Invitation

"The letter is changing!" Elys announced.

Words began to scramble in front of the princess' eyes. The ink on the paper glowed – shifting and altering itself until it formed a whole new set of lines to form a single paragraph.

And just like how it looked the first time she saw the letter, the ink slowly settled into a bright red hue with dark brown blots.

Henry stood straight and took a peek at the letter in the slave's hands.

"An invitation to a ball…" the old man murmured under his breath.

Elys placed the paper back in front of Aleksander and watched his reaction unfold. His eyes were full of rage as he scanned the new contents of the paper. He clearly was out for words this time around.

The prince took in a deep breath. He knew whose penmanship it was. Although he hated the man since he was a boy, he couldn't possibly deny the invitation now that they had opened it.

The vampire king's magic was inevitably irrefutable.

"Dammit!" Aleksander cursed. He raised his golden eyes to meet the crimsons of Elys, and then hissed, "If you hadn't taken this, we wouldn't have to be forced to accept this trap!"

"Why?" Elys asked him, a blank look in her faked expressions.

"My father's magic is that his words are irrefutable, both spoken and written," Aleksander mumbled, "how do you think he managed to stay in his position as King of thw West even as he had gone crazy?!"

In a split second, Elys caught sight of his hands flashing to grab her neck. The warrior princess' natural instincts kicked in, and she countered him by grabbing the prince's arms and shoving it away from her.

Aleksander lost his balance and almost fell to his face. He turned around, crouching with his back bent like an angry predator, a low guttural growl rising from his throat and his fangs baring in aggression.

"You have gone out of your mind!" Elys said, her heart slower to react at how close she had been to being strangled to death by an angry vampire.

Thank goodness that the prince wasn't thinking straight. Just as how Elys had lowered her defenses in her fit of rage, the prince was also the same with her.

He could only think of blaming Elys for his misfortune, and what else was he to do but to lash out on her?

Henry stood stiff to the side, but then immediately run to help his master up from his shameful blunder.

"Your highness," he called out to the prince whose face turned darker by the second, "please calm down."

"Stay out of this Henry!" Aleksander yelled at the old man, "I will kill her!"

An immense dark aura emanated from the prince. Elys knew all too well how magic tinged with evil desires felt like.

"But sire, you can't just immediately kill again after Davika," Henry tried to reason out to his master, "we don't have any more resources to be able to hire a blood servant in a rush. It would take days to find someone willing to serve you, and you need to feed daily!"

"Get off me Henry," Aleksander growled at the old man, "I don't care what you say. My life is a mess anyway. My father is a fucking asshole, the rest of the nobilities following his lead. I am enraged, and it is my right to do what I want with her."

"Prince Aleksander, please listen to me!" Henry begged, his arms trying to gather the prince's hands from destroying whatever it was that he could put his hands on. "This is just your hunger speaking nonsense. You need to feed. You will feel better when you do," he added.

"Your attendant has a point, husband," Elys spoke, "I don't think it's something of a secret, but your manor speaks volume of how desolate and poor your life is here."

"Hah!" the prince scoffed, "Well, if I needed to feed, then come my wife, I will suck the blood dry out of your useless body!"

"Your highness!" another voice called out from the hallway.

In an instant, Cornelia dashed to protect the princess from the prince. Even with little food to go by, the woman was driven with adrenaline and held Aleksander away with a little help from Henry.

"Cornelia!" Elys gasped in surprise. "Stay out of this. It is none of your business."

"She is right. Stay out of this woman," Henry grunted as the two of them fought the prince that seemed to have gone berserk.

He was bloodthirsty, and his rage was directed to only one person in the room – the princess.

"You can't make me," Cornelia snapped at the old man as she pushed Aleksander back with all her might, "her highness'... safety... comes first!"

Aleksander didn't budge. His nails dug into Cornelia's arms and his hands reached out for Elys.

The three of them – Cornelia, Henry, and the prince – looked ridiculous in her eyes. The maidservant was wrestling a vampire prince while an attendant barely made a difference in his attempt to hold Aleksander back.

Aleksander's bedchamber was a hot mess.

Elys wasn't backing down, the maidservant was adamant and steadfast in her self-imposed duty to protect the princess, while Henry on the other hand was just confused.

The princess didn't have time to plan out what to do next, and her body moved without Elys even properly thinking it through.

Aleksander saw her coming, and the rage inside him intensified. How dare this woman be so bold? Did she not know her place?

SLAP!

Before the prince could even use his powers on Elys, the princess had gone off to slap him in the face.

"Pull yourself together!" she snapped at him. "If you really hate your father that much, then do something about it. Don't be a boy that cries injustice without lifting a finger. Instead, be a man, take that rage in your heart and make him pay."

"You speak as if it is such an easy thing to do," Henry remarked, "if the prince could, he would have done it already."

"Shut up, Henry," Cordelia tutted.

The prince stopped struggling. Henry let his grip go and stood beside the prince, whereas Cordelia planted her feet in a wall of human flesh separating the prince and the princess.

Aleksander was silenced. He didn't expect Elys' slap.

Unfortunately, it didn't hurt him as much as what she had spoken after hitting him.