The fever didn't knock.
It kicked the damn door in.
One moment, Aisling Rutherford was pacing the length of her room like a caged cat, growling under her breath about blood contracts, marriage threats, and vampires with eyes like glacier fire. The next—bam—her knees buckled like spun sugar beneath a boot.
She hit the floor hard, a graceless heap of limbs and indignation.
What the hell?
Sweat slicked down her back in hot, humiliating rivers. Her nightdress clung to her skin like a second punishment. Her breaths—oh, saints—were short, shallow, useless little things that couldn't even fill her lungs properly.
Was this what dying felt like?
How tragically anticlimactic.
If she was going to keel over, she should at least have earned it by stabbing that infuriating vampire in his smug, aristocratic throat. Kylian bloody Hawkrige—with his perfect posture, his glacial stare, and that arrogant way he looked at her like he was already counting her as property. As if her soul was just another item in his neatly catalogued collection of stolen things.
Heat slammed through her again, a burning wave from the inside out. Her vision pulsed—red, red, red, like someone had poured fire into her skull. Her hands scrabbled against the floor, but the rug felt like it was moving, rippling beneath her fingers like it was alive.
She blinked.
The bedposts twisted—no, warped—like roots, curling and stretching and groaning. Her pillows looked like they were melting. The fireplace roared far too loud, every crackle sounding like a scream. Shadows danced across the walls in jagged patterns, tall and skeletal and wrong.
No. No, no, no.
She wasn't hallucinating. She wasn't weak like this. She was Aisling of House Rutherford. She didn't faint. She didn't swoon. She set things on fire and cursed at people in three languages. She—
Something cold clamped around her wrist.
Not a breeze. Not a sensation.
A thing.
Sharp. Ice-cold. Unseen fingers curling tight, dragging.
Her head spun, her stomach lurched—and then the world went black.
Everything blinked out.
---
When her eyes opened again, she wasn't in her bedroom.
She was in a ballroom—or what used to be one.
The walls were bones, the ceiling a ribcage cracked open to the moonlight. Beams jutted like snapped limbs, and silver light poured in, cruel and cold. Candles—too many to count—hung in the air like stars dying one by one. Their flames danced, pale and shivering, casting shadows that looked far too alive.
And the chandeliers... gods. Once regal, now nothing but broken skeletons of gold and crystal. They lay scattered across the marble, like someone had murdered elegance itself and left the pieces to rot.
The air stank.
Like roses dipped in decay. And blood. Sweet and metallic, clinging to the back of her throat like a lover's kiss gone wrong.
She looked down—and froze.
She was in a wedding gown. Crimson. Deep, blood-red silk that wrapped around her body like a second skin, thorny black embroidery clawing up the bodice and down the sleeves. Her feet—bare, pale, delicate—stood in something slick. Sticky.
It shimmered in the moonlight.
Not water.
Not wine.
Blood.
But... not her feet. Not her gown.
Aisling's heart stuttered. No. No, no, no. These weren't her limbs. Her body. Her breath.
They were Serena's.
She could feel it. In the way she stood—taller. Straighter. Like a woman who didn't bend, didn't kneel, didn't ask. Like a queen stepping toward the gallows with a smirk.
She wasn't alone.
He was there.
Across the hall, wrapped in shadow. Tall. Unmoving. A silhouette carved from night.
Even in this warped dreamspace, she knew him. Knew that impossibly straight posture. The slicked-back black hair pulled into that infuriatingly perfect bun. The blue eyes—icy, calculating, always watching. Always thinking. A predator disguised as a prince.
Kylian.
But not her Kylian.
This one looked... younger. The same sharp jawline. The same too-pretty mouth that never smiled unless it meant something terrible. But there was no scar beneath his left eye. No long coat that fluttered like a crow's wing.
His high-collared shirt clung to him like a second skin—and it was stained.
At the throat.
Blood.
Aisling wanted to run. She wanted to scream his name, ask him what the hell this was, demand he explain why she was wearing the corpse of his dead wife.
But her mouth wouldn't move.
Nothing did.
It wasn't her anymore.
It was Serena.
And Serena walked. Graceful. Fluid. Like the carnage around her didn't matter. Like the shattered chandeliers weren't crying glass beneath her feet. Like the corpses strewn across the marble floor—faceless, limp, and wrong—weren't even there.
Why were there corpses?
Gods, why were there corpses?
Aisling's thoughts screamed against the silence. Her body didn't.
Serena moved with the poise of a woman stepping into her fate, one hand brushing the folds of her gown like she was preparing for a dance.
A wedding march through hell.
Kylian didn't move.
Didn't blink.
He just watched her.
The way he always did. As if calculating how many pieces she could break into, and how beautiful each piece would look on display.
