He Called Me a Blood Bag, Now This Prince Begs for a Single Drop

The needle burned in my arm. "Prince Valerius, any more and she'll go into shock," the royal physician warned, his voice trembling. "She could die." Darkness kept gathering at the edges of my sight. I was too weak to shiver, though the castle room was freezing. The physician kept one hand near my pulse and the other clamped over the tube, waiting for Valerius to change his order. Valerius didn’t even look at me. His gaze was fixed on the crystal coffin in the center of the room, where his pureblood fiancée, Seraphina, lay in an enchanted slumber. "The infusion is incomplete." He watched the coffin. "Draw another 300 milliliters. Now." I had heard that order before, at the end of my previous life. The coffin, the physician, even the number had been the same. Last time, I had obeyed and died on this cot while Valerius watched Seraphina wake. I had called it devotion then. This time, I pulled the IV from my vein. The tube struck the cot. Blood spattered across the marble, and the physician jumped back. Valerius finally turned. "What is the meaning of this?" For ten years, that look had been enough to make me apologize. It had kept me quiet through fevers, fainting spells, and every extra vial he demanded. I pressed my thumb over the puncture and sat up. My throat hurt, but the words came out. "The blood bag is malfunctioning." A laugh came from the crystal coffin. Seraphina opened her eyes, pushed the lid aside, and looked me over. "Is this the little pet you wrote to me about, Valy?" She stretched her arms. "It seems poorly trained." Valerius left my cot for the coffin. "Seraphina. You’re awake." Alistair, the old butler who had served his family for a century, hurried to the cot. His face had gone pale. "My Prince, forgive me. The girl." He pointed at the blood running between my fingers. "Your curse, the kingdom's barrier. Without her daily infusion, both could fail." "Enough." Valerius looked over his shoulder. "She is a tool, Alistair. Tools can be replaced. This is a tantrum, nothing more." A tantrum. For ten years, I had bled to quiet his curse and reinforce the barrier around the kingdom. I had spent nights over antidote formulas after spending the day on this cot. He had reduced all of it to one word. I got off the cot. My knees shook, but I made it to the gilded chart on the wall. *Elara's Blood-Letting & Barrier Maintenance Schedule.* Every day of my life in the castle had a line on that page. I tore the parchment from the wall, ripped it into strips, and dropped them at Valerius's feet. "What do you think you're doing?" Valerius snapped. I knelt and touched one finger to the blood on the floor. A drop gathered in my palm and hardened into a red crystal. I flicked it across the floor. It stopped against his polished boot. A final donation. "I quit." Then, I turned my back on the Prince, his newly awakened fiancée, and the only life I had ever known. I walked toward the heavy oak doors. "Let her go," Valerius said behind me. "The first blizzard will have her crawling back, begging for a roof over her head." I kept walking.