Chapter 1 - Caius
To apply for a position in the illustrious Devereaux household, one must meet a few highly specific, borderline absurd requirements. Chief among them? A deep and abiding expertise in candle-making.
Yes, blood type is also a key factor, but priorities, people. When the Queen — my own dear, tyrannical mother — demands precisely one hundred and sixty-seven candles atop her birthday cake, well… she gets one hundred and sixty-seven candles.
The servants, poor souls, toil for weeks in preparation for the grand event, all leading up to a single, fleeting moment that lasts exactly fourteen and a half seconds (depending on the tempo of Happy Birthday that year).
And now, one by one, those very candles were being plucked from the ruins of the cake, their charred little wicks dropping blackened crumbs into the icing. The servants gathered them on silver trays like they were clearing away the remains of a small, waxy battlefield.
I tapped my fingers against the table, watching them work. “Where will all these candles go now?”
Philippe, our head steward and a man whose soul had long since been crushed beneath the weight of this family’s ridiculous demands, didn’t even look up. “The wax will be melted down and repurposed, Your Highness.”
Ah. Repurposed. Like everything else in this house.
Blood? Drained and stored for later indulgence.
Leftover décor? Reused for the next unnecessarily grandiose event.
Humans? Well. I’d long since stopped asking where the older servants went.
I sighed, resting my chin in my palm. “Tragic. And here I was hoping we’d start building a wax effigy of Mother.”
From down the table, Vivienne — eternal golden child, favourite of the court, and my personal thorn in the side — let out a laugh. “Looking for a new pastime? Perhaps I shall join you.”
“Oh, please.” I waved a dismissive hand. “You’d just spill wax on yourself and cry about your dress for a century.”
Vivienne smirked over the rim of her goblet. Across from her, Lucien, eldest brother and full-time joy assassin, exhaled sharply through his nose. “Must you always be so difficult, Caius?”
“Oh, forgive me,” I drawled, gesturing vaguely at the grandiose excess surrounding us. “I wasn’t aware we were all supposed to be basking in the glory of another candle-themed bacchanal.”
My eyes fell upon Mother’s crimson lips.
“What did you wish for, by the way?”
Mother, who had been swirling her drink with the quiet patience of someone contemplating murder, sighed. “You ask too many questions.”
“And no one here ever answers them,” I countered, flashing a grin. “Truly, it wounds the soul, this constant neglect.”
Lucien’s fingers twitched, which was as close as he got to committing fratricide in public. Vivienne took another sip of her drink, thoroughly entertained. The servants kept clearing wax, pretending they couldn’t hear a word of this, though I knew Marjorie from the kitchens was going to whisper every detail of this conversation into the baker’s ear by dawn.
Mother took a measured sip from her goblet. “If you are so dissatisfied, perhaps you should find a purpose.”
I drummed my fingers against the table. “Funny you should say that.”
The air shifted. A quiet, barely perceptible tension settling over the room.
Vivienne arched a brow. Lucien stilled. Even Mother—the ever-imperious Queen of this tiny, isolated kingdom — paused.
I let the moment stretch. Stretched my arms. Gazed at my nails, as though I had all the time in the world — which, technically, I did.
Then, with as much nonchalance as I could muster, I said:
“I’m leaving.”
Ah. There it was. That beautiful, glorious silence.
Mother was the first to break it. “Excuse me?”
I leaned back, feigning the very picture of ease. “I know, I know. Who in their right mind would want to leave this?” I waved a hand at the candle-covered ruins of the birthday cake. “But alas, I find that a life of endless, soul-crushing monotony is not quite my speed.”
Lucien’s jaw flexed. “This is not a matter of want.”
“Oh, but I think you’ll find that it is.” I flashed a fanged smile. “I want to leave, and therefore, I will.”
Mother set her goblet down with a slow, deliberate clink. “And where, pray tell, do you plan on going?”
“Tofino.”
A pause.
Vivienne blinked. “Where?”
