The fire cracked like gunshot in the silence.
Outside, the Highlands slumbered beneath a thick mantle of fog and frost, but inside the ancient watchtower—where blood had been spilled, bonds had been forged, and girls had been reborn into something unholy and eternal—stillness reigned. A charged stillness. The kind that happens just before a storm tears the sky open.
Caitriona and Elspeth lay on stone slabs like sleeping saints in a cathedral of ruin, their skin pale as milk-glass and just as fragile-looking. But they weren't fragile. Not anymore.
Day one.
Hadrian stood by the window, a tall silhouette haloed by the flickering fire and the blood moon beyond. His broad shoulders strained the seams of his dark wool coat, arms crossed, jaw set tight enough to break steel. The glass fogged faintly where he'd breathed too close.
Daenerys moved like smoke across the stone floor, her silver braid trailing down her back like a ribbon of moonlight. She knelt beside the girls—her girls now—her violet eyes unreadable. The firelight licked across her skin, making her look more goddess than vampire.
"You're brooding again," she murmured, without looking up.
"I'm planning," Hadrian replied, his voice a low rumble—the kind that made people either follow him into battle or pray they never had to face him on the wrong side of one.
"You always plan when you're brooding. It's adorable." She looked up at him with a crooked smile. "Very knight in tarnished armor. So 12th-century of you."
He turned, finally. Green eyes—too bright, too old for his youthful face—met hers.
"One of them twitched," he said.
"And we didn't die. That's a good start," Daenerys said dryly, standing. "Although, if Caitriona wakes up with her usual sass and bloodlust, we might wish we had."
Siobhan chuckled from near the hearth, arms folded under her long coat, her red hair gleaming. "Ach, I'd almost pay to see that. Wee Caitriona's got a tongue sharper than a butcher's cleaver."
"Sharper than yer wit, more like," Liam muttered, glancing up from where he crouched beside Maggie.
Siobhan arched a brow. "Careful, Liam. I might forget ye saved me life last week."
Hadrian cut across them. "Liam."
"Aye?"
"I need you to send a telegram."
Liam straightened, brushing dust from his knees. "To who?"
Hadrian hesitated for a beat. Then: "Carlisle Cullen."
Even Maggie, still curled beside Liam like a pale wraith, blinked at that. "Yer not serious."
"Deadly," Hadrian said.
Liam's brow furrowed, but he didn't argue. "What do you want me to say?"
Hadrian crossed the room, slow, deliberate. "Tell him Daenerys and I turned two girls. They're stable—for now. But when they wake…" He trailed off. "We can't stay here."
"Ye want the Cullens to leave Forks?" Liam asked, incredulous. "But that's across the bloody ocean!"
Hadrian nodded. "Exactly."
Siobhan frowned. "I still dinnae understand. The turning didn't happen on their land."
Daenerys leaned against the stone wall with aristocratic ease, her voice languid as silk but with teeth under the words. "The Quileutes don't give a damn about geography. Their treaty says no turning humans. Period."
"And they'll assume Carlisle sanctioned it," Hadrian added. "Whether he did or not. Which he didn't."
Liam scratched the back of his neck. "Aye. But three shifters? That's it? The Cullens can handle three wolves."
Daenerys snorted. "You've clearly never seen one in action. They're not werewolves, Liam. They're not cursed or moon-bound. They shift at will. And they're fast. Strong. Lethal."
"They don't fight fair," Hadrian said. "And they don't forgive."
Siobhan stepped closer, frown deepening. "You really think they'll come for the Cullens?"
"I think they'll come for everyone," Hadrian said. "I know I can take them head-on easily, but I'm not risking a war over semantics. Not with these girls."
Daenerys moved to his side, the firelight dancing in her violet eyes. She brushed something from his lapel—an ash fleck, or maybe just an excuse to touch him. "So we're running?"
"Relocating," Hadrian corrected, glancing down at her hand. "Strategic withdrawal."
"Mm. So broody. I like it." She grinned, leaning closer until he could feel the cold press of her forehead against his. "You always get like this when you're trying not to be heroic."
"I'm not heroic," he said.
"No," she whispered. "You're worse. You're good."
