When I was little, I used to pretend I was a princess.
Not the kind who needed saving.
Well… maybe a little.
I imagined myself wearing the most beautiful dress in the kingdom, waiting patiently for my prince charming to find me. He would ride in on a magnificent horse, sweep me off my feet, and make me his bride.
We would live happily ever after.
Back then, I believed in things like that.
I was naive.
Childish.
But I was happy.
My childhood wasn't filled with expensive toys or extravagant vacations. My parents didn't spoil us with things.
They spoiled us with love.
And I had my brother, Eliot.
Eliot was my best friend long before I understood what that meant.
We had a bond that was almost impossible to explain. He was the protective older brother who always made sure I was okay, even when I didn't ask him to.
He was a metalhead.
I grew up listening to the music he loved, and eventually, I loved it too.
There was always music playing somewhere in our house.
My parents would complain about the noise.
Eliot would turn it up.
And I'd laugh.
Those were the days when I believed nothing could ever change.
Then one night, everything did.
Our parents died in a car crash.
And just like that, the world I knew disappeared.
Eliot was left to raise me.
He was barely prepared to take care of himself, yet somehow he found a way to take care of me.
He worked.
He sacrificed.
He protected me.
He became my family.
My brother.
My guardian.
My home.
And then something happened to him.
Something that changed both of our lives forever.
Eliot became sick.
At first, we thought it was an ordinary illness. He was exhausted all the time, his skin grew pale, and he complained that his blood felt cold in his veins. Then came the fevers, the weakness, and the strange dark lines that began spreading beneath his skin.
The doctors couldn't explain it.
Until they found traces of vampire blood in his system.
They called it Sanguine Viremia.
It was a rare and deadly infection caused when a vampire tried to turn a human but failed. The transformation stopped halfway, leaving the victim neither human nor vampire. Instead, the vampire's blood corrupted their own, attacking healthy cells and slowly poisoning the body.
Eliot had survived the attack.
But he hadn't escaped it.
He was in the hospital now, surrounded by machines and bags of blood.
The doctors kept him alive through constant transfusions, replacing the infected blood in his body with clean human blood. Every transfusion bought him more time.
But it never cured him.
The infection always returned.
And with every passing day, Eliot grew weaker.
I sat beside his hospital bed, holding his hand while the blood dripped slowly into his veins.
His fingers were cold.
Too cold.
"Don't worry," I whispered, even though my voice trembled. "I'm going to find whoever did this to you."
Eliot's eyes barely opened.
"Rita…"
"I mean it."
He tried to speak, but the effort made him cough.
I tightened my grip on his hand.
The doctors had told me there was no known cure for Sanguine Viremia. They said the vampire who infected him might be the only one who knew how to reverse the damage.
But the vampire had disappeared.
No one knew his name.
No one knew where he came from.
All I knew was that he had tried to turn my brother and left him trapped between life and death.
A failed transformation.
A blood infection.
A slow, agonizing sentence.
I refused to accept it.
I would find the vampire responsible.
I would force him to cure Eliot.
Even if it took me the rest of my life.
Years later, I stood outside the doors of The Circle, staring at the entrance to the most exclusive supernatural club in Asteria.
Vampires came here.
Powerful vampires.
The kind of vampires normal people like me were supposed to fear.
And tonight, I was walking straight into their world.
I wasn't looking for a prince anymore.
I wasn't looking for a happily ever after.
I was looking for the vampire who had infected my brother.
And I was going to find him.