The first time I heard the Night Court's name, my mother slapped a hand over my mouth—hard enough my teeth clicked.
"Don't say it," she whispered, eyes darting around our cramped kitchen like the shadows were leaning in to listen. Her whole body was doing this sharp, rhythmic tremble—not from the winter draft, but from that bone-deep fear that lives in you forever. "Don't even think it, Serena. Those monsters don't just kill you. They take what's left. They take everything."
Back then? I thought she was being dramatic. Just another woman clinging to old nightmares to keep her daughter from wandering too far.
God, I wish I'd listened. Now I know she was just trying to keep me alive.
Because tonight, my world is screaming.
The sky is a bruised purple slashed with burning orange. The smoke is so thick it tastes like ash—like my neighbors' dreams turning to dust. I'm running, or trying to. Mostly I'm stumbling barefoot through dirt and soot, every step a sharp jab, like I'm treading on shattered glass.
Run, Serena. Don't look back. Don't count the bodies in the road. Don't breathe in that red mist.
I can feel them behind me. They aren't even sprinting. Why would they? It's a game. A midnight hunt where humans are just the entertainment.
My lungs are on fire. The air smells like ozone and something sweet. Too sweet. Like lilies left to rot in a closed room.
Vampires.
The air in front of me ripples, like heat off a summer road.
I skid to a halt, heels digging deep into the soot. A figure materializes. Tall, motionless, impossibly still. He didn't leap from a roof or step out of the trees.
He simply exists.
One second there was air. The next, there was a wall of cold power blocking the forest.
His coat is midnight-black, swallowing the light. But it's his eyes that stop my heart.
Not red. I expected red.
They're violet—deep, swirling, endless—rimmed with gold like a crown.
He looks… bored. Like he's waiting for a late carriage instead of cornering a girl whose life is burning down twenty yards away.
"You've got quite the endurance," he says. His voice is smooth—velvet dragged over steel. "Most humans trip within the first three minutes. You lasted ten."
My throat is a desert. My fingers shake as they find the jagged dagger in my waistband. My father's last resort.
I'd rather die than kneel.
I raise the blade.
"Don't," he says, his gaze dropping to my hand.
He hasn't moved a muscle, but the air suddenly thickens. The pressure crushes down on my chest until it feels like I'm drowning on dry land.
"That little toothpick won't do anything but annoy me." His eyes lift back to mine, sharp and cold. "And believe me, Serena Vale… you do not want me annoyed tonight."
My name. He knows my name.
"How…?" I choke out.
He steps forward.
My body flinches before my brain can even process it. I trip over a root, slamming down hard, pain jolting up my spine. He looms over me, a dark silhouette blocking out the burning sky.
"Your blood," he murmurs, tilting his head like he's listening to music only he can hear. "It's singing."
He leans closer. Way too close.
Up close, he's beautiful in the way nightmares are. All sharp jawlines and pale skin like polished marble. Lips that look like they've never learned how to smile.
"A Golden Vein," he whispers. "Hidden in a mud-stained village."
I try to crawl back, but my limbs feel like lead. His fingers brush the pulse at my throat—cold as a winter grave.
I expect the fangs. The agony. The end.
Instead—heat detonates inside me.
A golden jolt, violent and alive, racing through my veins like lightning. He jerks his hand back, his eyes blowing wide. For the first time, his boredom cracks.
Shock. And then something darker.
Hunger.
"What… what are you?" I whisper.
He doesn't answer. Not yet.
In the distance, the iron gates of the Night Court—carved into the mountain like a fortress made of pure cruelty—begin to groan open. The sound rolls across the valley like a death sentence.
Armored vampires emerge behind him, swords drawn and dripping. They stop. They bow low.
"Your Highness," one says. "The elders demand execution. A human caught in the Forbidden Zone must be sacrificed to stabilize the Core. Shall we take her head now?"
My heart stops. This is it.
I close my eyes, waiting for the cold slide of the blade.
"No," the Prince says.
One word. A command sharp enough to cut the world in half.
The guards hesitate. "But the law—Prince Darian—"
Darian. So that's his name. The monster who owns the night.
He looks down at me again. That gold flicker is back in his eyes, but it's not pity.
It's possession.
"She won't be executed," he says.
"Then what is she, Highness?"
His hand clamps around my arm, hauling me up like I weigh nothing. My body slams against his cold chest. The scent of lilies and blood floods my lungs.
"She will be my wife."
Silence. Absolute, terrifying silence.
"I'd rather die," I spit, the words fueled by a sudden, hot blaze of rage. "I'd rather you rip my throat out than turn me into your trophy."
Darian leans in, his breath cold against my ear.
"Then die with my ring on your finger, Serena," he murmurs, his voice dropping into a dark promise. "Because either way… your blood belongs to me now."
He grabs my hand.
Cold bites into my ring finger. I look down—and my breath shatters.
A band of black iron, etched with crimson runes, is already fused to my skin. It sinks. Deep. Until it's flush with the bone.
The ground tilts. The sky spins.
As the darkness finally swallows me whole, one thought hits like a knife:
My mother was wrong.
They didn't come to take my soul.
They came to turn me into a key.
And once the door opens…
There's no coming back.