''ELIAS MERCIER''
He had known of Valen before he ever knew how to pronounce his own name properly.
As a child tucked into a damp cot beneath candlelight and crumbling ceilings, he had listened to stories whispered by firelight, tales of the vampire lord who ruled the edges of time and shadows. A myth, some called him. A warning, others. But to him, he was something else entirely.
He was fascination incarnate.
By the time he was old enough to steal, he stole books. Scrolls. Bits of crumbling lore. Any piece of Valen's legend he could get his hands on. And when the stories ran dry, he began writing his own. Fantasies written in ink and obsession. Letters he never intended to send. A hundred imagined conversations with a man he thought he'd never meet.
Until he found the real Elias Mercier.
A scholar. A quiet man. Brilliant. Arrogant. And conveniently chosen to be the university's envoy to Valen Manor.
He had watched the real Elias for weeks. Studied his gait, his voice, his handwriting. Took his scent like a secret and wore it like perfume. He didn't kill him no, that would've been messy. But a little magical interference. A detour. A storm well-placed. And Elias was waylaid, trapped two towns south in a flooded inn.
And he… he took his place.
It was supposed to be a game. Just a chance to see the man behind the myth. Just one night to stand in the same room as Valen. To speak to him. Maybe earn a moment of interest. Nothing more.
But then Valen looked at him like that.
And the game changed.
Every night after the first was like threading a needle with his own heartbeat. The danger, the power, the desire. It was more than he'd imagined, and gods, he had imagined plenty.
He never expected Valen to look back at him like a man starving. Never expected the questions to sting. The answers to matter. He hadn't planned on falling in deeper each night, hadn't planned on feeling anything beyond infatuation.
But Valen had kissed him like a secret and touched him like a promise.
And that had undone everything.
Now, two days after he walked away, he stood in the forest beyond the manor, watching the flickering lights in the window, hidden by spell and shadow. Watching him.
Valen looked different now.
Sadder. Sharper. Angrier.
A part of him wanted to go back. To tell the truth. To ask for forgiveness. To admit that what had started as a deception had turned into the most painfully real thing he'd ever known.
But that was the problem.
Valen hadn't loved him.
He had loved Elias.
A name. A mask. A well-played role.
Not him.
He didn't even have a name anymore, not really. The only identity that had ever made him feel whole had been borrowed. Stolen.
Still… he ached for Valen.
And in that ache, something dark and loyal and deeply true stirred.
Because if Valen had taught him anything, it was this.
You don't just wait to be loved.
You fight to be seen.
Even if it breaks you.
So he turned from the manor. From the light. From the man still grieving a phantom. And began walking,not away from Valen, but toward the one thing he hadn't been ready to do before.
Become someone real.
So that if Valen ever looked at him again…
He'd know exactly who was looking back.
The real Elias Mercier was kind. Curious. Intelligent.
And entirely useless to Valen.
He barely made it through a day and a half.
Valen had tried , gods, he had tried. Sat him down in the same chair by the fire. Asked the same kinds of questions. Poured the same wine, leaned in the same way, gave him every chance to mirror even an echo of what had come before.
But it was like speaking through glass.
This Elias knew the language of texts and tomes but none of the tension. None of the pull. He didn't press. Didn't prod. Didn't dare.
He wasn't him.
By the end of the second morning, Valen stood in the foyer, cloak draped over one shoulder, jaw tight.
"You'll find horses saddled and waiting," Valen said flatly, not bothering to meet Elias's gaze. "A carriage if you prefer. Tell the university I thank them for their efforts, but their scholar is no longer needed."
The man stammered something polite and confused, but too professional to protest.
Valen didn't wait for him to finish. He turned and walked back into the manor without looking back.
He didn't need another scholar.
He needed him.
The liar.
The thief.
The one who had unraveled him with honeyed words and sharp truths and a mouth that tasted like temptation itself.
Back in the drawing room, Valen stared at the place where the imposter had once sat legs crossed, spine straight, eyes sharp enough to cut centuries down to size.
The memory made his throat tighten.
He'd asked questions for six nights.
But he had never asked the right one.
