Glass Hearts & Blood Oaths: The Things We Leave Behind
He was the enemy of order. A creature of chaos in the body of a boy, his smile a weapon honed over centuries. She knew this. She knew it. And yet…
Vivienne felt heat crawl up her throat, her telekinesis spiking sharply, rattling the bookshelves before she wrestled it back down. “He’s… infuriating,” she ground out. “He’s arrogant, manipulative, impossible.”
Her eyes flashed, deflecting instinctively. “For what, Vale? For sport? For conquest? For one more girl to add to your—”
“No.” His voice cut through hers, low and raw, edged with something rare and unpolished. He turned, finally facing her fully, and let her see — truly see — what he had hidden for so long. “I want you because I am tired. Tired of the centuries, the repetition, the endless, empty seduction of immortality. I want you because you are the only thing that makes the hunger bearable — not the thirst, not the blood, not the kill — but the ache of being here, being alive, century after century after bloody century, without an anchor.”
Glass Hearts & Blood Oaths: The Things We Leave Behind
Summary
At St. Ethelred’s Academy, an elite supernatural school tucked into the shadows of London, senior year unfolds under the weight of ancient magic and unspoken histories.
Vivienne Hartley, a telekinetic girl known for her sharp mind and cool pragmatism, has perfected the art of staying invisible — not by glamour, but by indifference. She’s focused on graduation, on moving past the suffocating world of adolescent drama and supernatural posturing.
But Lucian Vale, the academy’s most enigmatic and dangerously magnetic figure, has other ideas. A vampire of centuries-old lineage trapped in the body of a seventeen-year-old, Lucian has grown weary of fleeting attention, shallow admiration, and the endless repetition of immortal existence. Only Vivienne — sharp-tongued, unimpressed, untouchable — has ever held his fascination.
Years ago, they conspired in a childish game: pretend to be a couple to fend off unwanted admirers. It worked, until life got complicated and the game fell away. But now, as their final school year draws to a close, Lucian finds himself drawn to Vivienne with a hunger that has little to do with blood — and everything to do with need.
Over ten alternating chapters, we dive into Lucian’s brooding desire and Vivienne’s reluctant awakening. What begins as a reawakened flirtation escalates into a storm of longing, power, and dangerous vulnerability. Lucian must face his own desperate fear of losing the one person who makes eternity bearable, while Vivienne grapples with the impossible choice between the fragile beauty of mortality and the dark allure of forever.
Set against a backdrop of enchanted ballrooms, shadowed libraries, moonlit towers, and ancient oaths, Glass Hearts & Blood Oaths is a tale of passion, power, and the aching, bittersweet truth that love — real love — always demands a price.
In the end, they must decide: What are they willing to leave behind, and what are they willing to risk, for the promise of forever?
Prologue
The city stretched itself along the Thames, a labyrinth of ancient stone and modern steel, its dusk-lit bones exhaling centuries of secrets. London at twilight was a place where the veil between worlds thinned — where magic, folded into the cracks of cobblestones and the sighs of the wind, brushed against mortal and supernatural alike. And in the heart of this spectral metropolis stood St. Ethelred’s Academy, a monastic fortress disguised as an elite school, its iron gates guarding more than just privileged youth.
There, ivy clawed up Gothic spires, lamplight flickered in tall mullioned windows, and eldritch energy saturated the air, thick and metallic, like ozone before a lightning strike. The very stones of the place whispered of ancient pacts, of rituals long past, of blood spilled and bound in shadow. And tonight, as the autumn dusk slipped its violet cloak over the rooftops, two figures drifted like ghosts across the academy’s sweeping quadrangle.
Lucian Vale moved with the languorous grace of one unbothered by time. His black coat hung like a velvet shadow from his tall frame, his dark hair tousled by a breeze he scarcely noticed. He was a beautiful thing, ethereal and untouchable, his alabaster skin seemingly carved from moonlight itself — and yet his eyes, a wicked, garnet red when they caught the light just so, betrayed the truth of him. Centuries, folded into the boyish smirk. Hunger, quiet but eternal, simmering beneath the polished manners.
He paused, one hand resting on the cold stone balustrade, gaze fixed across the courtyard. She was there.
Vivienne Hartley.
The girl he had once conspired with, once clung to — though he would never have confessed it aloud — in that childish, conspiratorial pact of ninth grade. She, the cool and cunning telekinetic, had been the only one he could stand for more than a few minutes without the rising urge to devour or destroy. Together, they’d fabricated the perfect little romance, fooling their peers, fending off jealous witches and swooning fae alike. But as the years passed, the pretense slipped away, and the connection they’d forged dissolved into silence.
Or so she seemed to believe.
Vivienne walked now with the clipped precision of a girl determined to take up as little space as possible — spine straight, arms crossed, eyes sharp and dismissive beneath the heavy fringe of her dark hair. She radiated an aura of absolute practicality, her mind perpetually miles ahead, cataloguing exams, assignments, post-graduation plans. Lucian could almost hear her internal monologue, the biting sarcasm she wielded like a blade.
