I made it. Eventually. If memory serves me right, I was nineteen before I ever set foot in the castle walls. Four years. I had spent four years hiding in the woods, watching my village mourn the death of yet another child, forbidden from showing my face. Forced to hear my mother scream and wail, forced to watch my father decay, forced to see my brother close himself off and refuse to speak, all from afar.

I wanted to comfort them, tell them that I wasn't really gone, ease their suffering as well as my own, but who was I kidding? The little girl they raised was gone. Her scars, her features, her hair. Everything that made her her. Gone. Even if I tried to comfort them, they would not find solace in the monster their child had become, but rather pain and fear.

Watching them shattered me. My heart was in so many pieces, it didn't have a shape anymore. I was broken. I remember wishing I hadn't been brought back, wishing I could kill myself again.

But I didn't. I was alive. And I had finally made it. My calloused feet left dusty prints in the shiny floor, and I took a certain satisfaction in dirtying the richmens' world with the soil of my people. 

People stared, probably because I hadn't been able to scrub the years of dirt out of my clothes no matter how hard I worked, making it painfully clear that I did not belong, but I liked to pretend that they were astonished by my breathtaking, supernatural beauty. It was silly, but it gave me the confidence to refrain from sprinting right back out the door and pretending I didn't owe the old lady a life debt.

I fought my way through the stares, ignoring the whispers and the taunts. I could hear my footsteps echoing in the hallway-entrance-room-thingy. Had my heart still worked, I'm sure I would have felt it pounding in my throat. If I wasn't so afraid of what the old woman would do to me, I would have run. 

Or killed everyone in the room. 

One of the two. Maybe both. Who knows. Point is, I was terrified, and a scared vampire is capable of anything. I just hoped that I was capable of toppling the ruling family and possibly throwing my country into ruin.

I stepped those last few steps and stood dumbly before an empty throne, unsure of what to do next. Supposedly they were expecting me. Supposedly I was the new maid. How nice of no one to greet me but glaring guards and gossiping aristocrats. 

For a long moment, I was sure that the plan had failed; no one was expecting me, and I would be thrown out and lose my chance.

Before I could stop myself, I laughed. A dark, hollow sound befitting of a girl without a heart. It was such a cliché. The maid kills the king. My life was quickly becoming a twisted children's bedtime story and I couldn't find it in me to care.

But when I saw a girl step out from behind the throne and smile at me with carefully veiled fear, I knew I wasn't going to be a cliché. I had no idea what I was or what was in store for me, but I wasn't going to let my life be a simple tale of murder and chaos. Without a second thought, I smiled back up at her, amazed by the truths she hid so well beneath her stunning features.