Not once had he said: Who are you, really?
And now… he was gone.
But not gone enough.
Valen still felt him. Somewhere. Like a phantom limb. A wound trying to remember the shape of the knife.
And that was all the proof he needed.
He wasn't far.
Whoever he was, whatever his name , the false Elias had gotten too close. Left too many fingerprints in places even time couldn't dust away.
Valen paced to the desk and opened a drawer. Pulled out a small vial of blood , not just any blood. His. Saved from a night that should've been nothing but had become everything. A night of surrender.
He uncorked it slowly, bringing the scent to his nose.
There it was again.
Ink. Smoke. Rain.
But beneath it , power. Wild and uneven. Not like Elias Mercier at all. Not old magic, but desperate magic. Woven to mimic, not to mask. Just enough to slip through the cracks.
Valen's lips curled.
"You wanted me to see you" he murmured to the empty room. "And I did."
He brought the vial to the embers in the hearth and tipped it in.
A hiss. A spark. A thread of smoke curling toward the ceiling like a summoned promise.
The magic was faint, but Valen was older than faint things. Older than lies. Older than most of the gods that had ever dared to breathe.
He could follow it.
Would follow it.
Because whoever this man was, he hadn't just worn Elias's name.
He had wormed his way into Valen's thoughts, into his blood, into the hollow place behind his ribs where no one had been allowed to stay.
He had taken something.
And Valen was going to take it back.
Or burn for it trying.
He felt it like a crack in his spine.
A tug ,faint, then growing sharper. Like a thread pulled taut through the fabric of his magic. Through him.
He staggered back from the basin, breath catching, one hand bracing the stone wall of the ruin where he'd been hiding since dawn.
No, not hiding.
Recovering.
Running had a cost, and the spell he'd used to become Elias Mercier ,not just mimic him, but be him had burned through his mana like fire through parchment.
And now…
Now something was pulling on that spell's remains.
Valen.
He didn't need to see him to know.
He didn't need to smell the ash or hear the whisper of ancient silk dragging over cold floors.
It was Valen.
The vampire had found him.
Or worse was coming.
His breath shuddered in his chest.
Not from fear.
But from something far, far more dangerous.
Longing.
He'd spent years crafting the lie. Reading the history. Posing as a scholar's aide to get near the name Valen. Studying his myths like sacred text. Stealing from covens, coaxing druids for the blood-weaving spell, twisting the face and voice of Elias Mercier until it was his skin.
And it had worked.
Valen had wanted him. Needed him.
Valen had softened.
And he'd told himself that was the point.
To see if it could be done. To taste the story that no one had ever lived to tell , what it would mean to be wanted by a creature who claimed to want nothing.
But it had gone too far.
He'd stayed too long.
Six nights. Six confessions. Six truths. And not one of them a lie.
He had meant it when he said he wanted to break.
He had meant it when he said he would've stayed.
Even though he couldn't.
Even though his real name had been burned away long before Valen ever whispered Elias into his skin.
And now, the spell was unraveling.
Bit by bit, his magic frayed like old thread pulled through the eye of a storm.
He sat hard on the edge of the ruined fountain, palms pressed to his temples.
He felt watched. Not by eyes but by magic. Ancient. Focused. Determined.
Valen's scent had lodged itself in his senses even from this distance. Smoke and iron and the cold, perfumed bite of wine. It clung to the inside of his ribs like a brand.
He had underestimated him.
He had underestimated how much he'd mattered.
And that was the danger.
Because now, Valen wasn't hunting out of curiosity.
He was coming because he'd felt something too.
And when he arrived , when he found the man who had seduced him with lies, stolen his trust, and vanished into mist.
He wouldn't just want answers.
He would want blood.
And the worst part?
The false Elias wasn't sure he wouldn't give it to him willingly.
He looked down at his hands. Shaking slightly. The veins beneath the skin glimmered faintly with the last of the glamor spell.
He could feel it breaking.
Soon, the face would fall away.
The voice. The posture. The precision.
Valen would see the real him.
And he didn't know if that man , the man beneath the stolen name , was enough.
Not anymore.