He kissed her then. Not gently. Not sweetly. There was too much unsaid between them—blood, battle, pain. Her fingers curled into his coat like claws, and for a moment, the world narrowed to two immortal monsters trying not to fall in love like fools.
A cough broke them apart.
"Apologies," Siobhan said, smirking. "But yer romantic tension's foggin' up the room worse than the weather."
Maggie, at the door now, grinned faintly. "Get a room, ye two."
"Already have one," Daenerys muttered, smoothing her hair.
Hadrian straightened. "Tell Carlisle to get everyone out. They can contact us aboard the Queen Mary."
"The bloody Queen Mary?" Liam said, blinking. "That's not a ship, that's a castle."
"We need space. And speed. And distance," Hadrian said. "They'll pick a new destination. We'll meet them there."
"Where to after that?" Siobhan asked.
Hadrian looked toward the window again, eyes darkening. "Somewhere cold. Remote. Wild."
Daenerys smiled. "Somewhere people scream at night, and no one listens."
"Cheerful lot, aren't ye?" Liam muttered, tugging his coat on.
Maggie hesitated at the threshold, her gaze flicking toward Elspeth's unmoving body. Her lips parted, as if to speak—but she didn't. She just nodded and stepped into the snowstorm.
The wind howled against the tower walls.
Then—
Elspeth's hand spasmed.
Caitriona's brow creased, like a child frowning in sleep.
"Day one," Daenerys whispered. Her fingers found Hadrian's. "Let's hope day two doesn't try to eat us."
—
Hadrian crouched by the hearth, shirtless and gleaming with the fire's warm light, his sculpted back framed by the golden flicker of the flames. The muscles in his shoulders tensed and flowed as he etched another glowing rune into the pale grain of the massive pine trunk. Not a coffin—though, in fairness, it bore a striking resemblance.
A stray curl fell over his emerald-green eyes, and he brushed it back absently, fingers smudged with silver ink and dried blood. He worked with the calm, precise focus of a surgeon and the quiet intensity of a man who had seen far too many wars.
"You do know," came Daenerys's voice, lazy and laced with amusement, "that shirtlessness doesn't make you carve faster."
Hadrian didn't glance up. "I disagree. I think it's shaving hours off the project."
From the fur-covered bench behind him, Daenerys sat with one knee tucked beneath her chin, her silken white-blonde hair cascading over her shoulder in artful disarray. She was clad in dark riding trousers and a sleeveless blouse that showed off toned arms and the faint shimmer of protective runes inked just beneath her skin.
The firelight kissed her high cheekbones and caught in her violet eyes, which practically glowed with amusement. She was threading leather cords with her unnaturally nimble fingers, braiding them into elegant wristlets that shimmered faintly with embedded magic.
"Just admit it," she said, arching a silver brow, "you like the way I look at you when you pretend not to notice."
That made Hadrian pause.
He set the carving tool down and turned his head slightly. "You're hardly subtle, Dany."
She smiled—a slow, catlike thing. "Neither are you."
From the shadows of the circular tower chamber, a sharp voice interrupted the moment.
"Oh for God's sake, if ye two are gonna start rutting like bloody wolves again, do it outside where I don't have to smell it!"
Maggie stormed in, boots clacking on the stone, her copper hair swept into a loose braid and her cheeks flushed from the climb up the tower stairs. Her Irish brogue was thick and unforgiving. She looked like she'd just finished brawling with the wind and won. Again.
"They're stirrin'," she said. "Twitchin', twitchin', twitchin'. Like a sack full of ferrets under a new moon."
Daenerys rose from the bench, tucking the finished bracelets into a velvet pouch, her movements graceful and deliberate.
"Good. They're early," she said. "Means their systems are adapting quicker than expected."
Maggie gave her a look like she wasn't sure if that was good news or a death sentence. "Aye, and what happens if they wake up hungry and mad, eh? You planning on throwing Hadrian's pretty chest at 'em to distract 'em?"
"I'm standing right here," Hadrian muttered.
"And glowing like a Renaissance sculpture," Siobhan added, stepping in behind Maggie with a smirk and a cigarette dangling from her lips. She flicked it out the window with a snap of her fingers and gave Daenerys a nod. "He ever put a shirt on, or are we just accepting this as his uniform now?"
"I vote no shirt," Daenerys said breezily.
