Third Person's POV
It had been three nights since her arrival, and still Severin Vale could not quiet the sound of her heart.
It haunted the corridors — that soft, rhythmic flutter that did not belong in his world of stone and silence. He could hear it even now, faint through the walls, pulsing like a secret vein beneath the manor's bones.
It should have been nothing. A heartbeat among thousands.
And yet it drew him, always.
He found himself listening for it when the halls fell quiet, when the torches burned low. A mortal's heartbeat — her heartbeat — steady and stubborn, like a candle refusing to die in the wind.
She had changed the rhythm of the manor. He felt it in the servants' movements, the hush of whispers as they passed. Some pitied her. Others feared what her presence might stir in him.
He had given no orders concerning her — not yet. Only that she was to be fed, clothed, left undisturbed. But word spread quickly among immortals, and the speculation was inevitable.
The Lord keeps a human again, they murmured. The first since the War of Ash.
Fools. They thought it lust, nostalgia — another echo of his father's cruelty. They could not imagine that it was something far worse.
He stood now upon the balcony overlooking the inner courtyard. Below, rain gathered in the marble fountains, rippling under the pale morning light. Beyond the arches, he caught a glimpse of her.
Adelina.
She was walking the narrow path between the rose hedges, her shawl drawn close against the cold. The servants kept their distance, bowing as she passed. She thanked them — softly, genuinely — and the sound of her voice reached him faintly, light as breath.
It should not have mattered. Yet it did.
He found himself studying her the way a starving man studies the memory of food — afraid to taste, afraid not to.
She moved with a quiet grace that was not learned but born — the kind that lingered even in poverty, even in fear. He had seen queens bow less regally.
Her hair, that living darkness, caught the weak light like silk dipped in shadow. Her skin, warm against the gray morning, made the chill air seem gentler. And those eyes…
He had thought them violet only by candlelight, a trick of fear and tears. But now he saw they were truly that color — luminous, strange, the hue of twilight bruises and amethyst glass.
He did not know why that disturbed him more than her scent.
The blood of thousands had passed his lips over the centuries, yet never had he felt the ache that came with simply seeing someone. His hunger twisted in new shapes now — sharp, tender, inexplicable.
He wanted to hear her speak again.
He wanted to know what thoughts lived behind those eyes.
He wanted—
He stopped himself. His hands clenched against the railing until the marble groaned beneath his grip.
"No," he muttered to the morning air. "She is a mortal. A passing breath. Nothing more."
But even as he said it, the words rang hollow.
Below, Adelina paused to look up at the distant balcony. For a moment, their gazes caught — across rain, across silence, across the fragile thread of fate tightening between them.
She did not bow. She did not flee. She simply looked — curious, uncertain, her expression soft and unreadable.
It was he who looked away first.
He turned sharply, his cloak whispering behind him as he retreated into shadow, the scent of her still clinging to the air.
But as he walked back through the endless corridors, her heartbeat followed — patient, unrelenting, like a promise.
And Lord Severin Vale, the eldest son of the Original, the ruler of a kingdom built on blood, realized that something within him had begun to stir.
Something that should have never woken again.
He lingered in his study long after the rain had ceased, the fire burned low and restless in its hearth. He had spent centuries mastering his desires — turning hunger into discipline, loneliness into command — but this… this was something else entirely.
Every breath of her presence in his halls pressed against the edges of his control. Every heartbeat was a whisper beneath his skin, beckoning him closer.
Enough.
He could not indulge the weakness of curiosity, yet he could not banish it either. He needed to see her again — not from afar, not as a shadow in the garden, but near enough to remind himself what she was: mortal, fragile, fleeting.
"Summon her," he said at last.
The words escaped like a confession. His steward — ever silent in the corner — bowed deeply before vanishing through the doors.
Severin stood alone, the weight of the moment pressing down like storm clouds over his soul.
By nightfall, she would stand before him.
And he would finally learn if the tremor she stirred in him was hunger… or something far more dangerous.
….
The days that followed her arrival blurred into one another, steeped in unease and quiet splendor.
Adelina had not seen the master of the house since that first, dreadful night. His absence was a relief at first, though it offered little comfort. The manor itself was its own kind of predator — vast and watchful. Corridors twisted back upon themselves, rooms changed with the light, and mirrors seemed to breathe with a life not their own. The servants moved like phantoms, polite but distant, answering questions with rehearsed smiles and the faintest bow of the head.
She had been given a chamber overlooking the gardens — though "gardens" was a generous word. What lay beyond her window was a thicket of dark roses and creeping ivy, all blooming too vividly for the season. The scent of them haunted her sleep. Sometimes, when the wind caught their petals just so, she could have sworn she heard whispers in the rustle — her name carried faintly on the breeze, laced with reverence or warning, she could not tell.
Nights were the hardest. The manor grew colder after dusk, and strange sounds stirred in the walls — not the usual creaks of an old house, but something deeper, rhythmic, almost alive. She had taken to lighting every candle she could find, their soft glow forming a fragile circle of defiance against the dark.
And yet… something inside her was changing.
The fear that had first gripped her heart was beginning to blur at the edges, giving way to a strange, aching curiosity. She caught herself wondering about him — the man with eyes like stormlight and a voice that felt both dangerous and divine.
When the knock finally came at her door, sharp and deliberate, her breath stilled.
