The hunger had dulled, but it hadn't vanished. It simmered beneath her skin like a second heartbeat.
Queen Annabelle walked the earth with no shoes, no clear memory of how much time had passed—only the taste of blood still lingering on her tongue.
Her limbs moved on instinct, her mind fogged in a haze of confusion and new senses. The wind smelled louder. The ground felt alive beneath her feet. And the world... strange.
Things had changed. People dressed differently. Their hair, their speech, even the things they held in their hands—metal and glass boxes, flashing lights, the roar of strange carts without horses speeding past. But she didn't focus on any of that. Not yet.
She chalked it up to fashion, to trends. Maybe she'd slept a few months—long enough for styles to change, nothing more.
She didn't want to go back to the place where she awoke in hunger and blood. No, her heart—what was left of it—pulled her elsewhere.
**Home.**
The estate her parents had built. The last place that had ever felt safe—before everything was taken from her.
The walk was longer than she remembered, and the road twisted in ways that didn't exist before. But when she reached the gate, she knew. Ivy now strangled the once-polished stone walls. The metal gate was rusted and moaned when she pushed it open. The garden, once fragrant and alive, had withered into a wilderness.
And the mansion…
The windows were broken. The fountain in the courtyard was dry. Everything was aged, as if left to rot by time itself.
Her chest tightened.
She stepped inside, her bare feet stirring up dust as old as silence.
The halls were cold and dim. Her fingers brushed along the cracked wallpaper. This was once a place of laughter, perfume, and piano music. Now, it was a tomb.
She didn't feel afraid.
She felt... curious.
A faint shuffle echoed down the corridor.
Then—
"...Annabelle?"
She froze.
That voice. It couldn't be. Anger.
She turned, and there—sitting by a weak fire, wrapped in a thick blanket—was a man. Old. Withered. His skin sagged like wax melting in the sun. Eyes cloudy, rimmed in red. But she knew that face.
**Her uncle.**
He had stolen everything from her the moment her parents died. The inheritance. The land. The servants. The respect. Even her freedom.
And now\... he looked like the last breath of a dying age.
"Is it... really you?" he rasped. "You look just like your mother. But... she's been gone so long…"
Annabelle didn't speak.
The truth was curling its fingers around her spine.
This wasn't just a few months.
It had been decades.
Her stomach coiled.
Footsteps echoed down the hall.
Cousins. Grown now—adults with gray in their hair and heaviness in their eyes. Some she remembered. Some stared at her like they'd seen a ghost.
Then *he* appeared.
Lucien.
The cousin who once tried to force himself on her when she was barely sixteen. The one who grinned when she cried. The one who said no one would believe her.
He didn't speak.
Just stood there, mouth half open, eyes full of something between awe and dread.
She walked to him, silent as a whisper.
He didn't move.
She took his wrist gently.
Softly.
Then sank her teeth into his flesh.
His blood was bitter. Cowardly. Exactly as she remembered him.
He whimpered.
She drank.
Slowly.
Until he collapsed like a broken memory in her arms.
She looked up, lips painted in red.
No one moved.
No one dared speak.
Her uncle was weeping. Another cousin turned away.
Annabelle stood tall.
The girl they ruined was dead. Buried beneath time and cruelty.
What stood before them now… was a queen.
A predator reborn.
And she had only just .....