Bloody Wedding - Part III

The Vampiric Realm castle had always carried the weight of another century. To stand before it was to feel as though time itself had faltered there. Its towers rose with medieval assets, proud and grim against the dark, and its heavy walls seemed built less for beauty than endurance. Mortals would have found it out of place, but mortals were never meant to see what hid beyond its guarded threshold. Those foolish enough to pry too closely into the affairs of the realm did not survived long enough to carry tales back to the living. Among vampires, however, the place was known with a familiarity that softened none of its majesty: the Progeny Castle. It was called so as a reminder that all vampires, no matter their origins, were welcomed. It was exactly the sort of place many among the realm favored, because within its halls one did not feel dragged into the present, one felt returned to a truer age.

Lady DeathBreeze stood within those ancient walls beneath dim light and cold stone, waiting. Her posture was still, but it was not the stillness of peace. It was the stillness of calculation, of a mind turning over possibilities one after another and finding too few of them comforting. Nearby, enchanted spheres hovered in their appointed places, subtle instruments used to advise when one of the devils might be available to speak. Their faint magical shimmer occasionally caught her attention, and each time her eyes drifted to them only to return to the same troubled line of thought.

Fabia, one of her newest addition to the family, and already something was wrong.

DeathBreeze could still picture the report too clearly: fangs that had cracked, edges gone dull, the predatory sharpness blunted into something almost obscene in its wrongness. A vampire’s bite was not some decorative flourish. It was weapon, inheritance, hunger, identity. To have one’s fangs fail was not a minor inconvenience; it was humiliating. A predator who could no longer pierce flesh cleanly was a predator at risk of weakness, perhaps worse. Fabia had not merely complained of discomfort. There had been something abnormal in the damage itself, something that did not sit right in DeathBreeze’s mind.

It was not paranoia to be concerned but recently events created sudden worries in her. Not so long ago, the descendants of the Arch Vampire Lucian Blackburn had suffered under a curse so malicious it had infected bloodlines like rot. Vampires had spoken of possession, of disease, of something unnatural that moved through them with a will of its own, triggering their hunger. Too many strange afflictions had touched the undead of late for her to dismiss any new symptom as coincidence. And now Fabia, one of hers, was showing signs of something unknown yet.

Her fingers rested lightly against one arm as she thought, nails pressing just enough to feel. What if it spread? What if this was not isolated? What if another sickness had found its way into the blood, and she was only seeing its first trail? Her household was not merely a collection of names to her. They were hers to watch over, hers to guide, hers to protect when she could and avenge when she must. The possibility that something unseen might crawl from one vampire to the next beneath her own roof sat in her chest like a shard of ice.

And still she waited for a devil. There was a bitter irony in that. Devils... they are creatures made of malice, bound in service to the Source, whom many vampires revered as the origin of their own kind. It was one of those contradictions the realm lived with easily: seeking aid from beings no sane mortal would willingly approach. Yet tonight she needed one. Needed answers. She needed someone who could look into the matter before uncertainty became worst.

The soft buzz of her cellphone against her leg cut through the hush. DeathBreeze broke her gaze away from the enchanted spheres and slipped the device from the pocket of her pants. The glow of the screen touched her features as she read the incoming message. It was from Lady Adry. A faint shift crossed her expression.

Adry was one of her newer daughters, and one she had quickly learned to appreciate: beautiful, playful, dangerous in the effortless way some vampires were dangerous, and gifted with that rare ability to disappear into the current of a crowd while seeing everything that mattered. She had been moving through a common French estate that evening, one of those mortal places where elegance and patience often wore the same face. Seonnyeo, another daughter of DeathBreeze had crossed paths with her years before and judged her worthy of the Mayfairs’ notice, and that instinct had proven right. Adry knew how to gather threads of information and return with something valuable in hand.
Tonight, what she had sent was more than valuable. She wrote coordinates to a possible target.

The hunt was still active. The kill-on-sight order still stood. Whatever concern had tied her to the matter of illness was not erased, but it was forced, for the moment, to move aside. Duty did not always arrive at convenient hours. Blood never waited for good timing. She slipped the phone away, her decision already made, and left the castle with the swift, purposeful certainty of someone answering a call she had long expected.

