POV: Caspian.

I hadn’t felt pain in years. Not real pain.

Not the kind that clawed through the chest like it was trying to break out.

But now.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

I staggered back from her lips as if I’d been burned. My lungs strained. My fingers trembled. Something inside me moved. No, beat, like a second heart waking in the silence.

I could feel the blood rushing where there shouldn’t be blood.

My heart.

Beating.

"Gods," I whispered, barely audible. My hands found the cold wall behind me, and I leaned into it, trying to ground myself. Trying to pretend this wasn’t happening.

Behind me, Lyra's voice was soft. "Caspian?"

I couldn't answer. I didn’t dare look at her.

She had kissed me back.

Willingly.

And that single act had shattered everything I thought I knew.

"So soft,” came the voice inside me.

“So warm. She calms it, doesn’t she? But you don’t deserve her. You never will."

I flinched. My grip tightened.

The voice was no stranger. It had haunted my dreams since childhood.

Vaelith.

The First Vampire.

The god sealed in my blood and my true father.

He stirred now, not in dreams, not in nightmares. In me. In my pulse. In the warmth building behind my ribs.

“She’s your undoing, Caspian.”

“No,” I said out loud, more to myself than to him. “She’s not.”

“You can lie to yourself, son of Elira. But the relic is cracking. Every beat brings me closer. Every feeling pulls you deeper. And she...”

“Enough.”

The word came out like a snarl. I drove my fist into the wall. Stone cracked under my knuckles.

Silence.

Even Vaelith recoiled.

______________

When I finally turned around, she hadn’t moved.

She stood in the same place, in that shimmering silver gown they’d forced her to wear, her lips still parted, her eyes searching mine.

She looked like she didn’t know whether to reach for me or run.

Neither would save her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said again, voice low.

“That’s the third time you’ve said that tonight,” she replied. “Maybe stop saying it if you don’t mean it.”

Her tone wasn’t arrogant. It wasn’t even defiant. It was... honest. Like she was tired of pretending, too.

I looked away. “I mean it more than you know.”

She took a step forward.

My breath caught.

She was too close. Her scent filled the air like honeyed magic, the kind that pulled me in, soothed the scream in my head, quieted the madness. And that was the danger.

Her very presence softened me.

And I couldn’t afford softness.

Not with him inside me.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, my voice quiet.

“I’m not afraid.”

“You should be.”

“I’m not,” she said again, and her voice didn’t tremble.

I turned my back to her, hoping distance would make the ache fade.

It didn’t.

"You don’t understand what I am," I said. "What you’ve married."

“I understand enough.”

“No,” I snapped. “You think this is a fairytale. You think I’m a cursed prince and you’re the innocent bride who’ll save me with your purity or light or... whatever they told you in Velinor.”

Silence.

Then: “You think I want to save you?”

Her words stopped me cold.

When I looked over my shoulder, she tilted her head slightly. “I don’t know who you are. But I didn’t come here to fix you. I came here because I had no choice.”

Her honesty disarmed me. I didn’t know how to respond.

I had prepared for tears. For fear. For bitterness. Not calm truth.

"She’s stronger than you thought.”

I ignored the voice.

She sighed and moved toward the bed, fingers brushing over the carved headboard. “Is this the part where you lock me in? Or chain me up like a precious relic you’re afraid to break?”

“I wouldn’t chain you.”

“Then why do you speak to me like I’m already a curse?”

I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn’t come.

How could I explain it? That her kiss had woken something in me, something alive. Something I had spent years burying beneath silence, blood, and cold.

How could I tell her that I wasn’t just cursed?

I was the curse.

________________

Later that night, I sat by the window, cloaked in shadow.

A crack slithered across the floor tiles near the bed.

The relic had felt it too.

My uprising.

Lyra lay on the far side of the bed, her back to me, curled tightly beneath thick velvet covers. She hadn’t asked me to stay. I hadn’t asked her to leave.

The moon hung high above the mountains, tinged faintly in red. A warning.

And still...

Boom. Boom. Boom.

My heartbeat refused to stop.

Each throb felt like a countdown.

Each second, Vaelith stirred.

And I knew the truth now.

This wasn’t the end of my curse.

It was the moment it began to spread.