And yet.
Yet there had been moments. Fleeting, delicate fractures in her armor. The brush of her fingertips against his when she thought no one was looking. The quicksilver glance when she caught him staring. The way her powers — so tightly controlled — had flared, ever so slightly, when he’d murmured her name near her ear.
Vivienne.
Lucian tilted his head, lips curving in a slow, dangerous smile. She thought she had outgrown the game, walked away unscathed. But senior year had arrived, and with it, the aching realization that time was running out — for her, for them, for the strange, half-formed something that had always simmered between them.
He straightened, smoothing a hand through his hair, and began to cross the courtyard. His boots made no sound on the flagstones; he was a shadow among shadows.
From across the way, Vivienne stiffened. She could sense him — even without turning, even without looking — because of course she could. Her telekinesis trembled at the edge of her skin, a silent shiver through the molecules around her, brushing against his approaching presence like static.
“Vale,” she said, dryly, without looking up.
“Darling,” Lucian murmured, voice low and indulgent, “how devastating it is that you greet me with such indifference.”
Finally, she turned — slowly, deliberately — and fixed him with those steely grey eyes, a look so flat it might have shattered lesser creatures. “Still bored, I see.”
He laughed softly, a sound like velvet over steel. “Oh, Vivienne. Only ever with you do I feel anything but boredom.”
She raised a brow. “Try therapy.”
The banter was old, well-worn, and yet tonight, Lucian felt the edges of it tinged with something sharper. Anticipation. Desire. The knowledge that this year — this final year — they would have to confront what they had so carefully avoided.
Lucian let the smile fade from his mouth, just slightly, enough to reveal the flicker of vulnerability beneath. “Tell me, Vivienne — do you ever wonder what might have happened, if we’d let the game become something real?”
She didn’t answer. But her hand, resting lightly at her side, trembled — just enough to make the pebbles at her feet rattle, softly, like the echo of an unspoken truth.
Above them, the moon slid free of the clouds, casting silver across the academy’s stones, bathing them both in a light too cold to be human.
And in that pale glow, two hearts — one living, one undead — beat a little faster, though neither would admit it just yet.
Not yet. But soon.
Very soon.
Chapter 1: Lucian’s POV
Lucian Vale lounged against the ancient stone balustrade of the upper cloister, one long leg stretched out with careless elegance, the other bent just enough to let him balance his weight with feline ease. His black uniform jacket hung unbuttoned, a subtle rebellion against the academy’s strict dress code, the pristine white collar open at the throat where pale skin met shadow. Below him, the courtyard teemed with life: witches in heated gossip, fae boys laughing too loudly, warlock girls trailing perfumes of jasmine and ash. Their chatter, their flirting, their small intrigues — all of it rose in an indistinct, maddening buzz to Lucian’s sharp, ancient ears.
How unbearably tedious.
He let his crimson gaze drift lazily over the crowd, a predator watching a flock of noisy, fluttering birds, and sighed inwardly. Centuries of existence had honed his senses to a razor edge, but they had also dulled his patience. High school — even one as rarefied as St. Ethelred’s — was little more than theatre, a cycle of petty dramas endlessly recycled, youth pretending their troubles were monumental, as though their fleeting mortal years were more than a flicker in the dark.
And yet.
There.
His eyes sharpened, narrowing as they fixed on a single figure slicing coolly through the throng. Vivienne Hartley, her dark hair pulled into a no-nonsense twist, her uniform immaculate, her slender fingers curled loosely around a notebook rather than a phone. Her face — pale, heart-shaped, with steel-grey eyes that glinted like polished silver — remained a mask of disinterest. She did not laugh, did not linger, did not preen for the fae boys or flirt with the charming necromancers. She moved like a blade through water, untouched, untouchable, every line of her body whispering: I have no time for you.
Lucian felt the faint, unbidden curl of a smile at the corner of his mouth. How little she had changed.
He remembered — and how could he forget? — the first time they had met, years ago, when he was still amused by the novelty of pretending to be a teenager. Ninth grade. She’d bumped into him, books flying, the briefest brush of her hand across his. He had expected the usual: the flush, the stammer, the shy, worshipful gaze. Instead, she’d looked at him — properly looked — with a narrowed eye and a muttered, unimpressed, “Watch it, Vale.”
From that moment, she had fascinated him. Not because she was the most powerful girl in the school — though her telekinesis was formidable — but because she was the only one who didn’t shrink under his gaze. She had never tried to seduce him, impress him, own him. She had simply walked away.
And now, years later, he watched her stride across the courtyard, still immune, still distant, still maddeningly unaware of the way his immortal pulse quickened at the sight of her.
A voice interrupted his reverie.
“Lucian, darling, are you coming down, or shall we deliver your fan mail to the balcony?”