By the time she reached the estate, the air was thick with that particular life mortal gatherings carrie. Gardens spread wide around the property, crowded enough to offer cover, elegant enough to invite distraction. A place where the unsuspecting looked at flowers and lanterns and polished stone paths while something far older than all of it walked among them searching for its mark.

Adry had not been tricked. Her target stood among the gathered forms with an ease that made him visible even before her gaze settled fully upon him. Pale-skinned. Dark-haired. Refined in the way some men seemed born into. In bearing, elegant without trying, his silhouette composed and still amid the shifting life around him. The sight of him brought not surprise, but recognition. DeathBreeze knew him, not intimately, but it wasn't the first time those two vampires met. Their paths had crossed before, in another uneasy time between the Mayfair's and the Hathors. He was not some faceless enemy. He was a man she had met, a vampire whose presence had once been marked more by composure and kind words than hostility.

DeathBreeze approached him with controlled grace. She definitly not wanted him to run away. When she reached him, she gave a polite nod, the sort one might have mistaken for nothing more than courteous acknowledgment. For the briefest instant, her resolve met resistance, she was not fearing him, but she did had a marvelous time previously with long talks and polite interactions. He had not wronged her, not in the past, and definitly not now. He had shown no cruelty toward her, no offense that justified private hatred. More than that, he had been honorable with Rosie Mayfair, her daughter.

Part of her wished it mattered more but bloodline conflicts were not built upon the innocence of individuals. Houses rose and clashed beneath burdens larger than the virtues of one person. The clan he belonged to had become a threat to her own. A whole clan, multiples houses were a threat to the Mayfair Coven. Whether he deserved her courtesy in some private moral sense no longer outweighed what loyalty demanded.

Family first. Her house first. Always.

She reached for his arm. Her fingers closed around him with enough force to make the intent beneath the gesture unmistakable. It was a possessive gesture but it showed her power. The sudden movement might have looked intimate to anyone glancing too quickly. Her body angled near his, her mouth near enough to suggest some whisper, some closeness, some private exchange hidden beneath the music and the murmur of the estate. But then her fangs found him. She bit down with practiced precision, and what had seemed almost like a caress became feeding.

She expected resistance but DeathBreeze's prey didn't flinch, move or detatch himself. There was no sign of instinctive effort to wrench his arm from her grasp and preserve what blood he could. Strangely enough, it never came.Instead, he stayed still. She drank, and still he did not recoil. He did not make a scene. He did not raise his voice. His body remained there beneath her hold, tense perhaps, but not rejecting, not fighting her.

And then came words she had not expected to hear. He claimed himself honored. Honored to be bitten by the Princeps of the Mayfair.

The statement struck her more deeply than it should have, lodging in that cold place in her mind where duty and feeling were already pressing against one another. For a heartbeat too long, it made the entire act seem suspended in some strange solemnity. But hunger and purpose did not loosen. His blood filled her mouth. It was rich, warm, and carrying with it the distinct taste of lineage. She drank with care, savoring it despite herself, tasting not simply a man but the son of Hathor. Still he did not move and it became unsettling. He remained under her fangs as though spellbound, his limb never pulling away, his body never choosing struggle. It was as though he had fallen beneath a trance, or perhaps surrendered to one. As the seconds stretched, as his strength thinned and his blood ran lower, a thought entered her mind uninvited and refused to leave. She started to wonder if he did wanted this. Did some hidden part of him welcome the end now approaching? She could not know. She only knew that she kept drinking, that his body grew heavier in the subtle ways bodies did when life began to withdraw from them, and that eventually even feeding became more difficult simply because so much had already been taken.

Some might later say he fainted into a coma while others would say she killed him. The distinction mattered less in that moment than the silence with which he had crossed that threshold. When she finally released him, she did not simply leave him collapsed where he stood. Using the strength granted by her nature, she moved him herself. There was no rush in it, no clumsy dragging. She guided his body to a nearby bench with uncanny control and positioned him there with almost tender precision, arranging him so that to the casual eye he might appear merely asleep, resting away from the crowd beneath the softness of the night. A courtesy, perhaps, for those too blind to see death when it wore stillness.