“Oh, come on,” I groaned, dragging a hand down my face. “I know none of us have kept up with the modern world, but surely you’ve heard of Canada.”
More silence.
“Fine,” I huffed. “It’s a small town. On the coast. In British Columbia. I’m going to live among humans for a while. Get a house. Experience life.” I shrugged. “Maybe even get a dog.”
Lucien scoffed. “You loathe dogs.”
“That’s not true,” I countered. “I loathe you. Dogs, I could learn to tolerate.”
Vivienne nearly choked on her drink.
Mother, though. Mother was smiling.
And not in a good way.
“Canada,” she mused, as if tasting the word. “How… quaint.”
“Yes, I thought so too.” I propped my chin on my fist, feigning nonchalance. “Imagine. A whole new life. No court politics. No endless parties. Just a simple, normal existence.”
Vivienne snorted. “You? Normal?”
“Oh, hush,” I waved her off. “I think I’ll fit in quite nicely.”
Lucien muttered something about “international disasters” and “the last time Caius was left unsupervised.”
Mother simply took another sip of her drink, unreadable. “If your father were here,” she said, voice cool as untouched snowfall, “he would have torn your throat out.”
“Pity,” I replied, leaning back in my chair. “Though I quite like my throat.” I ran a hand along it for emphasis. “Keeps my head attached. Very useful.”
Lucien pinched the bridge of his nose, no doubt wondering how long it would take to find a replacement for me should Mother decide to have me removed.
Vivienne, meanwhile, was still blinking at me like I had just confessed to moving to the moon. “Why…” She frowned. “Why Tofu?”
I sighed. “To. Fi. No.” I dragged out the syllables as if I were speaking to a particularly slow child. “It’s a small town. On the coast. Humans live there. You may have heard of them—two legs, very fragile, tend to scream when bitten.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “Yes, yes, I know what humans are. I just don’t understand why you would voluntarily subject yourself to them.”
That, dear sister, was the question, wasn’t it?
I debated whether I should tell the truth or not.
That the latest pairing of servant to vampire royalty — the one who was meant to supply me with blood for the last three months — had, quite unintentionally, ruined me.
Because instead of treating him like a walking wine decanter, I had, against all odds, developed a dreadful habit of talking to him.
I had asked him about his mortal life. What brought him to our isolated little kingdom of decadence and fangs. What made humans so… human.
And he had answered me.
He had told me about the house he grew up in. The way the ocean smelled at dawn when you first paddled out into the surf. The burn in your arms after catching the perfect wave. The feeling of freedom — a concept that, up until that point, I had never truly understood.
Oh, and also, he had been accused of murdering two people, and in his panic, had found himself in service to our house because, well — what else do you do when everyone thinks you’ve killed someone but join a vampire court?
(Which, frankly, was one of the more relatable things I had heard in recent memory.)
But it was the way he spoke of the outside world that had planted a seed in my mind.
The thought of leaving had always been just that — a thought. A wistful, fleeting, impractical thing.
And then, one day, it wasn’t.
And now, here I was, preparing to launch myself into the mortal world like some poorly socialized, undead debutante.
Mother was still watching me, expression unreadable.
“Well,” I said, finally. “If you must know, a servant told me about it. He used to live outside of Tofino. Grew up surfing. Apparently, people enjoy that. Voluntarily.” I exhaled dramatically. “I thought, why not see for myself?”
Vivienne made a face. “You? On a beach?”
“I do own linen shirts, you know.”
Lucien muttered, “Only as a joke.”
Mother tilted her head ever so slightly, eyes glinting in the candlelight. “And tell me, Caius… is this sudden obsession with mortal life because you’ve developed a newfound appreciation for human culture—” She swirled her goblet absently. “—or is it because you’ve grown… attached?”
A slow smirk curled at the edge of my lips.
“Oh, Mother,” I purred, smoothing my shirt with exaggerated elegance. “What a scandalous thing to suggest.”
She didn’t blink.
Lucien tensed.
Vivienne sat forward, intrigued.
And I?
I just smiled.
