Chapter 4

I felt pathetic.

I was so broke that I couldn't even afford a decent dress, and I had thought I could have something with a vampire prince?

Ash was crashing at my place for a while, and I was nothing more than his food source.

That was all.

I bent down, picked up the pouch of gold coins, and weighed it in my hand.

"Alright," I said with a smile. "Take him back. He owes me for food, so take it out of this."

I turned and walked back inside.

With my back to all of them, my eyes burned, but I clenched my jaw and held the tears back.

As I reached the door, I heard Ash's voice. It sounded hoarse. "Charlotte..."

I didn't turn around.

"Ash, no, Your Grace, I guess," I said. My voice came out so steady that even I was surprised. "Your fiancée is here for you. You shouldn't keep her waiting."

The door closed behind me.

I slid down until I was sitting on the floor with my back against the door, and then I finally buried my face in my hands. I couldn't hold the tears back anymore.

Ash left.

He got into that black carriage and disappeared into the storm.

He looked back once before leaving.

I saw him from the second-floor window, but I closed the curtains.

In the days that followed, the manor was as silent as a grave.

There was no one in the kitchen making breakfast.

There was no one around to help me move anything heavy.

There was no deep, velvety voice reciting poetry in the middle of the night.

I kept telling myself that this was normal, and that time with him had been the weird part.

We were from completely different worlds. A human girl and a vampire prince? That wasn't how things worked.

But something was wrong with me.

Three days after Ash left, I started getting dizzy.

By the fifth day, I felt lightheaded, like I could barely keep my balance.

By the seventh day, I passed out in the laundry room.

By the tenth day, I couldn't even get out of bed.

I figured I was anemic. After all, he had been drinking my blood before.

I took iron pills and ate as much spinach and liver as I could stomach, but nothing helped.

Instead, I kept getting worse.

It felt like something essential was slipping away from me. Not blood, but something deeper, something that was my life force itself.

I started dreaming night after night.

Every single dream was about Ash.

I saw his pale gray eyes and the way his ears would turn pink. I couldn't forget the careful, almost gentle way he drank my blood.

And I kept hearing what he said about my blood being like the only water in a desert.

In my dreams, I reached out for him, but he kept slipping further away.

Fourteen days after Ash left, the old lady from next door stopped by with some eggs and found me collapsed on the laundry room floor.

She helped me back to bed, touched my forehead, and gasped.

"You're burning up like a hot coal, Charlotte. You need to see a doctor," she said.

The town doctor came over, examined me for a long time, and then shook his head.

"I've never seen anything like this," he said. "Her blood... is failing. It's like something is draining the life right out of her."

I lay in bed, my mind drifting in and out.

I was so cold that it felt like I had fallen into an ice cellar.

I could hear my own voice, weak and faltering.

"Ash...

"Ash, come back."

I knew he wouldn't come back.

He was a vampire prince, had a fiancée, and belonged to another world.

But I kept calling his name anyway.

Because I was dying.