---
The servants didn't walk—they flew.
Up the staircases, around marble pillars, across vast black-and-gold floors that gleamed like liquid shadow. Eva barely kept up, dodging trays and elbows and the occasional barked order from someone too important to bother remembering names.
Which was fine. She still didn't have one here.
"Stick close," the girl from before whispered. She had mousy hair, eyes too big for her face, and the twitchy energy of someone who lived in constant fear of being stepped on—literally or politically. "They call me Mira. Don't ask why. I didn't pick it."
Eva offered a weak smile. "I'm not exactly in a naming mood myself."
Mira blinked. "You talk."
"Only when I'm terrified."
"Good. You'll fit right in."
They skidded into what had to be the east wing—narrower halls, fewer chandeliers, and thankfully, no nobles in sight. This was where the real work happened. The sweating. The scrubbing. The burning your fingers on silver you weren't allowed to touch with bare hands.
Eva lasted four minutes before she knocked over a tray of goblets.
They shattered like tiny crystal hearts across the stone.
Mira winced.
Three heads turned. A tall, wiry man with a clipboard appeared like smoke from behind a velvet curtain. His eyebrows did a thing Eva thought might be illegal in some regions.
"You."
"Yes?" Eva said, too quickly.
He stared. "You're new."
"She's with me," Mira blurted. "Temporary placement. Blood spill team."
"There is no blood spill team."
"There is now?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine. But she so much as chips a teacup, I'm feeding her to the coatroom shadows."
Eva wasn't sure if he was joking. She also wasn't sure if she wanted to know.
---
The rest of the day passed in a blur of hot water, cold marble, and whispered insults from the kitchen maids who didn't appreciate new blood.
But Eva worked. Clumsily, yes. She banged her hip on a chair. Nearly set a tablecloth on fire. At one point she got stuck trying to open a too-fancy window and fell face-first into a tray of dried herbs.
Still—she worked.
And slowly, the panic in her chest began to ebb.
Not disappear. Not really. But fade into something… manageable.
Like background noise.
Like grief on mute.
---
Later that evening, Mira tugged her into the shadows near the upper balconies. Below, the grand hall unfurled like something out of a fever dream—blood-red carpets, obsidian chandeliers, nobles in black-and-silver finery drifting like ghosts.
Eva stared. "That's a lot of velvet."
Mira snorted. "You have no idea."
It was her first real glimpse of the vampire court.
Not just the pretty faces. But what simmered under them.
Laughter that didn't reach eyes. Conversations with too many pauses. Smiles that were just bare teeth dressed up.
They were beautiful.
They were terrifying.
And they didn't notice her at all.
"Who's that?" Eva whispered, pointing to a dark-haired man with a cane who hadn't moved once.
"Lord Blackthorn," Mira said. "Steward of the manor. Technically not a vampire. Technically not human either. Don't stare."
Eva stared harder. "He blinked sideways."
"Yup."
A bell chimed in the distance. Soft. Hollow. The kind of sound that made your spine stiffen without knowing why.
The nobles didn't flinch. But Mira did.
"What?"
"He's not here yet," Mira whispered, voice a ghost. "The Duke."
Eva's skin prickled.
"The court keeps pretending it doesn't matter," Mira continued. "But it does. You'll see. When he arrives, everything changes."
---
Eva didn't sleep that night.
Not from fear. Not really.
But from the feeling that something was winding tighter and tighter under her skin.
Something old.
Something hungry.