A servant stood waiting, silent as marble.
"The master requests your presence," he said, and even those words felt ceremonial, as though she were being summoned not by a man but by something older, something sacred and cruel.
She followed him through the corridors, her footsteps echoing softly against stone.
The air grew colder the deeper they went, the candlelight dimming to a ghostly shimmer. Her heart beat fast, too loud in her chest, each pulse a drum of defiance and longing.
Fear gnawed at her, yes — but it was no longer clean. It tangled with something else, something far more dangerous. Curiosity. Hunger.
What was it about him that drew her so completely? The memory of his eyes haunted her; their color shifted in her mind from silver to smoke to ash.
She hated herself for wishing to see them again.
The servant stopped before a set of great doors. Dark wood, carved with roses and strange sigils that seemed to shift when she wasn't looking. Her palms dampened.
"Enter when you are ready, my lady," the servant murmured, bowing low before vanishing down the hall.
For a long moment, Adelina simply stood there — staring at the doors that waited like a mouth about to open.
Her pulse fluttered wildly. Every part of her screamed to turn and flee.
And yet… her hand lifted anyway.
The handle was cold against her skin, almost living.
As the doors began to part, a rush of air escaped — scented faintly of rain, wine, and the faintest trace of blood.
And then she saw him.
He had told himself it was nothing.
A mortal girl, no different from the countless others who had crossed his threshold through the centuries — some trembling, some defiant, all forgettable. And yet, for days, his thoughts had coiled endlessly around her name.
Adelina.
He had watched her, of course. How could he not? From the shadows of the upper halls, through the thin veils of candlelight that marked her passage — she was a disruption in his stillness, a pulse of warmth that the house itself seemed to respond to. He felt her before he saw her, as though her presence had altered the very air.
At first, he mistook it for hunger. That old, ruinous ache that had driven him to cruelty long ago. But the hunger sharpened into something else — quieter, more corrosive. Curiosity, perhaps. Or the slow, reluctant birth of fascination.
He had waited three days before summoning her. Long enough, he thought, for the echo of his presence to fade from her fear. Long enough to regain control. And yet, as the doors creaked open and she stepped into the hall, all such illusions unraveled.
She entered timidly, though not without grace. The light from the high windows caught the sheen of her hair, dark as the promise of night. Her pulse fluttered visibly at her throat — and the sound of it reached him, clear and cruelly intimate.
He should not have noticed such things. He should not have cared.
But the air between them shifted, heavy with the scent of candle wax and something sweeter — her.
"Come closer," he said at last, and his voice came out lower than he intended. Not a command, but something that trembled near invitation.
She obeyed, each step hesitant. He could hear the faint catch in her breath, see the tremor in her hands, the defiance flickering beneath the fear. It stirred something dormant inside him — not pity, not desire, but a dangerous blend of both.
For centuries, he had lived without the burden of the living.
Now, one fragile girl had made the silence unbearable.
He leaned back in his chair, watching her approach, studying the line of her throat, the uncertainty in her eyes. The flicker of curiosity that mirrored his own.
The monster within him stirred, whispering its old, merciless truths.
He could end her in a breath. Claim her, ruin her, make her a shadow of his eternity.
And yet — he did not move.
Instead, he found himself asking softly,
"Tell me, Adelina… do you fear me still?"
Her silence answered him first.
He could hear the pulse racing in her throat, see the way her fingers tightened around the folds of her gown. It was fear — but not the kind that begged for mercy. No, hers was threaded with something dangerously akin to wonder. It unsettled him.
When she finally spoke, her voice trembled, but the sound was clear.
"I do not know what I feel, my lord."
It struck him more sharply than any confession of terror could have. The honesty of it — the soft defiance that lived inside her uncertainty. He had expected her to bow, to stammer, to shrink from his gaze. Instead, she looked at him — not long, not boldly, but enough. Enough for him to feel the echo of her gaze long after she dropped it.
He rose from his chair, moving toward her. Not swiftly, but with that same predatory grace that centuries had honed into ritual. Her breath caught; he heard it. The air between them tightened until it seemed the room itself might shatter.
He stopped a mere arm's length away.
Her scent reached him first — faint lavender and mortal heat — and it was unbearable.
"You have been restless," he said, and it was not a question.
She swallowed, her eyes darting to the ground. "The house is… strange."
A small, humorless smile touched his mouth. "It is old," he murmured, circling her slightly, his voice a low vibration. "Old things remember what they have lost. They grieve in ways the living cannot understand."
He watched her shiver — not entirely from fear.
It was too exquisite a reaction, too pure. She stood still, though he could sense every part of her begging to flee. He admired that restraint. It mirrored his own.
His gaze lingered on her neck — the soft line of it, the throb beneath translucent skin. His jaw tightened. He turned away before his thoughts betrayed him.
"This place will test you, Adelina," he said at last, his tone returning to that cold, measured cadence that had kept his world in order for so long. "Its beauty, its silence — even its master."
At that, her eyes lifted to him again. Something flickered there — fear still, but laced with something fragile and aching.
He should have looked away. He didn't.
"You should have left me to the storm," she whispered.
His hand flexed at his side, nails grazing his palm until the sting grounded him.
"Perhaps I should have," he murmured.
A pause. Then, quieter — almost to himself —
"But it seems the storm followed you here."