He turned his head slowly, a deliberate, graceful movement, and regarded Elara Moon, a witch of impeccable pedigree and insufferable charm. Her blond hair shimmered like spun gold, her lips painted a perfect red, her eyes sparkling with mischief. She perched delicately at the edge of the staircase, one finger twirling a strand of hair.
Lucian offered her a slow, indulgent smile. “Elara, my dear, you do realise your affections wound me deeply.”
She laughed, a silvery, practiced sound. “You’re impossible, Vale.”
“On the contrary,” he murmured, gaze sliding back to Vivienne’s retreating figure, “I am entirely possible — to the right person.”
Elara followed his line of sight, eyebrows lifting. “Her? Still?”
Lucian gave no answer, only the faintest quirk of his lips, as if to say: mind your own affairs, witchling.
His inner voice, however, was far less composed.
She still holds me, damn her. Years, and still she occupies a space no one else can touch. Why? Why her? Why not Elara, or any of the dozens who offer themselves freely? Why do I crave the girl who has never once tried to please me?
It was intolerable. Exhilarating. Maddening.
And entirely inescapable.
With a sigh, Lucian pushed off the balustrade, descending the staircase with a smoothness no human boy could ever match. The crowd parted instinctively, sensing his approach — the cold aura, the faint, seductive threat beneath his smile. He caught glimpses of faces turning, eyes darting, whispered names in passing: Vale… Lucian Vale… did you see him?
But none of it mattered. None of them mattered.
He crossed the quad in long, unhurried strides, the late afternoon light catching in his dark eyes, making them gleam like garnets. Ahead, Vivienne paused at the edge of the garden wall, flipping open her notebook, absorbed, as always, in something far more important than the boys circling like wolves.
Lucian tilted his head, studying her. He imagined, absurdly, reaching out — brushing that strand of hair from her cheek, feeling the jolt of her power ripple beneath his fingertips. He imagined bending close, close enough to smell the human warmth of her skin, and whispering, Do you remember, Vivienne, when we used to pretend?
But he did not move. Not yet.
He would wait. Watch. Let the tension build, the anticipation coil tighter. After all, he had eternity.
And this year, he suspected, Vivienne Hartley was about to stop pretending she didn’t care.
Chapter 2: Vivienne’s POV
Vivienne Hartley felt his eyes before she saw them — a subtle disturbance in the space around her, as if the air molecules themselves rearranged under the pressure of his attention. It was not magic, not precisely. It was something far more primitive: the preternatural awareness of a predator’s gaze fixed on one’s back, a sensation wired into the human nervous system long before the written word or civilisation.
She forced herself to keep her posture still, her fingers methodically turning the pages of her notebook. She was cataloguing spells, committing formulae to memory, making lists — lists soothed her — but her thoughts stuttered under the weight of Lucian Vale’s presence. She could almost trace the line of his sight, hot and cold at once, threading between her shoulder blades, curling at the nape of her neck.
Ignore him, she ordered herself, jaw tightening. Ignore him the way you always have.
The problem was, it was no longer working.
For years, Lucian Vale had been a beautifully constructed irritant — a creature of gleaming arrogance, suffocating charm, and an unshakeable conviction that the world should orbit him. And yet, somehow, they had stumbled into a fragile, private détente in their early school years. She had been, she realised now, a convenience: the clever, detached girl who could play the part of girlfriend without ever demanding anything real. He had been a shield: the magnetic vampire no one dared challenge, who had made her untouchable by association.
And then, as all childish conspiracies do, it had unravelled.
Vivienne shut her notebook with a snap, exhaling sharply. Why now? Why, after years of cool silence, did Lucian look at her with that slow, deliberate hunger? She had seen it — caught it flickering behind the carefully sculpted smirks, the lazy indifference, the courtly disdain he wore like an embroidered coat. His attention had shifted. She, who had been a fixture of the background, was once again at the centre of his gaze.
It infuriated her.
I don’t have time for this, she thought savagely, adjusting her grip on the notebook, shoulders stiff. I have exams, applications, a future to design. I do not have time for —
“Vivienne.”
The voice curled against her like silk and steel. Low, amused, rich with unspoken laughter. She turned slowly, deliberately, fixing him with the most unimpressed expression she could summon.
“Vale,” she said coolly. “Lurking again? You must be exhausted from the effort of standing still and looking decorative.”
Lucian’s lips quirked, the barest hint of a smile. His black coat, open at the throat, caught the late afternoon light in soft waves of fabric; his dark hair fell carelessly across his brow. His eyes — a colour no human iris could mimic, some hypnotic blend of garnet and shadow — glinted with unholy amusement.
“My darling,” he murmured, stepping close enough that she could smell him — old leather, cool stone, the faintest whisper of night-blooming jasmine. “I was merely observing. Admiring, one might say.”
