I won't bore you with the details of my castle stay. If I could have killed myself, I would have, and I probably shouldn't drive whoever is reading this to the brink of suicide with the only uneventful part of my life. Death. Whichever.

I cleaned. I dusted. I washed. I cleaned some more. And after that, I ate--if I was lucky. Not that eating did much good. I was thirsty. Starving. The spells branded into my skin were beginning to fade. The longer I went without blood, the harder it became to restrain myself, and the toll it took on my body had me ducking behind corners to collapse and clutch my throat, barely holding back a rampage. 

But I couldn't just attack some innocent bystander and drink their blood; it would blow my cover, not to mention rid me of the last, fragmented piece of my humanity. I would become a monster, inside and out.

Things weren't all bad though. There was this girl. The one who smiled that near-perfect smile on my first day in the castle. The one who always wore a pristine mask over her true emotions. I didn't know her name, but that didn't stop me from taking chances and angering the head maid just to catch a glimpse of her from afar as she walked the halls. I knew her routine by now. And no, I was not stalking her, I just happened to know where she was most of the time.

She was mysterious. I couldn't tell you why at first, but I found myself incredibly intrigued by that mask she wore. By her. How she swayed her hips as she walked, like she was dancing to a song only she could hear. How her hair never ceased to look perfect, no matter how much of a mess she had made of it. How her brilliant eyes always caught mine from across the room, effectively tying my tongue and tripping my feet like some kind of spell. How she never failed to smile brightly at the castle-goers even when I knew she didn't have a drop of happiness left in her thin frame.

Call it vampiric instincts, but I could tell; she wasn't living, she was following a routine, doing what she was told like a good little pawn, and I wanted to know why. I wanted to know her. I wanted to pull off the mask and find what was hiding underneath, and I didn't want anyone else to beat me to it.