A Tithe Of Blood

The small chamber was dim and cold, its single window shuttered tightly against the night's breath. A sliver of moonlight slipped through a crack in the wood, painting a pale silver ribbon across the rough floorboards, as if the night itself had tried to touch her.

Elira sat hunched on her cot, a threadbare blanket drawn tightly around her thin shoulders.

The coarse wool scratched her skin, but she welcomed the discomfort it was real, unlike the memories that kept slipping through her fingers like sand.

She reached beneath her pillow and withdrew a frayed square of fabric, once soft, now stiff from years of being folded and refolded. It held a fading scent lavender, sun-warmed earth, smoke from the hearth. Home.

Her fingers traced the worn threads, eyes misting. She wasn't sure whether it was the cold or the ache in her chest that made her shiver.

Outside, the estate lay in silence, blanketed under a moonless sky. Only the occasional drip of water echoed through the stone corridors and the soft shuffle of the night guard's boots broke the stillness.

Somewhere beyond the heavy walls, the wind moved through the trees, whispering to those who listened.

Elira's mind wandered, as it so often did in moments of quiet. She saw her childhood hills again rolling and green, speckled with wildflowers. She heard the sheep bleating in the distance, the comforting voice of her father calling from the porch. But most of all, she saw him.Nicholas.

He had been laughter and sunlight, warm bread and muddy boots. He had been her secret her joy, her first thread of understanding, her true friend.

Her fingers clenched the cloth tighter.

"Do you think the vampires will ever leave us in peace?" she had once asked him, sitting beneath the ancient willow near the river.

Nicholas had grinned, tossing a pebble into the rushing water. "Maybe. Or maybe they're just part of the world now. But no matter what come we have each other."

That promise so simple, so fragile had been ripped away the day the Blood Tax took her.

She remembered the cold-faced emissary arriving, the tense discussion behind closed doors.

She remembered her stepmother's sly smile, how easily her name had been offered in place of her younger sister's.

A sob tried to claw its way out of her throat, but she swallowed it down.

There was no room for weakness in the house of monsters.

She pressed the cloth to her lips and whispered, "Nicholas… please remember me. Please wait."

And the wind outside answered with silence.

The next evening, after a punishing day of labor, Elira was summoned by the headmaid. Without explanation, she was handed a woven basket and ordered to the lower gardens to collect moonlace petals an odd errand. Moonlace bloomed briefly in early autumn, and frost had already dulled the grounds.

Still, she obeyed.

Twilight bled into the horizon as she wrapped her shawl tighter and descended the moss-covered stairs toward the maze of brambles and stone.

The garden was unnaturally still.

No birds. No insects. Only the brittle crunch of her boots over gravel and the rustle of half-dead ivy against carved marble.

She reached the old fountain at the heart of the garden a relic from an older age. Half-frozen, the water inside shimmered with moonlight just beginning to rise. There, nestled in the cracks of the stone, bloomed a small cluster of moonlace, their petals pale, almost translucent, like frost woven into silk.

Elira knelt to pick them, fingers trembling from the cold.

That's when she felt it.

Not a sound, not a shadow—just the sudden weight of being watched. The air shifted, colder than it had any right to be.

She turned, slowly.

Duke Alaric stood beneath the archway, half-shrouded in darkness, his cloak trailing like smoke.

No footfall. No sound. He had simply appeared as a statue brought to life, carved from shadow and winter.

Elira's breath caught. Her first instinct was to curtsy to avert her eyes.

But something in his gaze held her fast.

"You shouldn't be here," he said softly.

She did not reply.

The silence that followed was not empty it thrummed with something unspoken.

Recognition. Curiosity. A tether neither of them understood.

After a long moment, his voice slid into the air low, smooth, controlled.

"You carry yourself like a ghost," he murmured. "Yet even the dead do not burn so brightly."

Her heart stuttered in her chest.

"I am no one,your grave" she whispered.

