Never. My brother will always be around. We’ll always be together.
Reaching behind him to my rocking chair, I snatch a blanket off and move closer to him, pressing it against the wound in his stomach. His hands fall away, and his gaze grows glossy.
“Feed on me,” I tell him. “I can be happy!”
I reach for positive emotions, but only find misery and fear. I grit my teeth and try like mad to think of the things that make me smile. I think of how, before Rayne hit his growth spurt, some people thought we were twins. As his little sister, I drank it in every time someone pointed out our similarities. Even though his eyes are blue and mine are grey, we have the same light brown hair, and even the same bone structure, down to our noses and lips.
And I was proud to look like the person I loved most in this world. I smile at the thought and let my emotions flood out of me in a way I never do. Always I hold back. Always I fear what will happen if anyone tastes the truth of what I am. But to ease Rayne’s pain, I could be vulnerable.
I could do anything for my brother.
Rayne’s head lolls to the side. “Be—be careful, Esmeray. You’re next. Don’t trust…anyone.”
And then, he stops talking.
My heart races, and I reach my hand out and lightly touch the side of his neck.
There’s no pulse. There’s nothing. Not even a trace of life.
“Rayne!” I call his name, then shake his arm.
This is impossible. This can’t be happening.
My vision wavers as I pull back the blanket and stare at his wound. Black streaks mar his injuries.
A poison.
It’s like my brain won’t work. I try to save him. To wake him. I scream and shout, and I clean and cover his wounds, but he never stirs.
An immortal has died.
My brother has died.
It should be impossible. It should…never have happened. But no matter how much I deny it, he lies unmoving on the floor as I gather him to my chest and scream and scream. Ghosts come from every corner of our estate, surrounding me. I hear my monsters howling over the thunder and the rain, but nothing is more real to me than the stiff body of my brother in my arms.
The wind roars outside and the lightning crackles. The worst thing imaginable has just happened. And for the first time in my life, there’s nothing I can do but cry.
3 Esmeray
My brother’s funeral took place on the family grounds on a bright and sunny day. All the Bloodmores came to stand at my parents’ side and mourn the heir of our family line. Friends and acquaintances, hoping to get into my family’s good graces, came too. And, of course, my brother's best friends, who stayed for the briefest amount of time, and then left in a hurry.
All our visitors avoided my father without even a touch of subtlety, like the dark blood running through his veins might be contagious; instead, they gravitated toward my mother. She, the ruler of our powerful house, was respected by all. And everyone treated my mother as if she’d lost her only child, because until that day I hadn’t existed to them.
I spoke to no one. My grief was so thick and miserable that I could do nothing more than nod in the direction of the fake sympathy piled on me, and then stray to the shadows of the woods to stare at my brother’s headstone and cry.
It was several hours later when I was called to my parents’ study. I went, feeling numb and lost to the world. Wishing like mad that they could just let me sink into my bed and spend the night staring into the darkness, replaying the moments before my brother died. But that wasn’t my parents’ way. The Bloodmores don’t mourn, such a thing would be beneath us. Opening the door to the study, I stare at my mother and father, trying like mad to contain my misery until I could escape the room.
My father, the man my brother and I got our height from, sits in the big, leather chair at his desk gazing at me with calculating eyes. If anyone else were to visit my parents, they would be careful to keep their arrangement concealed. My mother would be seated in the chair, and my father would stand far behind her. The proper place for our kind.
Only in front of me do they drop the façade. But sometimes I wish they wouldn’t. While my father secretly helps to run our house, in front of others my mother delivers their decisions with kindness. With me, there was no kindness, just my father’s unbending will.
My mother stands at my father’s right. Her hair is long, and an unusual soft brown shade that looks dark at times and at others blonde, like my own. It falls down her shoulders in perfect spiraling curls that feel at odds with her dapper black gown. In her eyes, there is a calm resolve, but beyond that I sense the same overwhelming pain that I carried in my own heart.
Bloodmores don’t mourn…but she does.
After a minute, my father clears his throat. “Up until recent events, your ongoings meant little to the family. Your days spent in idleness. Your nights spent preying upon humans. None of it mattered. But all that has changed now. As the heir to the Bloodmore house, you must fulfill your duties, which means in order to rule one day, you must attend the Royal Fae Academy. It will be a chance to learn how to become a leader, but also to make the powerful connections that such a position requires.”
“But I thought the Royal Fae Academy wouldn’t allow my kind in?” I ask, even though I already know the lie they had to have told in order to get me into an academy that doesn’t allow creatures as