Vivienne arched a brow, folding her arms. “Am I supposed to be flattered?”
Lucian tilted his head, studying her with infuriating patience. “Are you?”
She bristled. “I’m busy, Vale.”
“And yet you’re still standing here,” he murmured, smile widening just enough to reveal the dangerous curve of fang behind his lips.
Vivienne’s heart gave the traitorous jolt she had been dreading. She masked it expertly, rolling her eyes. “You haven’t changed, have you?” she said tightly. “Still playing at decadence, still trying to rattle the room with a single glance. You’re centuries old, Lucian. You’d think you’d have found a hobby by now.”
His eyes softened, just for a moment, and that — more than the smile, more than the teasing — unsettled her. There was something unguarded in his gaze, something raw and quiet, and it scraped against the defences she’d so carefully built.
“You were never a hobby, Vivienne,” he said softly.
For a heartbeat, the air between them trembled. Her telekinesis stirred, unbidden, making the edges of her notebook quiver, the loose gravel at their feet shift. She clenched her fists, forcing the power down, shoving the moment away.
“No,” she said, voice sharp as glass, “but you were a phase.”
She turned on her heel, walking briskly toward the south wing, heart pounding in her chest like a war drum. She hated the flush crawling up her neck, hated the way her powers danced against her skin, hated the way her pulse quickened at the memory of his gaze.
Get a grip, Hartley. You are practical. Logical. Immune.
But as she slipped into the shadowed corridor, pressing her back against the cold stone to catch her breath, she felt the first, sickening admission stir inside her.
Something about Lucian Vale this year felt… different.
And that difference terrified her more than any vampire ever could.
Chapter 3: Lucian’s POV
Lucian Vale was a master of orchestration. Time, after all, had taught him the delicate, predatory dance of proximity — how to let himself slip, seemingly by accident, into another’s path. But with Vivienne Hartley, it was no mere hunt for easy prey. It was art. It was ritual. It was the slow, exquisite tightening of a thread that had bound them for years, fraying at the edges but never quite snapping.
He watched her now from the shadows of the library, half-shielded behind an aisle of crumbling grimoires, his long fingers idly tracing the spine of an 18th-century treatise on elemental affinities. She sat at one of the great oak tables, sunlight slanting through the stained glass and catching in the dark sheen of her hair. Her brow furrowed as she read, the tip of her pen worrying at her lower lip, one foot tucked restlessly under the chair. She was focus incarnate — and yet, Lucian knew with unerring certainty, she felt him watching. She always knew.
He wondered — not for the first time — whether she remembered. Not just the childish conspiracies of their underclassman years, the staged hand-holding, the mock kisses exchanged beneath archways just to watch the envious gazes flare. But the moments in between, when the pretence blurred, when her fingers tangled in his hair and his mouth lingered too long against her throat. When they’d lay, breathless, under the stars on the academy roof, the cold slate biting through their uniforms, or pressed close in the ruined garden where the ivy ran wild.
Did she remember the cave by the river, where the walls pulsed with old magic and she had let him trap her wrist against stone, mouths brushing in a dance just shy of surrender? Did she remember the gatehouse, the quiet moans stifled in laughter, the way they had clung to each other not out of need, but out of the sheer, reckless joy of pushing boundaries?
He remembered every moment. Every. Bloody. One.
And now, in their final year, he felt the tether between them grow taut once more.
He stepped forward, letting his boots whisper against the stone.
Vivienne’s head lifted, eyes flicking up sharply — she knew it was him before she saw him, her telekinesis stirring the air in a subtle ripple. Lucian felt the tingle dance across his skin, an invisible caress, an accidental brush of power, and he smiled.
“Studious as ever, Hartley,” he murmured, voice pitched low, just for her. “Tell me — are you studying to escape, or to impress?”
Vivienne’s gaze hardened, but he saw the faintest flicker of colour rise along her throat. She closed the book, spine creaking. “I could ask you the same, Vale. Or have you decided to finally learn something this year?”
He gave a slow, languid shrug, slipping into the chair across from her with the insolent grace of a cat stretching over forbidden ground. “I know quite a bit already, darling. But you — you’ve always been a puzzle. One I’m suddenly interested in solving again.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You were interested in solving me once before, and we both know how that ended.”
Lucian’s smile turned faintly wistful, dangerously edged. “Do we? I remember it differently.” He leaned forward, forearms resting lightly on the table. “I remember breathless kisses behind the chapel, hands tangled in hair, the sound you made when I bit your lower lip just enough to leave a mark.”
Vivienne’s pen snapped between her fingers, a sharp crack of plastic. She cursed softly, colour blooming hotter in her cheeks, but she held his gaze with admirable ferocity. “We were playing, Lucian.” Her voice was tight, brittle. “Children playing at being grown.”
He tilted his head, eyes darkening, the lazy amusement slipping away. “And now?”