"Of course you do," Siobhan replied dryly, brushing snow off her wool coat and striding toward the enchanted trunk. She circled it with a practiced eye, nodding in reluctant approval at the dense layers of silver-etched runes. "So, this box. That's what's going to carry the girlies all the way to bloody America?"
"It's not a box," Hadrian replied, running his fingers along a newly carved glyph that flared faintly beneath his touch. "It's a mobile crypt warded with spatial folding, sensory suppression, and magic-bound locks keyed to me and Dany. Once sealed, it'll be silent, scentless, and unbreakable from the inside."
Siobhan gave him a look. "So, a box."
Daenerys tilted her head. "It's a cocoon."
"It's a coffin," Maggie muttered.
"It's a necessity," Hadrian snapped, his tone sharp enough to silence the room.
Siobhan exhaled through her nose. "Fine. You've got your coffin-cocoon. What about the bracelets?"
Daenerys sauntered over, holding one up. It gleamed softly in the light, the braided leather laced with whisper-thin threads of magic. "Wards woven into the strands. Suppression charms keyed to the olfactory nerves—once they're worn, the girls won't register human scent as prey. No stimulation, no frenzy."
"Until they're hungry," Maggie muttered.
"Then we hunt," Daenerys said, looping the bracelet onto her wrist to demonstrate. "And only with beasts. Plenty of elk in the high woods. Moose if we're lucky."
Siobhan raised a dark brow. "Still going full Cullens, eh? Drinking from bloody animals like it's fine wine?"
"It's not wine," Hadrian said. "It's penance."
Daenerys glanced at him, her expression softening. "And it works."
Siobhan shrugged. "Unnatural, if you ask me. Vampire who don't bite humans—what's next? A banshee who hums lullabies?"
Daenerys gave her a tight, amused smile. "We don't ask for your approval, Siobhan. Just your steel when it matters."
Siobhan nodded once. "Aye. And what's the plan if they go feral mid-voyage?"
Hadrian looked up, his emerald eyes cold and bright. "Then we end them."
Maggie flinched. "God above."
"No, Maggie," Daenerys said softly. "Just us."
Silence stretched again as wind howled through the tower windows, carrying with it the scent of snow and pine and something else—something hot and metallic.
"They're waking," Maggie said. "I can smell it in the air. Blood memory. Rising like steam from their bones."
Daenerys's eyes flared. "Then we sharpen our teeth."
"And say a prayer?" Siobhan asked, dry as salt.
Daenerys slid the pouch of bracelets onto her belt and smiled, wicked and dazzling. "To ourselves, darling. Who else has ever listened?"
Hadrian stood, finally pulling a linen shirt over his head with a reluctant sigh. "Come on then, my dragons," he murmured as he fastened the buttons, eyes gleaming. "Time to see if the girls are monsters—or something more."
—
On the third and final day, the storm broke with the dawn.
Snow still clung in crusted arcs to the mullioned windows of the ruined tower, but the sky outside had softened to a hazy winter gold. Sunlight spilled through the trees like cold honey, catching on icicles that glinted like bayonets. The storm had passed, but it hadn't left. It had settled in the bones.
Daenerys stood at the hearth in a silk robe the color of spilled ink, staring into the dying fire as though it might crack open and speak to her. Her silver hair was loose, falling over her shoulders in waves that caught the light like woven moonlight, and her violet eyes shimmered with that particular brand of intensity that made most men nervous and most women furious.
Hadrian Wayne wasn't most men.
He was leaning beside the window with a cigarette balanced between two fingers, his long coat open over a sweater and shirt, collar rakishly popped, eyes like polished emeralds tracking the woods below.
"Didn't think it'd clear so soon," he muttered, exhaling a thin curl of smoke through his nose.
"You sound disappointed," Daenerys said, her tone dry. She didn't turn to face him, but her lips quirked, barely.
Hadrian flicked ash into a cracked porcelain dish. "Storms keep things simple. Everyone hunkers down, does their brooding, blames the weather for their bad moods."
"Hmm." She tilted her head. "And what do you blame for your brooding?"
He turned, and his eyes met hers—cool and clear, but with that simmer beneath, the one that never quite went out. "You."
She laughed. A real one. Bright and brief, like the crack of a whip. "I suppose I'll take that as a compliment."