Then she bent close to him one final time. Lady DeathBreeze lips neared his ear, and her voice lowered to a breath. “You get to meet Nexyra... It was her will to have you, it seems. How lucky you are.”
There was no cruelty in the murmur or mocking laughter hidden beneath it. If anything, there was a solemn kind of reverence, a strange comfort offered to someone already beyond receiving it. In the quiet chambers of her own heart, she felt a flicker of relief for him. Whatever else he had been, however unaware, he had gone to her goddess. Chosen without understanding it. Claimed in a way many never were.

When she returned to the castle, Nommz was there waiting. He did not need a detailed explanation. One look at her told enough. There was blood stains on her clothing. There were no tears in fabric, no bruises forming from struggle, no signs that anyone had fought back. Only red in places that spoke clearly to what had transpired. He understood, or at least understood as much as was necessary, and she did not burden the moment with needless words.

Then came the long waiting again to consult with a devil. At last, after too much delay for her liking, they managed to speak to one of them. The exchange did not soothe her entirely, but it produced what she had been seeking: confirmation that the matter would be looked into. Fabia’s condition was now before beings better suited to read such obscurities. Another vampire disease was not something they appeared eager to handle. The problem existed, and it had been placed in their awareness.

Later that same night, after the matter had been relayed properly, Lady DeathBreeze reported the conversation to her Sovereign Rhavyn Kitaj Braveheart. Duty completed, one more burden placed in the right hands. She might have expected the night to quiet after that, instead, her phone drew her attention again.

A message from Rhavyn lightly questionning her about the unalive body she left behind. The Hathor leader was not happy to hear the one of hers might have met their true death. DeathBreeze looked at the words and let out a soft chuckle, the sound quiet but genuine. To the Mayfair Princeps, the end she had given him was not some grotesque misfortune. It had been almost glorious in its own way. He had met death through the bite and gone, knowingly or not, toward Nexyra. There were worse endings.

Her thumbs moved over the screen with calm certainty. “I had to, yes. And it will continue as long as this kill-on-sight stands.” She sent it without hesitation. There was no rage burning through her as she wrote. No dramatic hatred, there was only the hard, clean logic of retaliation. A hunt had been launched upon her House. The House had answered with a hunt of its own. That was consequence. That was the language predators understood best. What were they expected to do...bow their heads and wait politely for violence to arrive at their door?

Another message came.“If they stop it, you’ll leave them alone?”

DeathBreeze read it and understood the shape of the burden resting on Rhavyn’s shoulders. Leadership was never simple, least of all in a realm where alliances, duty, and private feelings braided themselves into knots. The Hathor leader and her Sovereign shared obligations through the realm. Professional ties and responsibilities that did not disappear merely because blood had been spilled between houses. Rhavyn had to navigate that without allowing frustration to poison function. It was not an enviable place to stand.

DeathBreeze answered plainly. “Oh, yeah. I have no grudge other than this.” And that was the truth.This was not personal vengeance dressed in grander language. She had not chosen the conflict because of some old private wound she wished to indulge. The hunt had been provoked by one act, one standing threat, and if that reason vanished then there was no need for the response to continue. She did not require endless blood for its own sake.

At last, the confirmation came. “She will take it down.”

DeathBreeze’s gaze lingered on that message for a moment. Something in her eased, though not enough to become softness. Resolution was always preferable to dragging conflict further than purpose required. In the end, she was informed that the Enfant d’Hathor would be ordered not to approach the Mayfair, not to touch them, and not to communicate with them. Boundaries would be put in place for their own security.

The matter had stretched across ten days....ten days during which every message, every movement, every encounter risked becoming another spark thrown into dry kindling. And yet perhaps that was precisely why it would be remembered. Not simply as a conflict, but as a lesson. Because some things in vampire society needed no elegant sermon. Some truths were best carved into memory through consequence alone. If one chose to turn against the Mayfair Coven, if one chose to hunt at their door and threaten what was theirs, then one had best be ready to receive the answer in equal measure.

And if not...then one should be prepared to meet death for it.