The wedding

I was twelve when I saw him for the first time, my father’s cousin, who was lying in a coffin. Muffled crying filled the room. I stared at the pale face of a man I had only heard about, and I reached out a hand towards him. That was when I heard the mumbling behind me.

"Poor child."

"It's most likely his turn now."

"I heard they all die early."

What do they mean by that?

My eyes opened. The lids were heavy, and a dull ache sat in every part of my body. I looked up at an unfamiliar ceiling with cobwebs stretched across it. Right. I was twenty now, and my life had taken the biggest turn.

I tried to sit up, but something lay across my chest. Putting my hand over it, I realized it was an arm. 

I turned my head slowly to the girl lying beside me, apparently my age, asleep, her black hair spread over the sheets and her arm draped over me. She looked harmless. I made myself remember that she wasn't. I had been told since childhood that she was everything but harmless.

I moved closer and kissed her forehead because that was what a husband did, and I had decided from the moment I was chosen that I would do it properly.

When her eyes opened, in them there was something close to shock, and then it was gone. With narrowed red eyes, she whispered "Morning~" and slowly slipped out of the bed. "Get some rest before tonight's ceremony."

I nodded. When the door closed behind her, I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. My hands weren't quite steady. I knew who I was supposed to marry my entire life, but I never saw her until today, and she was much prettier than I expected.

A few hours later, she led me to the dining room, which was enormous. A long table ran down its center, covered with a white, dusty sheet, and a rusted chandelier hung above it. She seated me at the far end and left through the door behind me.

I looked out at the tall windows stretching from floor to ceiling. The glass was tinted and cracked, with ivy pushed in through the holes. The manor had clearly never been cleaned. She came back with a tray and set it before me. A soup, perhaps, of a very unusual color.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Something you love."

She filled a spoon and raised it to my mouth. "Say aa."

I did not move. Every instinct told me to refuse. I was a grown man, and she was feeding me like a doll. But her eyes held a glimmer that I had seen on something else once, a cat before it pounced. I opened my mouth and took it in. I almost choked at the awful taste.

"I'm glad you like-" She paused and pointed at my neck. "Where is your family amulet?"

My hand went to my throat. It was bare. "I may have left it in the bath. Give me a moment—"

Her glare cut me off. I swallowed, and my voice came out thinner than I wanted. "In my room. I'll get it."

I began to stand, and she dangled it before my eyes. "Here you go."

How?

I had put it in my room myself. She hadn't left my sight. Had she made it appear? Could she do that?

She drew the cord over my head and kissed my cheek. "I know this soup is your favorite."

I kept my face still. She had no idea that I hated what she had made. 

She walked the length of the table and sat across from me, her hands folded under her chin. "Eat. I love watching you eat."

I looked at the spoon, and my hand reached for it. I didn't intend to move it. The taste was unpleasant. With each mouthful I was sure I would be sick, but I wasn't. I ate the whole bowl and bent forward, nauseated. I hated it, and I could not stop wanting more.

Afterwards she showed me the manor, opening every dusty room in turn. Dust landed over my nose and I had to held back a sneeze. She stopped at one door and turned to me, smiling. My heart gave a hard beat, which I put down to fear but I knew better. 

She poked my nose. "Your favorite room." She pushed the door open. "Ta-da."

It was full of moldy books on broken, towering shelves, a library that should have been torn down. I did not like this room. But maybe since she insisted that I liked it, I didn’t hate it all that much.

Pulling a book from a shelf, she handed it to me. "Let me read you this one." We crossed the library to a corner, where a window held a cushioned bench. She sat and pulled me down, my head in her lap, and began to read.

"The man she loved had been slaughtered by humans," she recited. I watched her face shift with every line. "So, to escape her wrath, according to her own demand, she decided to take in..."

Sunlight bathed her in amber, deepening how unreal she looked. I should have been listening. A part of me understood that I was hearing something important. But my eyes were closing.

I never knew when I fell asleep.

In the dream I saw my mother, blurred. I hadn't seen her since I was taken in as the chosen groom. I knew she had been against it, but she kept her distance, and I never learned what she truly felt. My father visited on special occasions. He had grown weaker over the years and spoke very little, and we spent most of the time in silence. I didn't hate his visits. I had been very lonely. I used to imagine my life with the wife I'd been promised, and how it might feel to be wanted by someone.

When my eyes opened I was in the bed. I sat up right, scratching my temples. How did I get here?

The door opened with a soft thud. As soon as I saw her, heat crawled up the back of my spine. She was wearing a thin nightgown, her pale skin almost glowing under it. Tucking the loose strands of hair behind her ear, she smirked. "I hope you are ready for the ceremony."

I looked at the floor. Not from shyness, but because I could not afford to look at her. She crossed the room and sat on the bed beside me. Her fingers slid into my hair. "It won't be strange," she murmured. "You've done this many times."

Though she smiled at me with the sweetest expression but her words were beyond repulsive.

I made my voice level. "No, I haven't done this before. I'm someone else-"

She pushed me down. Her mouth found my neck, and for a moment there was only the cool weight of her breath that made my body shiver. Then her teeth sank in.

I shoved at her shoulders. Her hand closed around my throat and held me still. I shut my eyes and tried to remember the needles, the tray my grandmother set out each morning, her unblinking stare, each needle thicker than the last. For years I had driven them through my own forearm, so that I would know how to endure this. But the sound of her drinking filled the room, wet and desperately slow, and no needle had ever prepared me for it. I clutched the sheets. It hurt. It felt wrong. My vision swam. She drew back and bent over me. "I really missed you after you killed yourself."

Tears stung my eyes, and I bit down on my lip. Can't she tell us apart? Any of us?

My family had been her sacrificial husbands for centuries. My father's cousin had been her husband before me, and when he could no longer bear it, he ended his life. I'd heard she threw his body at the family's door and demanded a replacement. That was why I was here. We had been her scapegoats for generations.

She slid her hand under my head and pulled my face to her throat. "Your turn," she whispered.

My body was heavy and weak. I gasped, fighting to stay awake. She doesn't even know we can't drink blood. I leaned into her, resting my head on her shoulder. That was when I heard it, her blood rushing under the skin like a river. My mouth watered. 

What the—

I felt my teeth break the skin before I knew I had moved. Her blood was hot and sweet. I didn't want this. It was repulsive, and still I could not pull back.

"I know you love my blood," she whispered. "I love you."

I could not tell whether she had said it to me, or to one of my ancestors. A feeling of heaviness blurred my senses, my body felt to be floating in space. I clenched her shoulders, my mouth still stuck to her neck.

The slurping continued into complete darkness.