CHAPTER NINE The Hunger That Isn’t Hunger
264 Words
They don’t look at me the same anymore.
When I walk through the castle village, conversations collapse into silence. Doors close.
Even the wind feels cautious around me. I feel it all now—the pulse of the earth beneath the stones, the old blood soaked into the walls, the way fear moves faster than sound.
The hunger is constant.
But it isn’t for blood.
It’s for wrongness.
I taste lies before they’re spoken. They rot on the tongue. When someone intends violence, the air tightens, vibrating like a plucked string. It makes my teeth ache. It makes my hands shake.
Astridr avoids me.
That frightens me more than his claws ever did.
When I finally corner him in the lower hall, he doesn’t bare his fangs. He looks… careful.
“What happens if I leave?” I ask.
His jaw tightens. “The seal walks with you. Wherever you stand, the boundary forms.”
“So I’m a prison,” I say.
“You are a door,” he replies. “And doors invite knocking.”
That night, the human village burns.
Not from vampire fire. From something colder.
Shadows crawl where flames should be, bending the light wrong. I hear screaming miles away, and every cry drives into my skull like a nail.
I drop to my knees on the battlements, blood running from my nose, my throat mark blazing.
Astridr grips my shoulders. “Do not answer them.”
But I already know—
Something ancient has felt me wake.
And it is coming to claim what it believes is theirs.
- Writer