Serena reached him.
She smiled.
Red lips curled, too red, too sharp. Blood glistened at the corner of her mouth, a ruby droplet trailing down her chin.
Her teeth... too white.
"I choose this," she whispered.
Her voice was silk soaked in venom. Steady. Final.
Kylian didn't smile.
Didn't say a word.
His hand lifted slowly—too slowly—and found her waist.
The candles around them flickered. Their light shuddered. One by one, they began to dim.
Serena's smile faltered.
Just a little. A flicker. A hairline crack in porcelain perfection.
And then her eyes.
Gods.
Aisling couldn't breathe.
Because her eyes weren't hers.
They were hollow.
Empty.
Dead.
She tried to scream.
Tried to run.
Tried to claw her way out of Serena's skin.
But her body wouldn't listen. Her mouth stayed closed. Her muscles locked in a silent performance orchestrated by someone else.
Serena's hand rose to Kylian's chest.
A second passed.
Then the vision cracked—
---
Now she was running.
Branches tore at her gown. The night was pitch black. Only the sound of her own breath, ragged and fast, kept her from collapsing.
No shoes. Blood smeared her legs.
A blade flashed through the trees.
She stumbled. A man's voice shouted behind her.
The trees opened into a clearing. Moonlight spilled like silver wine.
Too late.
A blade plunged into her stomach.
The pain was real. So sharp her lungs seized. A hand reached around her mouth as she was pulled backward, and the voice whispered in her ear.
"You shouldn't have remembered."
Darkness swallowed her.
---
Aisling jolted awake.
Her sheets were soaked. Her skin burned. She was in her room again. The fireplace was cold.
Her breath rattled out in short, panicked bursts. Her heart thundered against her ribs.
She sat up—and hissed.
A strange mark burned on her wrist.
It wasn't there yesterday.
It looked like a sigil. A circle surrounded by crescent moons. Inside it: a thorn, coiled around a dagger.
A whisper—her own voice—breathed across her ear.
Remember who you were, or become who you must be.
Aisling scrambled to her feet. Her legs felt like jelly. Her head spun.
She yanked open her wardrobe and stared at her reflection in the mirror.
The mark was still there. Red and pulsing.
Her emerald eyes looked too wide. Her lips were cracked. Her red hair was tangled like ivy.
And for just a second—a heartbeat—
Her reflection smiled without her.
---
She didn't scream. She refused to scream.
Screaming was exactly what some cursed ghost bride would do. She was Aisling bloody Rutherford, not some wilting flower from a gothic romance.
Even if her legs barely worked and her mirror hated her.
A knock startled her.
Her hand flew to the door.
"What?" she snapped.
"It's me," came the soft voice.
Her father? No. No, it was higher.
She cracked the door open.
Her mother's portrait hung in the hallway, unmoving.
Except… no, that couldn't be. Her mother was dead. Years dead.
A figure stood beneath the portrait. Faded. Pale. Wearing a soft, gray dress.
Aisling stepped out.
The figure didn't disappear.
It solidified.
Into her mother.
Not quite flesh. Not quite ghost. But close enough to steal the breath from Aisling's lungs.
"M-Mother?"
Her mother smiled gently.
"You're awake," she said.
Aisling wanted to sob. Instead, she reached out.
Her fingers went through her.
"You're not real."
"I'm part of what was," the ghost replied. "What you come from."
The chill in the air deepened. Her mother's eyes turned serious.
"You saw her. Serena."
Aisling clenched her jaw. "Who was she? Why do I keep seeing her? Why does he call me familiar?"
The ghost tilted her head. "Because he knew her. Because she was you."
"No," Aisling snapped. "I'm not some reincarnated corpse bride."
"You are her echo," her mother said. "And he is the storm that never left."
Aisling stepped back.
"Stop speaking in riddles. I need answers."
Her mother's gaze softened.
"Serena was a witch. As am I. As are you."
The floor beneath her might as well have cracked.
"You're lying."
"I wish I were." Her voice trembled. "But our line—House Rutherford—descends from the Blooded Witches of Elaris. We kept it secret. For safety."
Aisling couldn't breathe. Her hand flew to the mark.
"And this?" she whispered.
"The mark of remembering," her mother said. "You saw Serena die. You saw what came before. And now, the past is awake again. In you."
The hall was too cold. Her nightdress clung to her skin.
"So what am I supposed to do?" Aisling whispered. "Become her? Repeat her mistakes?"
Her mother shook her head.
"No. That's the one thing you must never do."
Her ghost flickered.
"Break the pattern. Or he will."
"He?"
A pause.
"Kylian Hawkrige."
And then the ghost was gone.
Aisling stood alone, trembling, her mark burning like fire beneath her skin.