"Oh, you should," he said, voice low, lips tilted into a half-grin. "You're the best kind of trouble I've ever met."
Before she could reply, the door creaked open.
Liam strode in, snow trailing behind him like a loyal dog. His coat was fur-lined and half-frozen, his scarf tangled, and his beard dusted white. He looked like he'd fought the mountain and won, then had a pint about it.
"Brought what you asked for," he called out, letting the burlap sack fall to the stone floor with a satisfying thump. "Bit of a scuffle with a bewitching seamstress on the way out, but I flirted her into letting me go."
Siobhan swept in from the shadows like smoke, all tailored wool and sharp hips, boots clicking on the stone. "Did you now?"
Liam gave her a wink, the kind that could ignite a pub fight. "Told her she had the finest seams I've ever seen. She said I had nice tailoring myself."
"Disgraceful," Siobhan said, though her smirk said otherwise. "And yet, entirely on brand."
Daenerys stepped forward and crouched beside the sack, drawing out the two velvet dresses—one forest green, the other a wine-dark burgundy. Her fingers brushed the subtle threadwork glowing beneath the surface: sigils stitched in protective runes, meant to hold against claw, fire, and mind.
"These will do nicely," she said. "Good work."
Liam gave a half-bow, then turned toward the fireplace. "I'm thawin'. If any of ye plan on wakin' ancient evil, do it quietly."
Maggie leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, steel-bladed gloves tapping against her elbows. Her copper hair was braided tight, her Irish brogue as thick as the peatlands. "If they rise screamin', I'll put 'em down meself. Right quick."
"They won't scream," Daenerys said, rising. "They'll remember. Or they'll learn."
Elspeth and Caitriona lay still in the cocoon. The sarcophagus was warm now, humming faintly with magic, the layered protection spells beginning to fall away in gentle wisps of light.
Hadrian stepped beside Daenerys. "This is the part where you tell me you're sure."
"I'm never sure," she said, looking up at him. "But I'm stubborn."
"God help me," he murmured, "that's my favorite thing about you."
She didn't look away. "That's not your favorite thing."
His lips twitched. "Not even close."
They stood there for a moment too long. Until Siobhan cleared her throat loudly, and Maggie made an exaggerated gagging sound in the corner.
"Right, well," Daenerys said briskly, cheeks flushed just a little. "Let's get them dressed."
The ward seals came away one by one—clicks and hums and the soft sigh of ancient magic unspooling. When the lid rose, it brought with it a cold mist that tasted faintly of blood and lavender.
Elspeth and Caitriona lay within, still as death—but their chests rose now in slow, steady rhythm.
They were changed.
Elspeth's golden hair had deepened, now threaded through with silver. Her skin glowed like moonlight on new snow, and her eyes, when they flickered beneath her lids, showed the barest hint of crimson. Caitriona was smaller, sharper—her raven curls now streaked with platinum, her jaw clenched even in sleep like she was biting back a scream.
"They look like angels," Liam muttered, stepping closer.
"No," Daenerys corrected. "They look like predators dressed as angels."
Together, she and Siobhan changed the girls with practiced ease. Their bodies were unnaturally light, muscles lean and tight beneath smooth skin. They moved even in unconsciousness—twitches of fingers, jerks of limbs, dreams leaking into motion.
"You ever think we've gone too far?" Maggie asked suddenly, quiet.
"No," Hadrian said, too quickly. Then added, "Yes. Every damned day."
Daenerys smoothed a lock of hair behind Caitriona's ear. "We did what we had to."
"And if they're not them anymore?" Siobhan asked.
"We remind them," Daenerys replied, firm. "Or we stop them. Fast. Clean."
No one argued.
And then—
Elspeth's eyes snapped open. Red. Burning. Ravenous.
A breath later, Caitriona jolted upright, back arched like a bow. Her lips parted, and her eyes locked on Maggie first—sharp, calculating, trembling on the edge of something feral.
Hadrian moved before anyone else, stepping forward slow and steady. "Easy, lass," he said gently. "You're safe."
Elspeth blinked. Her voice was hoarse, like she hadn't spoken in years. "I… I know you."
Daenerys knelt between them, heart twisting. "Yes," she said. "You always will."
Caitriona's mouth parted. Her voice was a whisper. "What… am I?"