She faltered — just a flicker, a heartbeat, but Lucian saw it. He saw the war in her eyes: reason versus hunger, caution against memory.
“You’re wasting your time,” she said finally, gathering her books with a briskness that was almost convincing. “I’m not the girl I was at fifteen.”
Lucian rose as she rose, moving with her, shadowing her steps through the dim aisles. “Neither am I,” he murmured. “But tell me, Vivienne — when you lie awake at night, when the world is silent, do you ever wonder… what we could have been, if we’d stopped pretending?”
At the edge of the shelves, she turned abruptly, forcing him to halt a bare breath away. She was close now — so close he could see the faint pulse at her throat, the delicate shimmer of her power under her skin. Her breath caught, just once, and he felt her tremble not with fear, but with fury.
“Don’t start something you don’t intend to finish, Vale,” she whispered, voice shaking with restraint.
Lucian’s smile was slow, dangerous, achingly fond. He reached out — just enough to brush a strand of hair back from her cheek, fingertips cool against her fevered skin.
“Oh, darling,” he murmured, voice a promise, a threat, a prayer. “I intend to finish everything.”
Chapter 4: Vivienne’s POV
Vivienne Hartley was unraveling.
Not dramatically, not outwardly — not in the catastrophic, public fashion of the witches whose charms shattered under stress or the warlocks who collapsed when their spells backfired — no, Vivienne’s disintegration was far subtler. It flickered at the edges, slipped between the seams, manifesting not in tears or screams but in the smallest betrayals of her own carefully disciplined body.
A coffee mug trembled when she reached for it, even when her hands were still. The curtain by her window stirred, though the night was windless. Pens rolled from desks, door latches clicked open on their own, the faintest ghost of her telekinesis reacting before she even registered the surge of emotion.
And the emotion always, invariably, traced back to him.
Lucian Vale.
It was absurd, she told herself. Infuriating. Illogical. She was practical, grounded, rational to a fault — she had spent her entire academic life rejecting the notion that her magic made her something wild or unpredictable. And yet here she was, trembling with power like a first-year student, her concentration dissolving whenever Lucian stepped into her periphery.
And it wasn’t just his face — though, God, that face — the bone-pale skin, the carved mouth, the predatory, knowing gleam in those impossible eyes. No, it was the totality of him: the voice, velvet-dark and sharpened with laughter; the scent, subtle but inescapable, like rain on stone and something older, deeper, something she had no name for but could feel threading itself through her pulse.
It’s biological, she reasoned, pacing her room in sharp, tight circles. Vampire pheromones. An evolutionary trick. An ancient mechanism to ensnare prey. That’s all.
Except… she was not prey.
And yet…
Late at night, when the academy had fallen silent and the lights flickered to dim enchantment, Vivienne lay sleepless beneath her blankets, eyes wide open, heart thudding against her ribs. She turned on her side, pressing her face into the cool linen, willing herself to think of anything else — equations, sigils, her university applications — but her mind, treacherous and uninvited, conjured him.
Lucian, standing by her window, all long lines and dark grace, a silhouette carved from shadow and moonlight. Lucian, slipping soundlessly to the edge of her bed, his eyes molten, his smile a slow, dangerous thing. Lucian, brushing the blankets aside as though they were smoke, his hands, pale and cool, ghosting along her bare skin, down her spine, along the curve of her hip —
Vivienne sat bolt upright, breath ragged, fists clenched in the sheets.
No. No, no, no.
But the images clung, insistent as ivy: Lucian kneeling between her thighs, his mouth tracing delicate, devastating paths along her skin, his voice murmuring her name — not in mockery, not in jest, but in raw, aching hunger. And worse, the part that rattled her the most, was that in these midnight imaginings, she was not resisting. She was arching into him, hands tangled in his hair, breathless and desperate and lost.
Her powers sparked, lights flickering overhead. She forced herself to inhale slowly, deliberately, grounding herself. This is chemical. Neurological. An echo of past intimacy. I am not some schoolgirl daydreaming over a pretty boy.
And yet her body ached, her skin too sensitive, her heart hammering traitorously whenever she so much as thought his name.
A soft knock sounded at her door. She flinched, nearly sending her bedside lamp flying, and scrambled to gather herself.
“Vivienne?” came a muffled voice — Elara Moon, soft, teasing. “You all right in there? You’re setting off the floor wards again.”
Vivienne exhaled, pressing her palms to her temples. “Fine,” she called tightly. “Just… a misfire. I’m fine.”
But as she lay back against the pillows, fists clenched at her sides, she knew the truth.
She was not fine.
Lucian Vale was inside her head, under her skin, threading himself into her nights and her waking hours alike. And no matter how fiercely she fought it, she was beginning — dangerously, inexorably — to want to let him in.
