Old Blood

The fire crackled low in the hearth as the plates were cleared—though neither of you had touched much. The last bite of fruit lingered on your tongue—too sweet, too strange to fully enjoy. Caden hadn't spoken again since his last words, but the silence between you was no longer empty. It buzzed with something else.

Anticipation. Suspicion. And something more dangerous: curiosity.

The food had been a formality. This dinner wasn't about nourishment. It was about positioning.

Caden sat with one leg crossed over the other, watching me with that same unnerving stillness. He didn't blink often. When he did, it was slow—like he was remembering how to appear human.

I broke the silence."So… what happens now?"

His lips curved slightly, but not into a smile. More like a riddle.

"That depends on you."

I raised an eyebrow. "How convenient."

"Isn't it?" he said smoothly. "Most people who end up here cling to whatever choice they're given, even if it's an illusion. But you're different. You ask. You challenge. You don't want a leash—you want to understand the chain."

His words were too poetic to be casual. I leaned forward slightly. "You said I was chosen. What for?"

He considered that a moment, as if weighing how much to reveal.

Then,

"There are very few things in this world that surprise me anymore. Even fewer that… resist me. But every hundred years or so, someone like you arrives. You don't fit the pattern. You see the gameboard but refuse to play by the old rules."

I didn't look away. "So you want to study me?"

"No," he said softly. "I want to unravel you."

A shiver danced down my spine, though his tone wasn't cruel. Just… intense. Like he wasn't used to wanting anything slowly.

He continued, voice low and deliberate. "There's something in your blood, your spirit—something dormant. Maybe even dangerous. I haven't tasted it, but I've felt it."

I pushed back slightly from the table. "You talk like I'm some ancient text."

Caden chuckled. "Aren't you?"

Then his expression changed—just a flicker, but enough. The amusement gave way to something more serious.

"There are others here who won't like this arrangement," he said. "Vampires older than me. Bound to older ways. They won't understand why I've kept you untouched."

I swallowed. "Then why do it?"

He stood slowly, walking toward you once again, but this time his hands stayed behind his back.

"Because power doesn't always lie in the taking," he said. "Sometimes it lies in the waiting. In the wanting. And in knowing the exact moment to move."

He stopped in front of me, looking down, his face shadowed by candlelight.

"Do you want to survive here, little flame?" he asked. "Then learn this: the most dangerous creature in this house is not the one who bites first... It's the one who waits."

He sets his hand forward, urging me to accept it.

You didn't take his hand. Not yet. But you didn't move away either.

My voice came quietly, measured. "You said there's something inside me. Something in my blood."

Caden didn't flinch. He only looked at you—fully, deeply, like someone trying to read a forgotten language etched into the lines of your face.

"I did."

"What is it?"

He exhaled, a sound that was almost a sigh. "I don't know yet. That's the unsettling part."

He stepped closer, and this time, I let him. His gaze dropped—slowly—to my throat. Not in hunger, but in curiosity. Reverence, even.

"I've tasted thousands of bloodlines," he said. "Centuries of human ancestry… diluted, predictable. But yours—" his voice dropped, thick with something unnameable—"your blood doesn't just carry life. It remembers."

I froze. "Remembers what?"

He moved past me then, walking toward one of the tall windows. The moonlight pooled across the floor like silver ink.

"There are old bloodlines," he said, "forgotten by your kind. Descendants of seers, empaths, shadow-binders. Mortals who once brushed too close to the supernatural and… were changed."

I swallowed hard. "Are you saying I'm one of them?"

"I'm saying," he said slowly, turning back to you, "that your blood sang when I first stood near you. Like it recognised me. Like it knew me."

Goosebumps lifted across my arms.

"And you didn't mark me," I whispered, "because you're afraid."

Caden's expression flickered—something between admiration and warning.

"I'm not afraid of you," he said. "I'm afraid of what you might awaken."

The candles flickered violently, though there was no wind. A subtle tremor passed through the air.

"You don't know it yet," he continued, walking back toward you, "but there's a memory inside your blood—one older than either of us. And it's starting to stir."

I stood slowly. The fear in my stomach was no longer pure dread. It was weight. Destiny. A sense that something ancient was watching through my eyes.

"What happens if it wakes?" I asked.

Caden stepped close again—his face calm, but his voice low and urgent.

"Then the real choice begins. Not between you and me… but between what you are and what this world becomes because of it."

He held out his hand again.

"No more games. Just the truth. Come with me."

I paused.

Caden's hand was still outstretched, his offer lingering like the scent of smoke. But something inside me —some deep, whispering instinct—urged me to wait. To not follow him yet.

Not without knowing more.

I stepped back. Just once.

"I will," I said, voice steady. "But not yet. Not until I talk to Lira."

Caden's gaze didn't falter. "You think she knows?"

"I think she's hiding something," I replied. "Something about me."

For a moment, he said nothing. Then, to your surprise, he gave a slow, amused nod. "Good," he murmured. "You're learning not to take what's offered without question."

He turned from me, drifting into the shadows. "You'll find her in the east wing. She tends the old archives. Ask carefully. She's more than she pretends to be."

And just like that, he vanished into the dark.

I found Lira where he said she'd be: in a long, dusty hall of forgotten books. Candlelight flickered against the stone as she ran a finger across a shelf of cracked spines.

She didn't turn when I entered.

"I wondered how long it would take," she said softly.

You approached. "You knew what I'd come for?"

"I knew you'd feel it eventually," she said, still not facing you. "The pull. The strangeness in your blood."

I stepped closer. "What am I, Lira?"

She finally turned then, her expression unreadable—but not surprised.

"You're what the old vampires called Sanguina Memoria," she said. "The blood that remembers. You're descended from a bloodline that once walked between life and shadow. Part mortal… part something else."

My breath caught. "Something else?"

She nodded. "Witch. Seer. Bound to creatures like Caden, not through fear or death, but through memory. You don't just carry life—you carry echoes."

"Of what?"

Lira stepped closer now, voice hushed. "Of an ancient bond. One that hasn't awakened in centuries. And if Caden senses it in you… It means the blood recognises him. Or worse—he was part of it."

The room spun slightly. "Part of it, how?"

But Lira was already walking to a small locked drawer. She retrieved a tiny leather-bound book, edges worn, held with twine.

She pressed it into my hands. "This belonged to the last of your line. She vanished the night she was bound to a vampire named Caden. Read it. But not here."

I stared at her. "Why are you helping me?"

Lira looked tired then. Older than she seemed. "Because once, I didn't ask questions. And it cost me more than my freedom."

She turned back to the shelves. "Go. Before he changes his mind."