Crimson Cradle

Previously

…I stood in the center of the room, the enchanted glass showing a tranquil forest scene that mocked my reality. The air was still, heavy with the scent of Valerius’s cologne and the unspoken threat of his obsession. My world had narrowed to this gilded prison, and the only inhabitant that mattered was the vampire king who had decided I was his. The hunter was trapped, not by chains, but by a silken thread of fascination, a thread that was rapidly hardening into an unbreakable cord. And a terrifying question began to echo in the hollow spaces of my mind: how much of Elara, the slayer, was truly left?