Chapter 3:The Empty Throne
1350 Words
Tagline: *We are mateless. Until today.*
DRAVEN POV
Another day in Duskmoor.
I stood at the oriel window of my tower.
Glass on three sides. Floor to ceiling. The kind of glass that didn’t shatter when Cassius threw things. The kind that let me see everything and touch nothing.
Below: red sky.
Not sunset. Duskmoor’s sky is always red. The color of old blood. The color of the Treaty, signed in it. The color of our father’s name — Acheron. A river of pain. A river we were born in.
Below that: bone forest.
Trees without leaves. Branches like claws. They grow where we buried Death. Where we sealed it and called it peace. Where nothing alive dares to root.
The kingdom moved like clockwork.
Merchants shouting prices for blood-wine and silver thread. Guards in black armor patrolling walls that hadn’t been breached in ten thousand years. Children laughing.
Children.
Laughing.
In _our_ kingdom.
They felt safe.
Protected.
Because the most powerful vampires in existence ruled here.
Because _we_ ruled here.
Their trust was the only thing keeping me and my brothers going.
It was duty. It was purpose. It was the only thing that looked like meaning when you stripped everything else away.
Their faith in us. Their belief that we would keep the monsters out.
The irony was not lost on me.
We _are_ the monsters.
But it wasn’t enough.
Duty isn’t a mate. Purpose isn’t a tether. Faith isn’t warmth.
There’s always been a hollow pit in us.
In me.
Right here. _My hand pressed to my chest without thinking._
Empty.
Gnawing.
A hole carved out before we were born and never filled.
Nothing fills it.
Not blood. Not war. Not s*x. Not fear in their eyes when we walk into a room.
We’ve tried.
Gods, we’ve tried.
We’ve existed since the dawn of time.
Not a metaphor. Not hyperbole.
I remember the first sunrise. I remember when the sun was blue. I remember when humans were still learning fire and we were already old.
We rule every vampire on Earth.
Not by vote. Not by bloodline.
By strength.
By being the thing every other vampire checks the shadows for.
I’m the eldest.
Silent.
I learned early that words are cheap. Actions aren’t. When I speak, it’s law. So I rarely speak.
Deadly.
Not because I enjoy it. Because I’m efficient. One movement. One end.
Final word.
When Lucien wants to burn a city and Cassius wants to save it for later, I decide. And they listen. Because I’m the wall between them and annihilation.
Lucien, second-born.
Unhinged.
He laughs when he kills. He laughs when he’s bored. He laughs when he’s breaking. You never know which it is until the knife’s already in.
Violent.
Not like Cassius. Cassius is rage. Lucien is chaos. Cassius destroys. Lucien _unmakes_.
Unpredictable.
Even to me. Especially to me. He’s the only thing in three hundred centuries that still surprises me.
Cassius, the youngest.
Beautiful.
A weapon wrapped in gold. The kind of face that starts wars and ends them. The kind of face poets kill themselves over.
Cruel.
Because beauty without cruelty is weakness. And Cassius was never weak. He learned cruelty before he learned to walk.
Black heart.
He says he doesn’t have one. I’ve felt it beat. Once. When we were children and he thought I was dead. It beats like a war drum. For us. Only for us.
Our father, King Acheron — named for a river of pain — ruled for 30,000 years with our mother, Queen Ravena.
Father.
Cold. Calculated. The kind of king who would flood a continent to save a kingdom. Who did.
Mother.
Powerful. Feared. Kind in ways that terrified people more than Father’s wrath.
Father would execute you.
Mother would _forgive_ you, then let you live with what you’d done.
Which is worse, I’ve never decided.
Mother’s a witch.
Not hedge witch. Not coven witch.
_The_ witch.
The one the Treaty was written around. The one Death itself bargained with.
Father’s pureblood vampire.
First of his kind. Turned by no one. Born from blood and night and something older than gods.
That makes us hybrids.
Abominations, the old texts call us.
We call it _advantage_.
Now they’re in the human realm.
Retired. The word tastes wrong in my mouth. Kings don’t retire. Gods don’t retire.
But Mother wanted it. So Father gave it.
I never understood Mother’s obsession with humans.
Fragile things. Short lives. Loud. Messy. They die if you look at them wrong.
But she built an empire for them.
Duskmoor Global.
Not a company. A constellation.
Biotech. We cure the diseases we helped make.
Pharma. We own the pills that keep them alive and the ones that kill them.
Hospitals in every country. Our name on the buildings. Our doctors with our training. Our blood in the IV bags when it counts.
Charities. Because Mother says _“balance.”_
Real estate. We own the ground they walk on.
Banks too big to fail. Because we make the rules.
The largest defense contractor on Earth. Because peace is a business, and we’re the only ones selling it.
Media. We write the news they believe.
Tech. We built the phones in their pockets. The cameras in their streets. The satellites over their heads.
We own pieces of every government.
Presidents. Prime Ministers. Dictators.
They ask _us_ for permission.
To bomb. To build. To breathe.
All because Mother loves them.
She sees something in them we don’t. Something worth saving. Worth ruling. Worth _protecting_.
When they retired, she dragged Father to the human world.
Not asked. Dragged.
I saw it.
Mother, hand on his arm, smiling like she’d already won. Father, looking at her like she was the only war he ever lost.
Left us the throne.
Left us the kingdom. Left us the weight.
But thrones mean nothing when you’re empty.
It’s just a chair. Gold. Jewels. Bloodstains you can’t scrub out.
You can sit on it for eternity and still feel that hollow pit gnawing.
We have no mates.
The words are simple. The truth of them is not.
Every seer from the Oracle to the witches of Salem told us the same thing:
_“You have a mate. Your mate exists. But you should be patient.”_
Every sage. Every druid. Every shaman.
_“Your mate exists. Be patient.”_
We waited.
One thousand years.
Five thousand years.
Ten thousand years.
Thirty thousand years.
We stopped believing.
After the first thousand years, we still hoped.
After the tenth thousand, we still listened.
After the thirtieth thousand, we buried it.
Hope is a cruelty when you’re immortal. It doesn’t die. It just rots.
So we decided to accept our fate.
We decided we didn’t have a mate.
So we take flings.
Feed the hunger.
Not the hunger for blood. The other one. The worse one. The one in our chests.
Noble vampires’ daughters. Princesses of night courts. Warlocks with pretty mouths.
They all beg for a night.
For a taste of power. For a story to tell their grandchildren. For the chance to say _they_ were the one.
Anyone who wants more… gets silenced.
Not killed. Usually.
Just... _convinced_. Memories taken. Ambitions redirected. Sent to convents or battlefields or the human world with a new name and a trust fund.
Because hope is a disease. And we won’t infect anyone else with it.
We buried our hope.
Thirty feet deep. In the bone forest. Under the trees that don’t grow.
We accepted it.
_We are mateless._
The words are carved into the wall of my tower. I did it myself. Claw by claw. So I’d never forget.
_We are mateless._
_We are empty._
_We are enough._
We told ourselves that last one until i
t almost sounded true.
Until today.
---
*AUTHOR'S NOTE*
THE EMPTY THRONE 👑🐺❄️
⚠️ TW: Immortality, existential dread, past executions
Draven POV. The eldest. The final word.
30,000 years of “we are mateless”...
Until today.
Comment "EMPTY NO MORE" if you felt that hollow pit.
- Writer