Daenerys smiled, soft and terrible. "You're you. Just more."
Caitriona stared at her fingers. "I can hear everything."
"Charming," Liam muttered from behind.
Elspeth clutched her stomach suddenly. "I'm… hungry."
The room tensed.
Hadrian didn't blink. "We have rabbits in the cellar. Deer in the snowline. Take your pick."
Daenerys rose slowly, brushing invisible dust from her skirt. "Let's get you something to eat, girls."
"And then?" Caitriona asked, voice sharp.
Daenerys turned, silver hair catching the firelight like a halo. "Then we teach you how to be monsters without becoming beasts."
She held out her hand. Elspeth took it first.
And so the dawn came. With blood in their eyes, and fire in their hearts.
—
The fire had burned low in the great stone hearth, casting long shadows across the manor's drawing room. The walls—hung with threadbare tapestries and portraits with eyes that seemed too knowing—breathed with an old, forgotten kind of magic. The kind that watched. The kind that remembered.
Elspeth's fingers gripped Daenerys's hand like a sinner clutching a rosary, but her eyes, red as garnets under gaslight, kept flicking to Caitriona. The younger girl sat curled in a wingback chair, knees drawn to her chest, her frame shaking like a church bell in winter wind.
"I feel wrong," Caitriona whispered, her voice soaked in dread and a thick Scottish brogue. "Inside. Like I've been gutted and stitched back up all... crooked."
Hadrian crouched in front of her, his emerald eyes gentle, like spring moss in a world gone grey. "You're not wrong," he said, voice low, smooth as a whiskey pour. "You're different. Retuned, like a piano dragged through a thunderstorm. But the melody's still yours, lass. I swear it on my name."
She blinked, her wide dark eyes full of trembling ghosts. "But we died."
"Aye," Daenerys said, her voice cool as porcelain but burning beneath, like a blade held too long over fire. She stood tall beside them, wrapped in a dove-grey cloak, silver hair falling like silk over her shoulder, violet eyes sharp as flint. "They called you witches. Branded you. Burned your home. Left your bodies for the carrion."
Elspeth's chin trembled, but her voice was fierce. "Because I made the winds scream."
"And I made the trees bleed," Caitriona whispered, curling tighter.
"Aye, and the village called it the Devil's work," Liam said, leaning against the hearth, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his thick Irish brogue soaked in contempt. "Didn't matter that you were bairns. You frightened them, and that was enough."
"They were cowards," Maggie said, Irish vowels curling around every word like smoke. She tossed a poker into the fire, sparks flaring. "And cowardice always finds a holy excuse."
"We've all died a bit," Siobhan said coolly, draping herself on the divan like a queen in mourning. "Some of us more spectacularly than others."
Hadrian reached into his coat—long, dark, lined in something that caught the light like dragonfly wings—and pulled out a silver coin. He turned it once, twice, then tossed it into the air. It hung there, defying gravity, and then began to glow—burning gold, no flame, no smoke, just light, like a prayer lit from within.
Caitriona stared, eyes wide.
"That's not illusion," Hadrian said, voice low. "That's us. Magic. Blood-born. Bone-deep. You were always more than what they feared. We didn't make you monsters. We simply revealed the truth."
"Witches," Elspeth breathed. Her brogue thickened with awe. "Real witches."
"And vampires," Daenerys added, folding her gloved hands before her. She looked more statue than woman—except for the firestorm in her eyes.
"But... that's damned," Caitriona whispered, shrinking into the chair.
"We're not demons, are we?" Elspeth asked, making the sign of the cross so quickly it nearly blurred.
"No," Hadrian said, standing tall, brushing ash from his coat like a knight shedding old sins. "Demons don't question. They don't feel guilt. They don't cry out for mercy. You do."
Daenerys stepped forward, her steps silent, deadly, divine. "We know what you were taught. Hellfire. Eternal agony. But truth's rarely that clean. Or that cruel. You are still you. The soul is not in the blood, but in the will."
"But I can feel it," Caitriona said. "Like... something curling in my throat. Like I'm starving for something I can't name."
Maggie grinned wickedly. "That's the hunger. Like a violin string always pulled too tight. You'll learn to play it."
"We don't kill to feed," Daenerys said firmly.
