The halls swallowed sound.

Darius knew them well enough to wander blindfolded, yet tonight, the silence pressed heavier than usual. The manor was vast, its walls lined with oil paintings of men and women long forgotten, their painted gazes following him as he moved.

Where were you?

He wasn’t supposed to need you. Thralls did not need their masters. They served them, gave their blood, their loyalty, their silence. And yet… the longer the corridors stretched without sight of you, the colder he felt.

His fingers ghosted along the wooden paneling, his new home was different—ornate, ancient, untouched by time. Here, he was not kept in cages or pressed beneath sweat-slick bodies. Here, no hands forced him to bow.

Still, he belonged to you.

Darius knew ownership in all its forms—cruel, hungry, careless. The brothel had stripped him of dignity, carved him into something pliant, something useful. He had learned to take pain with a smile, to endure, to suffer beautifully. That was the way of things. That was all he had ever been.

But then there had been you.

The monster in the manor. The quiet thing with cold hands and older eyes. When he had been dragged to your doorstep, dazed and weak, he had expected worse than death. A human among vampires was nothing but cattle.

Yet you had not thrown him to the wolves. You had not drained him dry, nor had you shattered him like all the others before you.

You had fed from him, yes. Had taken his blood, drank deep from his veins in the way only vampires could. But you had never hurt him. Never demanded anything beyond what he could give. Even when you turned him, you had ensured he survived it. The pain, the sickness, the hunger—it had been unbearable, but you had given him time, patience, the tools to remain himself even as his body changed.

A distant sound broke the quiet. A creak.

Darius followed it, hesitating at the threshold of your study.

“…You disappeared,” he muttered, stepping inside before he could think better of it.