Chapter 5: Lucian’s POV
Lucian Vale had never been a stranger to obsession — centuries had a way of breeding it, like ivy creeping into the stonework of the mind — but this was something altogether more exquisite, more maddening. Vivienne Hartley was not simply the girl who resisted him; she was the girl who saw him. Not the mask, not the polished vampire prince, not the easy charm or the glinting eyes. She saw beneath, saw the ancient, gnawing hunger, the restlessness that centuries could not soothe. And worse, she refused to be impressed by it.
It was why he remembered every scrap of her — the brush of her fingers when she handed him a pen, the impatient smirk when she corrected his Latin incantations, the sharp, sarcastic retorts that left lesser boys stammering. Vivienne had been a constant thread through the last four years, stitching herself through his mind in a way no fleeting conquest or simpering admirer ever had.
And now, as senior year ticked inevitably towards its close, Lucian felt the noose of time draw tight. He had waited long enough. He was done watching.
He cornered her in the east wing, near the disused stairwell where the wards had frayed and the mistresses seldom patrolled. She was alone, of course — Vivienne was always alone — a book clutched to her chest, her expression fierce, closed, as if daring the world to challenge her.
“Vivienne,” he said softly, stepping into her path.
Her eyes flicked up, guarded, exasperated. “Lucian. Don’t you have a fan club to supervise?”
He smiled — slow, deliberate, predatory. “They bore me. You don’t.”
She stiffened, brushing past him, but he caught her wrist — gently, deliberately. He felt the pulse leap under her skin. “You can’t keep pretending you don’t feel this,” he murmured, voice silk-wrapped steel.
Her telekinesis flared instantly, snapping his hand back with a force that jarred through his bones. Lucian’s eyes flashed, delighted. “Oh, darling,” he breathed, “do that again.”
“Don’t push me, Lucian,” Vivienne hissed, voice shaking with fury. “I’m not some toy you can play with.”
Something sharp, feral stirred in his chest. “No,” he agreed softly, “you’re not. You’re the only one who isn’t.”
Before she could move, he closed the space between them, hands slamming to either side of her against the stone wall, caging her in. Not touching — not quite — but so close she could feel the cool wash of his breath, the low vibration of his voice threading through her.
“You want to fight me, Vivienne?” he murmured, eyes burning. “Then fight.”
Her power erupted, violent and stunning, slamming into his chest and sending him staggering back with a low laugh. She surged forward, fury igniting her every motion, and for a breathless, electric moment, they collided — fists, magic, snarled words, a storm of motion and sound. His inhuman strength, her raw, psychic force, clashing like colliding stars.
“Stop controlling me!” she screamed, shoving him back with a blast of telekinetic energy that shattered the stone arch behind them.
Lucian, breathing hard, grinned through a smear of blood on his lip. “I’m not controlling you,” he rasped. “You’re letting me in.”
Her fist connected with his jaw, cracking his head sideways. He let out a short, savage laugh, wiping the blood with the back of his hand. “There’s the girl I remember.”
Vivienne’s eyes burned silver, her whole body trembling with barely restrained power. “Stay away from me, Vale.”
And she was gone — storming down the corridor, shoving open doors with pure force, leaving a wake of crackling air behind her. Lucian watched her go, chest heaving, exhilarated, aching, maddened by the pull of her.
But they were not alone.
From the far end of the hallway, shadows detached themselves — tall figures in black academic robes, the faint shimmer of enchanted badges at their throats. The ward keepers. The deans. The professors, drawn by the flare of uncontrolled magic, the crackle of shattered wards.
“Mr. Vale,” came a cool, imperious voice — Headmistress Morrigan, her silver hair swept up like a crown, her sharp eyes glinting with measured displeasure. “And Miss Hartley.” She glanced after Vivienne’s retreating figure, mouth tightening. “It seems you two have… unresolved tensions.”
Lucian straightened slowly, smoothing his jacket, letting the smile fade into something faintly apologetic, faintly dangerous. “Just a disagreement, Headmistress.”
Morrigan’s gaze narrowed. “See that it doesn’t become a problem.”
Lucian inclined his head, graceful as ever. But inwardly, his blood was still thrumming, his body still charged with the memory of Vivienne’s hands on him, her power surging, her lips parted in fury.
He could feel her, even now, like a pulse thrumming in the air.
And he knew — with the clarity of a hunter sighting his prey — that she would come back. She would have to. Because whatever existed between them now, whatever wildfire they had tried to smother, it was no longer a game.
It was survival.
Chapter 6: Vivienne’s POV
Vivienne Hartley hated herself.
Not in the dramatic, self-pitying way of girls who cried in bathrooms or scribbled dark poetry onto the backs of notebooks — no, Vivienne’s hatred was quiet, surgical, precise. It lodged in the recesses of her rational mind like a splinter, a steady, gnawing ache she could neither pull free nor ignore. She was furious at herself — for the softening in her chest, for the unbidden tremors in her hands, for the way her breath hitched when Lucian Vale’s name so much as brushed the edge of her thoughts.
