Chapter 8: A Necessary Betrayal

The walls of my gilded prison felt thinner now, but not because I was any closer to escape. It was because the world outside was pressing in, and the consequences of my existence were finally crashing down upon the delicate fiction Caius had built. Whispers slithered under my door, carried by the servants too fearful to speak directly to me. Words like “instability,” “liability,” and “the Lupine problem” became a constant, hissed chorus. The vampire court, it seemed, had reached...