MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

Ivy gasps awake with a scream tearing from her throat, the sound raw and desperate. Her hands fly to her neck, frantically searching for the wound that should be there. Her fingers find only smooth, unmarked skin. Unbroken. Perfect. Unbearably intact. She presses harder, searching for the telltale stickiness of blood, but her throat is dry and whole. She claws at her neck like a madwoman, hyperventilating, certain that she is still dying, that this moment is a cruel hallucination concocted by her dying brain.
The clock on the wall reads 6:00 PM.
The corset around her ribs is tight, restricting her breathing, squeezing her lungs with a familiar pressure. The crimson lipstick sits untouched on the vanity, a vivid splash of color against the pristine white. The candles flicker in their sconces, casting writhing shadows on the walls. Everything is exactly as it was before the ball, before the massacre, before she watched Hendery die shielding her body. The scent of lavender and beeswax, so innocuous moments ago, now feels menacing.
Ivy staggers to the mirror, certain she will see a corpse staring back, her reflection warped by the trauma of death. Instead, she sees her own face: pale, eyes dilated with terror, but undeniably alive. The phantom scar on her neck burns with an intensity that makes her gasp, a searing heat beneath her skin, but it leaves no physical mark. It is as if her body remembers dying even as her eyes insist on her continued existence, a horrifying dissonance.
This is not possible. She has lived her entire life in a linear progression. Time moves forward. It does not loop back. It does not reset. People do not die and then wake up six hours earlier, still smelling blood on their skin, still feeling the phantom sting of a blade across their throat.
But it is happening.
Ivy grips the edge of the vanity so hard her knuckles turn white. She counts her heartbeats, each one a small rebellion against the impossibility of the moment. One. Two. Three. She is alive. Her heart is beating. She is not dead in the ballroom. She is not covered in Hendery’s blood. The chilling sensation of his blood soaking her gown lingers, a phantom wetness she can almost feel.
The door creaks open behind her. Mara enters with the midnight-blue gown draped over her arms, her movements exactly as they were before. Exactly as they were before Ivy dumped Hendery. Before the shadows. Before the blade. Before the massacre that she is now certain was not a nightmare but a shattering glimpse of some terrible future.
“Arms up, miss,” Mara says, her voice a perfect echo of the past, utterly devoid of the horror Ivy just experienced.
Ivy cannot speak. She raises her arms mechanically while Mara laces the corset tighter, each tug stealing another inch of breath from her lungs. The pain is real. The restriction is real. This moment is real in a way that the ball was not, or perhaps the ball was real, and this is the dream. The line between nightmare and reality blurs with terrifying ease.
“Prince Hendery has not fed in weeks, they say,” Mara continues, her voice a distant hum of gossip, a casual detail that now feels imbued with immense significance. “The kitchen staff whispers he has grown pale as a ghost.”
Ivy’s hands clench into fists. Hendery has not fed in weeks. That detail suddenly feels crucial, a fact that her dying brain had managed to process even as her throat was being cut. Why would she remember that? Why would the image of his starving, pale face linger in her mind? Because it matters. Because it means something, a piece of a puzzle she is only just beginning to assemble.
Ivy meets her own eyes in the mirror and sees something in her expression that was not there before. A hardness. A clarity. An absolute certainty that what she witnessed in the ballroom was not a nightmare, but a prophecy written in blood and shadows. Her jaw is set, her gaze unflinching.
The corset cinches tight enough to bruise.
“I will not be staying long,” Ivy says, her voice steady and remote, surprising herself with its calm resolve. “After the first dance, I am retiring to my quarters.”
Mara hums noncommittally, completing the laces without comment. But something in her expression shifts, a subtle recognition that Ivy is not the same woman who entered this room minutes ago. The woman who entered was anxious, uncertain, ready to flee. The woman in the mirror now is someone else entirely. Someone harder. Someone colder. Someone who has already died once and will apparently die many times more. The weight of multiple deaths rests upon her, an invisible shroud.
Ivy stands and examines herself in the full-length mirror. The midnight-blue gown shimmers like starlight on water, elegant and deceptively fragile. Her hair is arranged in perfect waves. The crimson lipstick has been meticulously applied to her lips, the exact color of fresh blood, the exact color of Hendery’s life pooling on white marble.
The pendant around her neck catches the light, a small silver crescent moon. It was a gift from Hendery weeks ago, one she had been planning to return to him at the ball. Now she cannot bring herself to remove it. The weight of it against her skin feels like an anchor, holding her to this moment, preventing her from fragmenting into hysteria.
“The clock is ticking, miss,” Mara says gently, her words carrying a subtle warning.
Ivy nods, accepting the shawl Mara offers her. She is moving through these moments like an automaton, her body following its programmed routine while her mind races through the implications of what has happened, or will happen, or is happening right now in some parallel reality. The corridors stretch endlessly before her as she walks toward the ballroom. Torches flicker in their iron sconces, casting writhing shadows across the stone walls. The sounds of the orchestra tuning carry through the air, familiar and ominous. Ivy counts the shadows, counts the torches, counts the footsteps of the guards as she passes. Everything is the same, yet everything is completely different.
The grand doors to the ballroom loom before her, twice her height, carved with intricate scenes of vampire conquests and human subjugation. Ivy places her hand on the cold, unforgiving wood and takes a deep breath. She can turn back. She can demand that Mara undress her, can spend the evening in her quarters, can refuse to walk into the ballroom at all. But that is not what the version of her that saw the massacre would do. That version would fight.
The guards pull the doors open without a word. The ballroom explodes into view again, glittering and golden and full of masked vampires who have no idea what is coming. Ivy scans the room for familiar faces, for threats, for any indication of who might want Hendery dead. But there is nothing. Everyone is dancing, laughing, lost in the elegant display of the masquerade.
Hendery sits on his throne at the far end of the room. He looks exactly as he did before she dumped him, before her death: bored, untouchable, glacial. His dark hair is swept back from his face, and his black-on-black ensemble makes him look like a shadow given form. But now that Ivy knows the truth, now that she has seen him die, his coldness reads differently. It reads not as indifference but as calculation, a carefully constructed façade.
His gaze finds hers across the room. For a moment, nothing happens. Then his expression shifts, so subtly that anyone else might miss it. But Ivy is looking for it now, is attuned to the smallest change in his features. His obsidian eyes widen fractionally. His jaw tightens. His hands grip the arms of his throne hard enough that she can see the strain in his knuckles from across the room. He sees her differently now. Or perhaps he sees her the way he always has, and she is the one who is different.
Ivy refuses to look away. The message is clear, carried on the silent language of her unwavering gaze: I know what you sacrificed. I understand what you did. I am no longer the fragile human you must protect with lies and distance.
Hendery’s expression hardens into something possessive and utterly unreadable. He rises from his throne, and the entire ballroom seems to quiet in anticipation of his movement. Courtiers scatter like fish before a shark. Ivy feels her pulse spike as he begins to walk toward her, his movements fluid and predatory. She holds her ground, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs, waiting for what comes next.