He was the enemy of order. A creature of chaos in the body of a boy, his smile a weapon honed over centuries. She knew this. She knew it. And yet…
She replayed the way his mouth had curved at her, not in mockery, not in his usual smirking cruelty, but something quieter, more private. A softness that emerged only for her, as though the centuries-weary vampire saw something in her — something real, something necessary — that the rest of the world did not.
Her heart betrayed her. Again and again.
She sat curled on her bed now, knees drawn to her chest, the cool silver light of the moon spilling through the high window across her blankets. Her hands twitched restlessly, telekinesis stirring the edges of books and pens and paper, sending them drifting gently across the room in a restless, thoughtless dance. She told herself to stop, to centre, to breathe — but her pulse thudded loud and wild in her ears, her skin prickling with a heat that had nothing to do with magic.
Lucian.
His name filled the spaces between her thoughts, slipped into her like water through cracks in stone. She saw him when she closed her eyes — the elegant arch of his mouth, the way his dark hair fell messily over his brow, the lean lines of his body when he moved, all liquid grace and predator’s ease. She hated how beautiful he was. Hated how every inch of him seemed designed to undo her.
It’s biological, she whispered fiercely to herself, pressing her fists against her temples. It’s pheromones, glamour, old blood magic. He’s engineered to attract, to manipulate, to seduce.
And yet…
When he looked at her — truly looked, when the crowd was gone and the performative arrogance fell away — there was a flicker of vulnerability in his eyes that set her heart stumbling, made her chest tighten with something sharp and unbearable. She saw him, too. She always had. Beneath the centuries of power and polish, she glimpsed the boy he might have been, the man he had never quite become, the loneliness wrapped in silk and shadow.
It drove her mad.
“Vivienne?”
The voice at her door jolted her upright. She shoved back her hair, schooling her features into sharpness.
Elara’s voice came through again, soft and slightly teasing: “You’re not still stewing, are you? You’ve been in there all night.”
Vivienne hesitated, then rose, crossing to the door. She cracked it open, peering out at Elara’s expectant face.
“I’m fine,” Vivienne said stiffly.
Elara arched a delicate brow, arms crossed. “You look fine.”
Vivienne sighed, rubbing at her temple. “I’m just… tired.”
Elara studied her for a long, perceptive moment. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
Vivienne’s stomach flipped. “Who?” she asked too quickly.
Elara smirked faintly. “Lucian Vale.”
Vivienne felt heat crawl up her throat, her telekinesis spiking sharply, rattling the bookshelves before she wrestled it back down. “He’s… infuriating,” she ground out. “He’s arrogant, manipulative, impossible.”
Elara leaned lightly against the doorframe, smiling just a touch. “Mmm. And yet…”
Vivienne clenched her jaw. “And yet nothing.”
She slammed the door gently but firmly, heart pounding, fingers twitching at her sides.
And then, in the silence that followed, she let herself sag against the wood, closing her eyes, exhaling shakily.
And yet, she thought bitterly, I want him.
She hated how her mind replayed the memory of his body pressed close to hers, the effortless strength in his hands, the cool whisper of his breath at her ear. She hated how her skin still remembered the ghost of his touch, how her lips tingled at the thought of his mouth, how her thighs ached with a longing she refused — stubbornly, fiercely — to name.
You are practical, she reminded herself. You are logical. You are immune.
But her body, traitorous and aching, was no longer listening.
Chapter 7: Lucian’s POV
Lucian Vale stood alone in the forbidden wing of the academy gardens, the wrought-iron archway tangled with vines and nightshade, the scent of blood roses heavy in the air. Moonlight dripped over the stonework in pale ribbons, casting fractured shadows across his hands as he traced one elegant fingertip along the delicate stem of the rose he held — thorns sharp enough to draw even vampire skin. He let the thorn bite, just enough, watching the dark bead of blood swell, glint, then vanish as the skin healed over almost instantly.
Immortality was a trick, a mockery. Time folded endlessly inward, the years indistinguishable, the faces blurring, the centuries piling one atop the next like suffocating snow. Lucian had long ago stopped pretending that eternity was a gift. It was a sentence.
And yet.
Vivienne.
She had slipped beneath his skin, through the cracks in his polished façade, with a precision no spell or stake or sunlight had ever managed. She did not worship him, did not fear him, did not need him — and because of that, because of her maddening, impossible resistance, he found himself hungering for her in ways that had nothing to do with blood.
She made him feel alive.
He could not remember the last time that had been true.
He moved through the shadowed gardens with the silence of centuries, the blood roses bundled in his arms, and something else tucked carefully into his pocket — a small, leather-bound notebook, its cover plain and unadorned, the kind of thing Vivienne would appreciate: not flashy, not ostentatious, but sturdy, practical, meant to hold ideas, lists, thoughts. He had seen her scribbling in countless such notebooks over the years, the margins filled with diagrams and spells and tiny, meticulous handwriting. She did not waste words. She did not waste anything.