Alaric took a step forward, his boots making no sound on the stone. His eyes didn't hold hunger only study. And something buried even deeper.

"You are something," he said. "Just not what they think."

She found herself holding his gaze. "Do you speak in riddles to all your servants, or am I a special case?"

The corner of his mouth twitched not quite a smile. More like the shadow of one. A reaction carefully leashed.

"I don't speak to servants," he said quietly.

She should've been insulted. But instead, her skin prickled with warmth beneath the chill.

He stepped closer still.

Now she could smell winter on him smoke, pine, cold metal.

"Does Lord Calvorn know you're here?" she asked, her voice barely audible.

Alaric's gaze drifted to the hollow of her throat, where her shawl didn't quite hide the faint, glowing mark beneath her skin.

"I see it," he murmured.

Her breath hitched.

"You know what it is?"

He met her eyes, and for a moment just a moment there was a flicker of something in his own.

"I've seen it before."

And then, he was gone melting into the garden like mist, as though he had never been there at all.

Elira stood alone, her basket full of moonlace, and her heart heavier than ever.

_____________

The night clung to the estate like a second skin cold, close, and watching.Elira did not sleep.

Not after the garden. Not after his voice.

She had returned to her quarters with the scent of pine and winter still lingering in her hair, with the weight of Duke Alaric's words coiled like smoke beneath her ribs.

"I've seen it before."

The mark beneath her collarbone still pulsed faintly, as though it had been stirred by his gaze. She had not looked at it closely in months too afraid of what it might mean. But now… it hummed beneath her skin like a distant drum, as if awakening to something that had always been waiting.

The next morning, the sky was a pale bruise, and the earth still slick with dew. Elira had been assigned to the outer courtyard gates a chore meant for invisibility. No nobles ever passed that way. Only carts of firewood and supply runners.

The servants called it "the edge of the world" because the stone walls beyond opened to mist, forest, and fog.

She scrubbed the iron hinges of the gate with a rag dipped in vinegar, her knuckles raw from cold and lye soap. The wind bit at her cheeks and wrapped through her shawl like unseen fingers.

And that's when she saw it.

A folded scrap of thick parchment, pale as bone, tucked carefully beneath a loose brick near the base of the gate.

It wasn't there before. She was sure of it.

Cautiously, Elira pried it free. The wax seal had already been broken. No crest. No mark.

Anonymous.

She hesitated, then unfolded it.

The handwriting was slanted, precise, and unadorned—an economy of strokes that spoke of discipline, not poetry.

You are being watched. Not by me.

Be wary of those who smile too easily and bleed too willingly.

Burn this.

There was no signature. No instructions.

But she knew.

Alaric.

Her pulse quickened, though the warning itself was colder than the wind.

She glanced around. No one. Just distant voices near the servants' shed and a pair of kitchen boys tossing stones at crows.

She tucked the note beneath her apron and moved to the small brazier near the tool racks. It glowed with embers, barely alive.

With trembling fingers, she fed the parchment into the flame.

It caught immediately.And as it burned, the ink turned silver. Not black.

She stared as the ash crumbled, shifting like snow.

That night, Elira saw Kathy again.

They crossed paths near the linen stores. Kathy had a pitcher of warmed milk in her hands and a peculiar flush to her cheeks not from cold, but from something else.

"Elira," she said sweetly, stepping into her path, "you always look like you've seen a ghost."

Elira blinked. "No more than usual."

Kathy smiled, the corners of her mouth too wide. "Careful walking near the east wing after dark. Not everyone there's as kind as me."

There was a tiny smear of red at the base of her neck. Barely noticeable.

Elira's eyes lingered on it.

Kathy followed her gaze and smiled wider.

"Some debts are sweeter to pay than others," she said quietly, before brushing past and vanishing into the dark.

Elira stood frozen.And she knew, the note had been right.

Not all monsters wore fangs.

Some smiled as they bled.