Because, really. What was the fun in giving them a straight answer?
Mother sighed, long-suffering, as if I were the source of every headache she had endured over the past century. “I wish you were more like your father.”
“Well,” I said cheerfully, “he’s dead, so that seems unlikely.”
Vivienne let out a snort. Lucien shot her a withering glare, as if my lack of respect for our dearly departed, throat-ripping father was somehow her fault.
Mother merely closed her eyes for a moment, gathering whatever scraps of patience she had left. When she opened them again, they were sharp and cold. “What purpose does this bring you, Caius?”
“Won’t I be a better Prince to our Kingdom if I can see what difficulties surround it?”
Lucien scoffed. “Last I checked, Tofino was on the other side of the world.”
“Semantics, brother.”
“I still fail to see the purpose,” he pressed, voice clipped. “Your role as Prince and future King is to take care of our Kingdom. We have never had issues acquiring humans. They come here.”
“Yes,” I drawled, “because nothing says ‘functional monarchy’ like a centuries-old tradition of luring lost travelers into our clutches.” I leaned against the table. “Tell me, when was the last time you even spoke to a human, Lucien? Properly, I mean. Not in a ‘please extend your wrist’ or ‘try not to scream too loudly’ sort of way.”
He set his goblet down a little too hard. “Humans are not our concern.”
“Oh, but aren’t they?” I arched a brow. “A Kingdom is only as strong as the people within it. And if we only see humans as livestock, then—”
Mother’s voice cut through the room like the snap of a blade. “Do not lecture me on rulership, Caius.”
I turned to her, lips quirking. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
She held my gaze, searching.
Lucien’s fingers were flexing and curling, his restraint hanging by a thread. Vivienne, by contrast, had fully propped her chin in her palm, clearly invested in the spectacle.
I exhaled a dramatic sigh. “Look, if I’m being honest — and I rarely am, so listen closely — I simply do not care enough about ruling.” I gave Lucien a bright smile. “Which is why you’ll make a far better King than I ever will.”
And then, because the moment was too perfect to resist, I placed a hand over my heart and announced, “I abdicate the throne.”
Lucien’s chair screeched against the floor as he stood. “You cannot abdicate what has never been yours.”
“Oh, but I can,” I said, thoroughly delighted. “It’s happening right now. Listen—” I made a grand, sweeping motion with my hands. “I, Prince Caius of the House Devereaux of the Isle of Sangclair, do solemnly swear to relinquish my title, my crown, and my responsibility in favour of my dear, dear elder brother, who is clearly far more suited for the—”
A goblet somehow shattered in Mother’s grip.
I paused.
Vivienne sat up a little straighter. “Oh, this just got good.”
Mother, ever the picture of refined devastation, did not immediately move. Instead, she flexed her fingers, letting the shards drop onto the table. A single droplet of blood welled at the tip of her index finger before sealing itself in an instant.
When she spoke, her voice was quiet. Dangerously so.
“I did not spend the last century ensuring you remained alive only for you to throw away your legacy like some common—” She exhaled, long and slow, as if trying very hard to not hurl me through the nearest wall. “You are my son. My heir. And I will not allow you to make a fool of this family with your childish whims.”
I tilted my head. “Then it’s a good thing I’ve never been particularly obedient.”
Lucien looked about three seconds away from launching himself at me.
Mother’s smile was razor-sharp. “If you leave,” she said, voice smooth, “do not expect a welcome when you return.”
A silence settled over the room.
Vivienne blinked. “Oh, damn.”
Lucien’s expression was taut, unreadable.
Mother only watched me, waiting.
I, meanwhile, took a moment to let it settle. Let the words drift between us.
Then, I stood.
“Well, that is disappointing,” I said, turning on my heel. “But I suppose I’ll just have to make do with my beach house and newfound freedom.” I strode toward the exit, my steps echoing through the great hall. “Do send my things ahead, won’t you?”
Mother did not reply.
Lucien did not move.
Vivienne, however, raised her glass in mock salute.
And just like that, I was gone.
