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The canvas was bleeding.
I mean, not real blood. Paint. Cracked oil paint from 1847, flaking off in chips the size of my thumbnail. But under my work light it looked wet. Dark. Wrong.
I should've left it alone.
"Just stabilize the corner," I muttered, reaching for the microfiber brush. My hand was shaking. Too much coffee. Not enough sleep. The gallery owner wanted this portrait done by Friday and it was already Wednesday and I still hadn't figured out why the varnish was bubbling in the bottom left quadrant like something was pushing through from underneath.
The estate was too quiet. Mr. Ashford said I could work after hours. Said I'd have the place to myself. He didn't mention the house would feel like it was watching me.
I leaned in close. The subject of the painting stared back—some Victorian-era lord in a black coat, pale as bone, with eyes that followed you around the room. Typical melodramatic portraiture. Except his mouth was weird. The artist had painted it slightly open, like he was about to speak. Or bite.
I pushed the thought away and touched the brush to the damaged varnish.
The canvas split.
Not tore. Split. Like a mouth opening.
And my brush went through.
"What the hell—"
I jerked back, but my sleeve caught on the broken frame edge. Pain spiked hot across my forearm. I looked down and saw the cut, shallow but long, welling red.
Blood dripped onto the canvas.
The painting inhaled.
I heard it. Felt it. The air in the room sucked inward and the candles I'd lit for better color reference flared white-blue. The blood on the canvas didn't soak in. It spread. Crawled. Following the cracks in the paint like veins, racing toward the figure's open mouth.
"No no no—" I grabbed for the rag in my kit, tried to blot it, but the blood was already gone. Absorbed. And the paint was moving.
The lord's eyes shifted.
Looked right at me.
I staggered back, knocked over my stool. My heart was slamming against my ribs. This wasn't real. Couldn't be real. Restoration work didn't—paintings didn't—
The temperature dropped twenty degrees in two seconds.
Behind me, a voice said, "Careless."
I spun around.
A man stood in the doorway. Tall. Dark hair. Wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up and an expression that could've frozen the candles out. He looked like the portrait. Not identical, but close enough that my brain started making connections I didn't want it to make.
"Who are you?" My voice came out steady. Good. My hands were still shaking. Not good.
He stepped into the room. Graceful. Too graceful. Like he was walking on water instead of old hardwood.
"You triggered a bloodlock," he said. Not an answer. His gaze flicked to the painting, then to my arm. The cut was still bleeding, thin red line dripping onto the drop cloth. "And you're still bleeding. So either you're incompetent, or you're exactly what you look like."
"I'm a conservator," I said. "I was hired to restore—"
"The Thorne family crest is painted into that frame." He moved closer. I moved back. My hip hit the work table. "Only blood can trigger the seal. Only hunter blood."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you?"
He was fast. One second he was three feet away, the next his hand was around my wrist, lifting my bleeding arm between us. His grip was cold. Not cool. Cold. Like marble in winter.
"Let go—"
"Your pulse is elevated. You're afraid." He tilted his head. "But not surprised."
"You're hurting me."
"Not yet."
I yanked hard, but his grip didn't budge. My brain was screaming at me to run, but my legs felt like they'd been nailed to the floor. His eyes weren't brown or blue. They were black. Completely black. No whites.
And his teeth—
Oh god, his teeth.
"You're not real," I whispered.
"I'm extremely real." He pulled me closer. I could smell him now. Cold stone. Old paper. Something metallic underneath. "And you just used a blood ritual to summon me. So let's try this again. Who sent you?"
"No one sent me. I'm an art restorer, I work for Ashford Gallery, I've never seen you before in my life—"
"Liar."
"I'm not lying!"
His other hand came up and caught my jaw. Forced my head to the side, baring my throat. I felt his breath against my neck. Cold. Wrong.
"Hunters always lie," he said softly. "It's in your blood."
"I don't know what a hunter is—"
"Then this will be very educational."
Fangs brushed my skin.
I stopped breathing. Stopped thinking. My entire body locked up, rabbit-frozen, every animal instinct I had screaming predator predator predator—
And then I moved.
I don't know what I did. My hand flew up and hit something—his chest, his throat, I couldn't tell—but he let go, just for a second, and I twisted, grabbed the palette knife off the table, swung it—
He caught my wrist again. Slammed it down onto the table. The knife skittered away.
"There it is," he said. Almost smiling. "Training."
"I don't have training, I have a degree in art history, you're insane—"
"You moved like a hunter."
"I moved like someone who doesn't want to die!"
He leaned in close. His nose almost touched mine. His eyes were still solid black, but something else was there now. Not anger. Curiosity. Hunger.
"You really don't know," he said quietly. "Do you."
It wasn't a question.
I tried to pull free. He didn't let go.
