Chapter 3
The days that followed were strange, but honestly, they were kind of nice in their own weird way.
Every three days, Ash would look at me all serious and proper and ask, "Charlotte, may I?"
I'd hold out my wrist and say, "Go ahead."
He'd lean in. For a second, his fangs stung a little when they went in, but then the feeling turned into the warm, tingly numbness that was strange but not unpleasant.
He was always careful. He'd take a few sips and then stop.
And right after that, he'd bring me the blood tonic and some kind of dessert.
"What is this supposed to be?" I joked. "Carrot and stick?"
"I guess so," he'd mumble, wiping his mouth. His ears would turn red again.
I started noticing a pattern. Every time after he fed, his face looked less pale, more like a living person's.
And his eyes would change from that cold gray to a soft golden color, like melted amber.
They looked beautiful.
"Charlotte, what are you staring at?" he asked one day.
"You," I said. "You look kind of like a living human after you drink."
He paused for a moment. "I was never alive to begin with."
"Oh, that's right," I said. "You're basically dead."
"Technically, I'm undead," he said.
"Same thing," I shot back.
He gave me a helpless smile.
And that was how our days went by.
He took care of the house like a real butler, and I kept doing my laundry work.
He went out to buy groceries at night because he couldn't go out during the day, and I made deliveries in the afternoon.
Now and then, he took a sip of my blood, and I complained about how sharp his teeth were.
We were like a couple of weird roommates.
But sometimes, I felt like we were something more than that.
*****
That afternoon, I was out in the yard hanging up the laundry when a black carriage pulled up to the estate gates.
The carriage was ridiculously fancy. It was all black, with a silver crest on the door: a bat with its wings spread, clutching a rose in its jaws.
The door swung open, and a woman stepped out.
No, she wasn't a woman.
She was more like a statue.
She was tall and coldly beautiful, her skin so pale that it looked like marble, and her jet black hair fell all the way down to her waist like a waterfall.
She wore a deep red dress with rubies lining the neckline, and each one of those stones was probably worth more than everything I owned put together.
Her eyes swept over the crumbling estate, then over the patched-up sheets hanging on the clothesline, and finally landed on me.
She looked like I was beneath her notice, like I wasn't even worth a second glance.
"So you're the human woman who took in my fiancé?" she said.
The clothes slipped from my hands and fell to the ground.
"Fiancé?" I echoed, stunned.
"Ashton Von Blackwood," she said, lifting her chin. "The Prince of the House of Von Blackwood, also my fiancé. What do you call him? Ash?"
My mind went completely blank.
A prince? That scrawny guy who blushed after sneaking my blood? He was a vampire prince?
"Sweetheart," Vivienne Ravenscar—she told me her name later—stepped closer, and her perfume was so strong that it nearly knocked me out. "Thank you for taking in my fiancé. Here's your reward."
She took a velvet pouch from her servant and tossed it at my feet without a second thought.
The pouch burst open, and gold coins spilled everywhere, jingling as they scattered across the ground.
"Please stay away from him from now on," she added.
I stared at the pile of gold coins.
That was enough to wipe out all my debts and even fix up the manor.
Then I looked up and caught sight of Ash, who was standing in the shadows of the porch.
He stood there, looking paler than usual.
His lips were pressed into a thin line, and he didn't say a word.
He didn't deny it.
He didn't explain.
He didn't say, "She's not my fiancée."