The First Taste
The Restricted Vault only opened when the moon bled red, and tonight it bled like a fresh wound. I slipped through the iron gates of St. Aelred’s Academy at two in the morning, boots silent on the frost-dusted gravel.
No prefects, no wards, no witnesses. Just me, a stolen master key, and the whisper that had lived under my skin for three years.
Camille Emor is dead.
Camille Emor is dead.
Camille Emor is dead.
They buried the wrong girl. I was the one still breathing. Three years ago the carriage accident took my parents and supposedly me. Front-page tragedy, perfect little obituary, insurance paid, aunt cashed out, and “Lira Ashwood” got shipped off to St. Aelred’s on a scholarship nobody double-checked.
Clean exit. Except the dead don’t usually dream about breathing grimoires that call them by their real name. Tonight the pull was unbearable. Tonight the moon was right. The vault door sighed open like it had been waiting for me.
Too easy.
Inside, the air tasted like copper and old screams. Chained books hissed as I passed. At the very back, on a black marble pedestal, sat the one I’d come for: no title, leather the color of fresh blood; it’s practically purring. My fingers hovered, itching to just feel the leather on my skin.
A gloved hand slid lazily over my mouth from behind. Another caught my wrist an inch from the cover.
“Oops. Hands off the merchandise, little thief,” The voice was pure honey over broken glass, low and amused, like he’d caught me stealing candy instead of trespassing in a cursed vault. I knew that voice. Lucien Vale. The Warden. The only student the headmistress handed every single key in the academy to. Ice-blue eyes, permanent smirk, and the black iron keyring that could open Hell itself.
He spun me, back bumping the pedestal. The book flipped open by itself, pages fanning like it was stretching after a long nap. One drop of my blood (already beading from a paper-cut I didn’t remember getting) fell onto the blank title page. Ink bled across parchment, rearranging itself:
Property of Camille Emor
Debt begins now
Lucien tilted his head, his lazy smile widening.
“Huh. Thought they scrubbed your name from every record on the continent.”
The blood vanished. A burning rose rune flared on the inside of my left wrist, crimson and alive.
He lifted my arm like he was checking the time. “Cute tattoo. Three-hundred-year-old blood debt, activated. Congrats, dead girl. You just rang the dinner bell.”
I yanked free and shoved him. He didn’t move an inch.
“Let me go.”
“’Fraid not.” He dangled the black keyring, keys chiming softly. “My vault, my rules. And this?” He tapped the faint rose scar on his own palm. “Family heirloom. Twelve generations of Vales keeping your tab. You just woke the ledger.”
The grimoire flipped to a fresh page on its own. Ink crawled across it:
Two souls bound by stolen name
Thirty nights in the Warden’s flame
Speak the truth or the rune will climb
Lie once, lose an inch at a time
When the rose reaches the heart
One shall finish what death could not start
Lucien read it aloud like he was ordering coffee. “Thirty nights, one tower, just you and me. Door seals at dusk tomorrow. Be late and the rose starts walking on its own. Spoiler: it’s faster than you.”
I laughed, high and cracked. “You’re joking.”
The torches snuffed out all at once. Pitch black. His voice floated out of the dark, still lazy, still smiling.
“Do I sound like I joke, Miss Emor?”
Torches flared back. The pedestal was empty. The book had vanished. But I felt it curled against my ribs like a second heartbeat. Lucien stepped into the doorway, moonlight slicing across sharp cheekbones.
“Oh, almost forgot. The wrong body I buried three years ago? Still had your face. Funny how that works.” He flashed a lazy two-finger salute. “See you at dusk, little thief. Try not to die again before then. That’d be… inconvenient.”
The vault door slammed. I stood alone, wrist on fire, pulse hammering so loud I was sure the book could hear it wherever it had gone. The rose rune pulsed once, slow, deliberate. Somewhere in the dark it whispered my name like it was tasting it.