"Not anymore," Liam muttered. "Mostly."
"There are other ways," Hadrian said. "Our kin in America—they live on animal blood. Deer, foxes, the odd bear if they're cheeky."
"You'll hate the first taste," Maggie warned, cracking her neck. "But they say it grows on you."
"Like jazz," Liam said, smirking.
"Like rot," Siobhan corrected with a sniff.
Caitriona looked at Elspeth. "You really think we can?"
Elspeth nodded. "We can try. Together."
Hadrian turned toward the door. "Then let's hunt."
"Not for blood," Daenerys said. "For control."
"For salvation," Hadrian finished.
"Fresh air," Maggie added, swinging her cloak around her shoulders. "And maybe a fresh corpse or two."
Liam groaned. "We agreed. No more corpses."
"I never agreed," Maggie smirked.
Outside, dawn spilled gold across the snow. The forest loomed, shadowed and silent. But the air buzzed—alive, dangerous.
Hadrian held Daenerys back as the others moved ahead. "You were brilliant, you know."
Her brow arched. "Of course I was."
"I mean it," he said. "You've got a fire in you that makes the sun look cold."
She smiled slowly, and it wasn't a kind smile. It was a queen's smile. "Careful, Hadrian. Keep that up, and I might decide to rule with you."
He stepped closer. "Darlin', I'd build you a throne from the bones of your enemies."
She laughed, rich and rare, like cathedral bells.
"I don't need your bones," she said.
"You've already got my heart," he replied, brushing a stray lock of silver hair behind her ear.
They kissed—fierce, electric, ancient. Then broke apart like a storm split by lightning.
Ahead, the others vanished into the woods, laughter sharp as broken glass, footsteps silent as snowfall.
And behind them, the old world—of crosses and torches and lies—crumbled to ash.
The new world had teeth.
And it was hungry.
—
The snow had thickened to a slow, mournful dance. Heavy flakes drifted down like pieces of a broken heaven, painting the Highlands in a bone-white hush. The trees stood silent witness, their branches bare and brittle, like old bones thrust skyward in prayer.
Elspeth's laughter shattered the stillness.
It was sharp, unexpected—half a giggle, half a bark of incredulous joy—as she tripped over a snow-cloaked log and nearly pitched face-first into the drifts.
"Saints save me," she sputtered, hauling herself upright with a dramatic huff, her thick Scottish brogue muffled by the wind. "I look like I've been dragged backwards through a slaughterhouse and had a wee brawl with the butcher on the way out."
Her once-cream dress was a battlefield: torn hem, soaked bodice, a constellation of blood across the sleeves. She looked like a ghost who'd fought her way back to the world of the living.
Caitriona, walking beside her and looking no better, twirled once on her heels, letting the blood-speckled fabric swirl like a grim ballerina.
"That poor stag," she said, grinning, her dark eyes gleaming beneath the curls matted to her forehead. "Didnae even know what hit it. One minute prancin' about like some bloody forest king, the next—" She mimed an explosion. "Bam. Caitriona MacLeod, Slayer of Antlered Things."
Elspeth snorted. "Your skirt looks like it murdered someone and hid the body under the floorboards."
"It was a nice skirt," Caitriona admitted, glancing down with mock sadness. "Now it's performance art."
Hadrian, several paces ahead, turned at the noise—his long black coat billowing faintly in the breeze like the wing of a crow. Hands still buried in his pockets, he gave them a slow once-over and lifted a single brow.
Without a word, he flicked his fingers. The effect was instantaneous. Blood and dirt vanished from their dresses in a shimmer of invisible heat, torn seams knitting back together with a faint hiss of steam. It wasn't magic so much as a command. Reality obeyed him.
"Do you try to get drenched in blood," he asked dryly, emerald eyes twinkling beneath the shadows of his lashes, "or is it just a talent you've both cultivated over time?"
Elspeth put a hand to her chest, mock-offended. "We're artists, sir. This is commitment to the role."
Daenerys didn't look back. She moved beside Hadrian with the soundless grace of a shadow at moonrise. Her silver hair caught the pale light, half-veiled in snow, and the violet of her eyes burned through the mist like distant fire.
"Better the dresses than some poor mortal," she murmured, her voice laced with that low, velvet menace she wore like perfume.
