wondered who this had once belonged to. Perhaps a sweet nun of the old church, happy to donate her sanguine blood to the night creatures. 

Was the old church still around? Rosemary thought back to those old monasteries, to the warm-blooded maidens dressed in white habits, to their sanguine blood, holy in its dedication to her.

In some ways, Rosemary supposed she was the original nun. Laughing to herself, she looked down at the novel’s opening page. Her face grew red. She turned the page. Her face flushed redder. Who would read something like this? Where would the story go? She turned the page again, unable to look away.

“What are you reading?”

Rosemary screamed and threw the book across the room. It slammed into a distant shelf of anatomical illustrations and scientific manuals.

Above her, Agnes snorted. “Something illicit, I see.”

“I am reading... nothing at all,” Rosemary said. “I am simply enjoying the atmosphere of the library as I sip this blood.”

“Sure,” said Agnes. She walked across the room to where the book lay and picked it up. Rosemary watched her flip through it in horror. Surely she would be scandalized! What would she think, that her mistress read such... fluff!

Agnes snorted. “Is this the sort of thing you like? These pseudo-werewolf romances are all over Cordis.” 

“A-are they?” Rosemary asked. “I did not know of them.”

“I found them quite offensive,” said Agnes. Then, she muttered, “though perhaps I should find them flattering?”

“Minerva collects them. There are more on the table, there.”

Agnes wandered over, glancing at them. The moonlight bathed her fine silhouette in silver. “Let me see... we have The Alpha’s Nanny, Married to the Huntress, and oh, this should be fun! The Alpha Huntress.” Agnes plucked this off the table, then sat herself on Rosemary’s armrest. 

This close, Rosemary could hear her heart, beating gently away.

Agnes shoved a book into her hands. In the Arms of the Vampire Duchess. 

Raising an eyebrow, Rosemary flipped the book open. “Oh, how silly.”

“It’s about you, mistress” Agnes teased.

“It is not!” Rosemary said, and with that, she began to read.

Or at least, she attempted to read. With Agnes’ pleasant heat beside her, she could not focus on a single page. Instead, her eyes drew slowly away, to Agnes’ thigh, draped across the armrest. To her long, clawed fingers, the gleam of her silver bracelets, her broad shoulders, up to the brown skin of her... neck.

Agnes smelled so very warm. Rosemary was becoming aware of the gentle rush of her blood in her veins. It circulated through her body like the moon around the earth, like the earth around her sun, like the cosmos around itself. Alive. Unknowable. Dark. Enticing. 

Rosemary felt a pricking in her fangs and frowned, pressing her lips together. 

Agnes was here to be her companion, not her food. This was deeply inappropriate. 

And Rosemary had not drunken from another in nine centuries. What if she killed her? What if she hurt her? What if Agnes grew angry and left forever? What if she became... scared? 

Rosemary was harmless now, but she knew exactly who and what she was. Caught in its orbit forever, she knew better than anyone what the moon had done. It was, after all, her fault.

She musn’t fail again. She must measure herself. She must not do to Agnes what she had done to Nyx.

But Agnes smelled like pine and petrichor, and Rosemary found herself drifting toward the other woman.

Werewolves were lovely, Rosemary thought. For they were so close to the earth even as they followed the moon. They were the best of her children, bold and beautiful. Capable of gentility. Not like the vampires. Not at all like the vampires, who they had been created to measure. 

Again, her teeth ached.

Rosemary was determined to distract herself. “How is your book, Agnes?”

“Relatively underwhelming,” said Agnes. “It attempts to convey the experiences of a pseudo-werewolf who is also a hunter, but the details are all wrong.”

“I... see.” How would Agnes know anything about the hunters? If Rosemary remembered correctly, they were quite secretive. And yet, she supposed, she would have no idea if there had been any changes. “Is this book... offensive to you as well?”

“It really should be,” Agnes said. “And yet reading it does not anger me. How is The Vampire Duchess?”

Rosemary frowned, glancing back at her book. “It is nothing like the romances I love.”

Agnes leaned perilously close, so that a loose strand of her black hair tumbled down her neck, and snatched away the book. Rosemary did not miss it.

Taking a sip of her blood, Rosemary tried to steel herself against temptation.

Agnes’ wrist passed by her face. The beat of her heart was an ancient drum. The smell of her blood was as heady as herbs. Rosemary did not remember food, but the scent of the living, the scent of Agnes, so close to her, brought the taste of salt to her tongue.

Rosemary was hungry.

Her cup of blood was still quite full. A sip of it brought no sensation to her tongue, and so she lifted her arm above her head, and closed her eyes, and poured it upon herself. 

It dripped down her cheeks like tears; it felt, for a moment, like the perfect water of her old moon pool, in which she had submerged herself. An embryo. Then she smelled the blood again and all of its complexities.

Agnes was still near. Her heartbeat droned on, an organistrum.

Rosemary let herself remember.

Nyx had been young once, like her.

Nyx had watched her dance beneath the moon. And Rosemary had watched Nyx dance in its absence. She was something new and strange and beautiful. The Maiden of the New Moon. Her skin had been pale, her neck inviting. They had kissed, once, and Rosemary had found the beautiful vein of her neck, like shattered pottery glued together, and drunk and drunk and drunk and drunk and drunk without care, and drunk without distance. 

Nyx’s blood had welled on her tongue; when she lapped at it, it poured out from the corner of her mouth and stained Nyx’s black clothes. And stained Nyx’s pale skin. And dried in her hair.

There had been no vampires, back then, except perhaps for Rosemary. But that night, there had been two vampires instead, beneath the thousand, watchful eyes of the moon.