"Let me leave," I said. My voice cracked. "Please. I don't know what you think I did, but I'll go, I won't tell anyone, I'll forget this whole thing—"
"Too late."
He turned my arm over. Pressed his thumb against the cut. It should've hurt. It didn't. It felt—warm. Electric. Wrong in a completely different way.
"The ritual is incomplete," he said. "Your blood opened the lock. Now it needs an answer."
"What answer? I don't—"
"This answer."
He bit my wrist.
Pain flashed white-hot up my arm. I gasped, tried to jerk away, but his grip was iron and his mouth was latched onto my skin and I could feel it—the pull. Not just blood. Something deeper. Something inside me unraveling and pouring out and oh god oh god—
The room spun.
The candles went out.
I heard him make a sound. Surprised. Almost shocked. He pulled back, and I saw his mouth, red with my blood, and his eyes—still black, but wider now—
"Impossible," he said.
I couldn't answer. My legs gave out. He caught me before I hit the floor, and I hated that, hated that he was holding me up when he was the reason I was falling, but I couldn't—couldn't think, couldn't breathe—
"What did you do?" I managed.
He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.
"Something I can't undo," he said.
And then the world went black.
---
I woke up in a bed that wasn't mine.
Silk sheets. Four-poster frame. Canopy. The kind of bed you see in museum ropes-off sections labeled "Do Not Touch."
I sat up too fast. My head swam, my arm throbbed, and my mouth tasted like I'd been chewing on copper pennies.
The room was huge. Stone walls. Actual tapestries. A fireplace big enough to roast a cow. And one tall window with heavy velvet drapes, currently closed.
I looked down at my wrist.
Two puncture marks, sealed over with something dark and shiny. Not a scab. Something else. The skin around them was flushed, hot to the touch, and I could feel it—a pulse under the marks that didn't match my heartbeat.
The door opened.
He walked in. Same man. Same cold grace. But now he was wearing a coat, long and dark, with silver buttons. He looked like he'd stepped out of the painting.
Maybe he had.
"You're awake," he said.
"Where am I?"
"Thornveil Court."
That meant nothing to me.
"I want to leave."
"No."
Just like that. No.
I swung my legs out of bed. I was still wearing my work clothes—jeans, old sweater, boots. At least he hadn't undressed me. Small mercy.
"You can't keep me here."
"I can." He crossed the room, stopped a few feet from the bed. "And I will. Until we determine what you are."
"I'm a conservator. I already told you—"
"Your blood says otherwise."
I stood up. Steadier than I expected. "My blood doesn't say anything. You bit me. That's assault. I'm calling the police."
"Go ahead."
I reached for my phone. It wasn't in my pocket.
"Looking for this?" He held it up. My phone. Cracked screen and all.
I lunged for it. He pulled it back, effortless.
"Give it back—"
"Why did you come to that house?" he asked.
"I was hired. I had a job. I didn't know about the painting or the ritual or you—"
"Who hired you?"
"Ashford Gallery. Mr. Ashford. I can give you his number, you can call him yourself—"
"Ashford is dead."
I stopped.
"What?"
"He died sixty years ago. His estate has been sealed since 1824."
The room tilted again.
"That's not possible. I spoke to him last week. He paid my deposit—"
"Show me the contract."
I stared at him.
"I—it's in my bag. At the house."
"There is no bag. There is no contract." He stepped closer. "There's only you, and a triggered bloodlock, and the fact that you're still alive after I fed from a Wren."
That word. Wren.
Something in my chest tightened.
"I don't know what that means," I said quietly.
He watched me for a long moment. Then he set my phone down on the bedside table.
"It means," he said, "that you and I are bound. The ritual is complete. Your blood is mine. And mine—" He touched his own wrist, where a matching mark glowed faint red under his skin. "—is yours."
I looked at the mark on my wrist again. At his.
Identical.
"No," I said. "No, undo it."
"I told you. I can't."
"Then find someone who can."
"There is no one." His voice was flat. Final. "The bond is eternal. Until one of us dies."
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't process. This wasn't real. This was shock. Concussion. Some kind of psychotic break brought on by solvent fumes and too many late nights—
"Three months," he said.
I looked up.
"What?"
"You have three months to prove you're not a threat. If you pass, you'll be granted a place in the court. If you fail—" His expression didn't change. "—you'll be executed as a hunter."
"I'm not a hunter!"
"Then you have nothing to worry about."
He turned and walked toward the door.
"Wait—"
He stopped. Didn't turn around.
"What's your name?" I asked.
Silence.
Then, quietly: "Dorian Thorne. Crown Prince of the Night Court."
The door closed behind him.
And I stood there, alone, in a room that shouldn't exist, with a mark on my wrist that pulsed in time with a heartbeat that wasn't mine.