The shadows beyond the frozen river were the kind that haunted one's dreams.
The Vampire Queen stepped forward with a grandeur as silent as a night bird's wing but as destructive as a storm. A cowl covered her head, and her long black cloak swept the ground. Beneath it, she wore a deep burgundy dress; the biting cold meant absolutely nothing to her. The shivering snowstorms were merely a backdrop for her visual display. It was clear that no heart beat beneath that skin.
My stomach churned. Seeing her caused "bitter water" to rise in my throat. My tongue felt as if it had tasted something sour. It smelled like hospital corridors—the heavy, medicinal scent of B-vitamins. Yet, there was a pleasant, poisonous side to her as well. She looked like a pure rose that had begun to rot. The scent was intoxicating—like deep red blood roses. Perhaps as burgundy, unique, and seductive as the roses of Isparta.
The woman to her right was staring at me. Among the crowd of male and female shadows, I could see her in a single glance. My mother, whom I had known only as a story, who died on that icy road, was standing there. She looked as noble and terrifying as a Duchess of the Night.
Her hair—which hadn't grown in 19 years—was in an old-fashioned butterfly cut, falling loosely over her shoulders. Her dark brown, straight-as-thorns hair was the only human thing left about her. Even her face, still looking like a young college waitress, couldn't hide the ancient weariness of her soul. She was as white as a gravestone. Pale. She should have been forty today, but her soul looked four hundred years old.
The butterfly cut, with honey-colored highlights she'd once added to look stylish, clashed miserably with her black cloak. Her eyes, even while looking at her daughter, held nothing but curiosity—not a mother's warmth. Seeing her, my heart didn't even flutter. I only knew it was her because of the facial features she had passed down to me.
Her silhouette, frozen in a few torn photographs, had not aged, yet it held no place in my memories.
The Queen's voice cracked over the river like a whip. It was beautiful, but as sharp and cold as ice.
"What is mine, remains mine! Get your salivating, filthy paws off my Duchess!" she barked at the wolf pack. Her voice sounded like iron grinding against iron—soft as velvet, yet incredibly hard.
Varg pulled me behind him with an even firmer possessiveness, his eyes fixed on the other side of the river. His skin began to burn like an ember against his ancient enemy. He wrapped his arms tightly around my waist, cinching them like a belt. His scent enveloped my body. I felt tiny in his arms, pressed against his massive frame.
"This land was watered with the blood of wolves, not the shrieks of parasites!" Varg roared, his voice rippling the river water. "She is my Luna. F-ck off, fang. Get back to being chained to your rusty coffins."
Looking at my mother's cold, porcelain face, I felt my soul split in two. On one side, my father, who said nothing to those who saw me as a "project"; on the other, my mother, leading those who wanted me back as "property."
I was certainly a cruel joke of fate. If there were a recycling bin for parents, it probably wouldn't have been placed in my neighborhood.
Kael rushed to stand in front of me, realizing the gravity of the situation. A spark lit in his eyes, filled with worry. He reached out to touch me, but Varg growled through his teeth.
"You see, Varg." Kael said with a faint smirk. "To protect your honor, you won't just face a few old wolves; you'll have to face the entire armies of hell. Are you ready to pay the price? For my love for Vespera, I am ready to butcher these blood-sucking leeches and break every law. But you... is your 'key' worth dying for?"
Varg didn't look at Kael; his eyes were locked onto the Vampire Lady.
"I paid my price with the blood of my sons!" Varg said, his voice coming from a depth that could burn not just a valley, but the entire world.
"If you want the girl, Queen, show the courage to cross to this side of the river. But know this,every immortal who steps onto this bank tonight will taste true death! I will rip your throat out with pleasure."
"Are you not smart enough to know I cannot enter without permission, dog?" the Vampire Lady said with a heavy smile.
Her long crimson hair spilled over her shoulders. When her green eyes slowly turned blood-red, her smile seemed to last for centuries.
"Are you not smart enough to know I can read the future? The hybrid will join me eventually... She will be mine. Why would I fight you now?"
The Vampire Lady stopped at the riverbank as if hitting an invisible wall. Her eyes prowled over me like a hungry wolf. "Duchess Vespera belongs to me!" she hissed with ambition. "I take what is mine by force; her fate is tied to me."
Her voice was like shattered glass caught in the howling wind.
"Neither that primitive wolf father nor the body of that pathetic human mother saved her. My healing, my blood saved her! I found her on that icy road when she was about to die in her mother's womb. She is my most precious work of art! I heard her heartbeat from her mother's dead womb. She is my future. She was my prophecy, not that of mud-furred primitive animals..."
Varg, without letting go of my waist, took a step forward. With a voice heavy with whiskey, he let out a mocking laugh that incited every wolf in the valley. He narrowed his eyes as if he were flirting with a barista on a barstool.
"Vampires can't get it up!" Varg thundered crudely. "Are you going to give her babies with those fangs, My Lady? Do you think a parasite will touch my mated bride? I'll cook your son's bloodless p-nis and feed it to all of you. I'll carve special coffins for your son's bloodless manhood with my own hands."
My mother, the Jester Duchess, standing to the Queen's right, wore a poisonous smile. Clearly, she thought her daughter's poor choice in men came from her. In her eyes, I read: "I died for a nothing. I died giving birth to a nothing's baby."
I wasn't her child; I was like a germ left over from my father. If she had any shred of motherhood or humanity left, she had rubbed salt in the wound and silenced it. She had thrown her heart into a speechless well.
Because the only thing she valued was the hem of the Queen's robes. She would crawl on the ground for her.
"Vespera's wolf never woke up." the Lady said mockingly. Her voice carved deep wounds in my soul. "Because that wolf suffocated from vampire venom in her mother's womb. Before she was even born, her wolf was strangled. But for us... for us, she is the only 'dead wolf' who can carry immortal babies. Imagine how our numbers will grow, how this world will become our graveyard!"
At this sacred insult, the wolves dug their claws into the earth, and a deadly chorus of snarls rose in the air. Claws were unsheathed, weapons were reached for. This land was about to witness the greatest slaughter in its history.
A single tear fell from my eyes for my wolf that could never wake. She was just like me. Someone's pawn. A simple figure in someone's game. She had never woken. Never been born. She was just in an eternal, immortal sleep induced by the vampire's venom.
They were going to make us breeders. They saw us as nothing but handmaids.
Tears filled my bloodshot eyes. Should I cry for our sorrow or our fate? I didn't know. My wolf, who couldn't protect me, had never even been born.
Amidst this bloody madness, while I couldn't breathe, I felt Varg's burning heat. For the first time, Varg dropped his brutal mask and held my body with true possessiveness. He leaned in and pressed his forehead against mine.
"My evening star." Varg said, his voice not commanding for once, but pouring out like a vow. "Go and wait at home. This is about to turn into a hell you shouldn't see. I will not give you to them, to those dead things, Luna."
Varg calling me "Luna" lit a fire in my chest despite the freezing cold.
Not key.
My evening star.
"Go and wait at home," he had said. He was determined to protect me like a shield in the midst of that savagery.
But just then, from the other side of the river, from among those shadows behind my mother, the voices that rose rooted my feet to the ground like a marble statue.