Page 7

It will pass, a familiar voice reminds me. It always does.

After a minute, I manage to steady my breathing. Slowly, I uncurl my fingers from around the ring, and before I realise what I’m doing, I slide the band into place on my left hand.

Everything stills. I stare down, horror in my throat. This is worse than grief. It’s a sense of…unbelonging. Like the ring doesn’t fit around my finger anymore. Like my body doesn’t belong to me. All I see is the blood and dirt under my fingernails instead of once-manicured hands.

What have I become?

I sink under the water before the scream comes out. It doesn’t work. The past rips from my mouth in a muffled shriek, filling my water-clogged ears. And just like that, I’m back where this all began.

The ring is still on my finger, but now I’m looking down at it through the delicate lace veil covering my face. White satin gathers around my hips, spilling to the cobbles in rippling folds. Every step is as light and hazy as a dream as I approach the church, taking in its grand spires, its stained-glass windows.

This is it, I tell myself. Some women speak of nerves, of slick palms and dry mouths. I have no such afflictions. I have no such doubt. On this day, I have everything I’ve ever wanted.

Before I enter the church, something changes. The sky is bright and cloudless, the sun at its zenith. There should be no reason for the shiver that crawls down my spine, the deep sense of unease that turns my veins to ice. But despite the warm springtime weather, it’s like a shadow has settled over me. Like a shroud has fallen over the sky, leaving the day in darkness.

That’s when the church doors open and I hear the screams.

My feet move faster of their own accord, carrying me towards a memory that will haunt my nights for years to come. On either side of me, the pews are filled with expressions of horror. Some of the guests are weeping. A man retches. But they all look the same as I pass, my mind lost behind a dense fog.

Even if I wanted to stop, I couldn’t. I keep walking, legs trembling as I approach the altar. I fight through the clustered bodies of friends and family trying to stop me from seeing what is waiting for me.

The sharp tang of blood hits me first. The stench is too strong to be from a minor wound, but the ability to discern that kind of subtlety is not something I’ll hone until years later. In this moment, metres away from the man I am supposed to marry, all I smell is the wrongness of it—the reek of copper, the musk of fear.

I elbow my way through the last of the onlookers and find my groom.

Bile rises at the back of my throat, and before I can swallow it, I retch down the front of my wedding dress. My white skirts are splattered with watery vomit, and my throat burns as I try to remember how to breathe.

“Henry…”

I don’t know if his name makes it from my lips. I feel my mouth forming the shape, but my tongue is dry, my windpipe constricted. The taste of it is stale and hollow, as if my senses are trying to convince me of the truth I don’t want to face.

Henry is dead. My…husband is dead.

It won’t be until I examine the bruises the next day that I’ll realise how hard my knees hit the floor. My legs buckle and I sink like a stone, not caring that the ends of my gown are soaking in blood. Henry’s blood… Oh, God…

He’s staring at the ceiling, blue eyes slack and glassy. His tousled crop of blonde hair falls around his forehead, flecked with red. His cheeks have lost all colour. He is pale, impossibly pale.

I fall forward, a hysterical sob wrenching from my chest. I don’t know whether I want to kiss his bloodless lips or lie weeping on him until the same cruel fate takes me too. He’s not cold yet, but the warmth of his skin is already fading. I can no longer feel the beat of his heart or the rise and fall of his breathing. He is gone. Gone. And for the life of me, I cannot understand why.

“Alderose.” Someone puts their hand on my shoulder and tries to coax me away. I shake them off and cling to Henry’s silk waistcoat, holding him close even as the reek of death threatens to suffocate me. All around me, people are shouting, their muffled voices strained with fear and panic. But it’s like none of them exist. It’s just me and Henry, lying here on the floor where we were meant to be married.

My lips find his cheek, but there is no life in him, nothing left of the man I love.

As I draw back, something catches my eye: two marks in his pallid neck. Clean holes that seem too perfect, too even. Blood dribbles from them, leaving trickles of red in their wake.

“Vampire.”

Someone mutters the word like a curse, and it ripples through the gathered crowd. It’s the only thing I can hear over my own breathing. It fills my ears, echoing with a scream that might be my own.

Another strong hand grips my arm, squeezing tightly. I try to wrestle free again, but the fight has deserted me. Instead, I allow myself to be pulled away from the bloody altar. I leave Henry behind, though the image of his lifeless corpse will soon fill my waking hours with a sorrow I have never known. I stumble down the church steps into the sunlight in a dress stained with blood and vomit, a bride that never was.

Yet ringing in my head is that word—the name of the creature that took my wedding day from me. I clutch it to my chest, as if holding it close might replace the empty fissure that once was my heart.

“Vampire,” I whisper to myself.

And with that, I set myself on a path I cannot turn back from.

I climb out of the tub and wrap myself in a scratchy robe, drying the last of the now-tepid bathwater from my skin. My wine glass is empty, but when I go to refill it, I find nothing left in the bottle.