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The vampire lord’s grip on her waist tightens until Ivy hisses with pain. The man who swept her onto the dance floor is handsome in a forgettable way, his smile too wide and too sharp, his presence somehow both familiar and utterly alien. Ivy allows him to spin her through the waltz, her body moving through the steps while her mind catalogs every detail of the ballroom. She notes the location of every guard, the precise moment when the orchestra begins to shift from one piece to another, the exact position of Hendery on his throne, watching her with an intensity that should terrify her but instead sends a thrill of possessive satisfaction through her chest.
“You dance well for a human,” the lord murmurs, his breath cool against her ear, a casual compliment laced with a subtle hint of condescension.
Ivy does not respond. She counts the chandeliers instead: Three. Four. Five. She wonders which one will shatter first when the shadows erupt. She wonders if there is any way to warn these people, any way to save them from the massacre that is less than an hour away. The weight of this knowledge, this terrible forewarning, presses down on her, a chilling burden.
They complete another turn, their movements flowing seamlessly with the music. Hendery is no longer on his throne. He has moved to the edge of the dance floor, his presence radiating a palpable fury that makes the vampire lord holding Ivy go suddenly rigid. The pressure on her waist increases to a point just shy of breaking ribs, a silent warning.
“I think this dance is over,” Hendery says, his voice carrying a lethal edge, quiet yet capable of freezing blood.
The vampire lord releases Ivy so quickly she stumbles. He bows deeply, offering profuse apologies that Hendery ignores entirely. His obsidian gaze is locked on Ivy, and there is something different in his expression now, something that reminds her of the way he looked when he stepped in front of the shadow-blade, a protective ferocity she had mistaken for indifference.
“We need to talk,” Ivy says quietly, her voice barely a whisper amidst the surrounding chatter.
“Do we?” Hendery’s voice is sharp enough to cut, remote and unforgiving. “Because I believe the talking is finished, little bird. You made your position abundantly clear.”
He turns and walks away, disappearing into the crowd before Ivy can follow. She stands alone on the dance floor, acutely aware of the stares directed at her. The human liaison who dared to reject the Vampire King. The whispers that her disappearance from his grace signals the end of her usefulness, the swift fall from favor.
Ivy has perhaps forty-five minutes before the shadows come.
She moves through the ballroom with purpose now, no longer searching for the assassin but searching for Hendery. She finds him speaking with the High Council near the refreshment table. His expression is carefully neutral, but his eyes bleed just slightly with crimson as they track her movements across the room.
When she approaches, he excuses himself without explanation and walks directly toward the balcony doors, his stride swift and decisive.
Ivy follows him outside, into the cool night air and the relative privacy of the stone balcony. The sounds of the ball become muffled behind them, reduced to a distant hum of music and laughter and the chiming of the approaching hour.
“I want to explain,” Ivy begins, the words tumbling out in a desperate rush, a frantic attempt to bridge the gap between them.
“There is nothing to explain,” Hendery interrupts, his voice remote and unyielding. “You have made your choice. I accept it.”
“That is a lie.” Ivy steps closer to him, her voice steady, refusing to back down. “You do not accept it. You are angry. You are hurt. You are…”
“I am what?” He turns to face her, his entire body radiating controlled fury. “I am what, Ivy? Possessive? Controlling? A monster? Tell me what you came out here to call me, so we can dispense with this pretense that you ever cared about anything except escaping.”
“I did care,” Ivy says, and she means it, though the emotion feels foreign in her mouth. “I do care. That is the problem. I cared enough to believe the lie you told me.”
Hendery’s expression flickers with something that might be confusion, a brief crack in his stony façade. “What lie?”
“That you were cold,” Ivy says, her voice gaining strength. “That you did not care about anyone or anything. That I was just a pet to you, something to be possessed and then discarded.”
She steps closer still, close enough that she can see the tension in his jaw, the tightness around his eyes, the subtle tremor of suppressed emotion. “But that is not true. I saw the medical logs. I know you are starving yourself. I know you were planning to give up your throne. You have been protecting me with lies this entire time, and I repaid that by…”
“How did you see the medical logs?” The question cuts through her words like a blade, sharp and unexpected. Ivy’s mouth goes dry.
“I broke into your study during the second loop,” she says, deciding in that moment that the truth is the only weapon she has left. “I died the second time when the guards caught me trying to escape the castle. But before that, I was looking for answers. I found the logs. I found the abdication papers.”
Hendery’s expression goes absolutely still. The air crackles with a sudden, dangerous silence. “Loops. You said loops.”
A clock somewhere in the castle chimes eleven times. Ivy hears it as if through water, the sound feeling distant and urgent all at once. Fifty-eight minutes until the shadows come. Fifty-eight minutes until this conversation ends in blood and death.
“The ball ends with a massacre every time I close my eyes,” Ivy says quietly, watching his face for any sign of disbelief. “At midnight, shadows erupt from the floor. A shadow-blade comes directly at me. You step in front of it. You die. Then someone cuts my throat.”
She watches his face carefully, looking for disbelief, for dismissal, for the coldness that would mean she has made a catastrophic error in telling him the truth. Instead, Hendery’s obsidian eyes flood entirely with crimson. His hands clench into fists at his sides, the tendons in his forearms standing out like iron cables, straining with suppressed power.
“How many times?” he demands, his voice a low growl.
“This is the first time I am telling you,” Ivy says. “In the times before, I ran. I tried to escape. I tried to figure out who was trying to kill you. I discovered there is an assassin in the orchestra. He uses sound magic to paralyze the vampires and create shadows. He has been killing you twelve different ways, and I have died in all twelve.”
The clock begins to chime again. Eleven forty-five.
“We have fifteen minutes,” Ivy finishes, the urgency in her voice unmistakable. “And I do not know how to stop this.”
Hendery’s gaze is fierce, possessive, utterly focused on her face as if he can read the truth directly from her skin. When he speaks, his voice is rough with an emotion that sounds suspiciously like grief, a raw edge of vulnerability.
“If this is true, if you have been experiencing a time loop, then you are already connected to something far larger than you understand. And if you die, if you truly die while trapped in that loop…”
A shadow blade erupts from the polished marble floor directly between them, cutting off his words. Ivy has exactly enough time to gasp before Hendery moves. He grabs her by the waist and pulls her against his chest, shielding her body with his own. The shadow-blade is not the delicate, surgical strike she remembers from the first iteration. This time, it is a wild, desperate strike, the weapon of an assassin who has lost the element of surprise, panicked and unthinking.
The blade punches through Hendery’s back and erupts from his chest, inches from Ivy’s heart. Blood erupts between them, hot, wet, impossible, soaking her gown once more.
“You should not have come here,” Hendery gasps, his breath harsh against her ear, already weakening. “You should have run.”
But Ivy was not talking about running. She was talking about staying. She was talking about understanding. And now, as his blood soaks her gown for the second time, she understands with crystalline clarity that she has no choice at all. She will live this night a thousand times if that is what it takes to save him. When the assassin’s blade finds her throat moments later, Ivy does not fight it. She simply closes her eyes and accepts the darkness, holding fast to the knowledge that somewhere, another version of her is waking up at six o’clock, and she will try again, stronger and more determined.