"True," Caitriona admitted, sobering just a little. "Still… that was—well, that was the best worst thing I've ever done."
She turned slightly, her dark gaze flickering between the two vampires who led them now—ageless, unreadable, and yet somehow... familiar.
"We never really said thank you," she said, voice quieter. "For savin' us. For not leavin' us to rot in that old church like discarded bones."
Elspeth nodded. "We were sixteen. Nearly seventeen. But last night? It felt like we lived. Really lived. More than we ever did before."
Daenerys tilted her head just enough to speak without turning.
"Because now," she said, "you're awake."
A stillness passed between them, more sacred than silence. The wind whispered overhead, rattling skeletal branches. And through the trees, the manor emerged—an ancient silhouette of black stone and crawling ivy, like something time forgot but death remembered.
"We were orphaned young," Elspeth said after a moment. "Uncle took us in. Cait's aunt too. Fierce woman. Baked bread like a witch and cursed like a sailor."
Caitriona smiled faintly. "They both died last winter. Fever. Took half the village. No one left but ghosts and regrets."
Hadrian's voice was soft, careful. "I'm sorry."
Caitriona shrugged, but her jaw was tight.
"You get used to the emptiness. Like breathing frost. Eventually, you don't even feel the burn."
Elspeth's smile was crooked. "Until someone sets it on fire."
Hadrian chuckled low in his throat. "We've been accused of being... a little incendiary."
Caitriona's gaze drifted back to him. "You don't look much older than us. Twenty? Twenty-one, maybe."
Daenerys arched a pale brow at Hadrian, lips curling with faint amusement. "Go on, darling. Impress them."
He sighed theatrically. "We've been alive for nearly eighteen years."
Elspeth grinned. "Aye, see? That's what I thought."
"And," Hadrian added with a smirk, "we've been vampires for another eighteen."
Both girls stopped in their tracks. Caitriona blinked. Elspeth's mouth dropped open like a church door in a hurricane.
"Wait, what?" Cait said. "You mean... you're older than my uncle?"
Hadrian smiled, slow and wicked. "And probably better looking too."
Daenerys didn't even blink. "You're not even the handsomest one in this snowbank, Hadrian."
He placed a hand over his heart in mock betrayal. "Et tu, Daenerys?"
Elspeth, after a long pause, tilted her head. "So if you turned us... does that make you...?"
Caitriona's eyes widened in horror. "Are ye our parents?!"
Daenerys turned at that, the ghost of a smirk playing at her lips. "Gods, no. I don't do nappies. Or lullabies."
Hadrian laughed. "In vampire terms, it's more like... patronage. You're ours. And we're responsible for you."
Elspeth made a face. "So... adoptive parents of the damned?"
"Glorious title," Daenerys mused. "We should get that etched in stone."
Caitriona shook her head, half-laughing, half-appalled. "This is so... messed up."
Hadrian beamed. "Welcome to the family, darling."
Daenerys's voice turned gentle, the fire beneath it banked but not gone. "We'll guide you. Train you. But we won't chain you."
"That's more than anyone's ever done for us," Elspeth said softly.
They walked the rest of the way in reverent silence. The manor loomed larger now, its stained glass windows glinting faintly through the snowfall, the scent of smoke curling from the chimney like an omen.
Caitriona, as they reached the frostbitten steps, murmured, "What now?"
"Now?" Daenerys said, pausing beneath the carved archway, her silver hair stirring in the wind like spun mercury. "Now you rest. You listen. You learn."
"There's more out there than you've ever imagined," Hadrian added. "Things that live in shadow. Things that burn in the light."
"Some are monsters," Daenerys said, stepping into the threshold. "Some are angels."
Hadrian smiled, a half-tilted, dangerous thing. "And some are both."
Elspeth stared at them. "Training for what?"
Daenerys turned. The fire in her eyes met the snowlight. It made her look like something carved from a fever dream—ethereal, terrible, and beautiful.
"To be more than survivors," she said.
Hadrian stepped beside her, hand brushing against hers—not holding it, not quite, but close enough to matter.
"To be legends."
The door opened. The dark swallowed them whole.
Inside, the air crackled. Inside, the shadows moved.
And far below the manor, in chambers where no human heart had beat for centuries—
Magic opened one red eye… And smiled.
---
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