When he found her — alone, as he knew she would be — she was seated on the low stone wall by the enchanted fountains, one ankle crossed over the other, her dark hair pulled up messily, eyes closed as if trying to will the world away. She didn’t flinch when he approached. She never did.
“Vivienne.”
Her eyes snapped open, sharp and silver, flicking immediately to the roses in his hand. Her mouth twisted faintly, a half-smile, half-sneer. “How cliché of you, Vale.”
Lucian’s own mouth curved, slow and aching. “Not for you,” he murmured, holding the roses out. “For me. A reminder that beauty wounds.”
She hesitated — and that was all he needed, the brief flicker of pause, the crack in her armour. He settled beside her, close but not quite touching, and drew the notebook from his pocket, setting it gently on her knee.
“For you,” he said softly. “Something useful. Something real.”
Vivienne’s fingers closed around it slowly, brows furrowing, suspicion flickering in her eyes. “Why?” she asked, voice tight. “What do you want, Lucian?”
And that was it. The moment. The edge of confession, the sharp line he had danced around for too many years. He exhaled, slowly, feeling the weight of centuries press down on his ribs, his shoulders, his throat.
“I want you,” he said simply.
Her eyes flashed, deflecting instinctively. “For what, Vale? For sport? For conquest? For one more girl to add to your—”
“No.” His voice cut through hers, low and raw, edged with something rare and unpolished. He turned, finally facing her fully, and let her see — truly see — what he had hidden for so long. “I want you because I am tired. Tired of the centuries, the repetition, the endless, empty seduction of immortality. I want you because you are the only thing that makes the hunger bearable — not the thirst, not the blood, not the kill — but the ache of being here, being alive, century after century after bloody century, without an anchor.”
He reached out, his hand trembling faintly, brushing a single rose petal across her cheek. “You are not a game to me, Vivienne. You never were.”
For the first time in years, she was silent. No sharp retort, no biting sarcasm. Just the faint hitch of her breath, the tremor of her telekinesis rippling faintly in the air between them, stirring the fountain’s enchanted surface into delicate, glasslike waves.
Lucian closed his eyes, exhaling shakily. “I am… so tired of being untouched.”
When he opened his eyes again, she was watching him — really watching, as if seeing him for the first time. The immortal boy, the centuries-old monster, the fractured heart behind the fangs.
And in that suspended, aching moment, Lucian knew: whether she ran or stayed, whether she broke him or saved him, he was already hers.
Chapter 8: Vivienne’s POV
Vivienne Hartley had never known herself to fall. She was not the type — not the girl who drifted, or slipped, or stumbled into anything. She calculated. She anticipated. She kept herself two steps ahead of every spell, every exam, every social ambush this wretched academy could throw at her.
But now, with Lucian Vale standing before her in the blood-rose-scented dark, his immortal eyes gleaming like garnets in the fractured moonlight, she felt the edges of her composure fracture, peel back, give way.
It was not his beauty — though God, that was dangerous enough, the way his pale skin caught the shadows, the way his mouth curved with aching tenderness just for her. It was the rawness. The truth. The quiet confession from a creature who had spent centuries perfecting masks, shedding them only now, only here, with her.
Her fingers trembled slightly, closing around the notebook he’d given her — something so small, so practical, so perfectly aligned to her — and she knew, suddenly, with sharp, devastating clarity, that she had not been resisting him all these years. She had been resisting herself.
Before she could talk herself down, before she could reassert logic and control and all the neat little barricades she had built around her heart, she surged forward — a breathless, desperate motion — and closed the space between them.
Lucian’s eyes widened, the faintest flicker of surprise — and then her mouth was on his, fierce and trembling, tasting the cold silk of him, the centuries of loneliness, the inhuman restraint cracking under her touch. His arms snapped around her in a bruising, unyielding grip, pulling her against him so tightly she felt the cool steel of his body, the trembling quake of his hunger.
The world shuddered.
She barely noticed the way the enchanted lights flickered, the way windows rattled in their frames, the faint whine of distant wards straining under her telekinetic surge. Her powers rippled out, raw and unrestrained, pressing against the air, cracking stone, stirring the very magic of the school. She was terrified, exhilarated, undone — and she wanted, God help her, she wanted.
“Vivienne,” Lucian murmured against her mouth, his voice a half-broken groan, “tell me to stop.”
“Don’t you dare,” she whispered back, hands tangling in his hair, pulling him down, pressing her body shamelessly against his.
Somehow — she would never remember how — they stumbled through shadowed hallways, slipping through hidden doors, ascending the back stairs of the girls’ dormitory. She warded her room hastily with a flick of her fingers, breathless, laughing softly against his mouth, tasting the thrill of doing everything wrong, of letting herself have this.
Elara’s voice floated faintly from the hall — a knowing giggle, a teasing “Oh, Viv…” — but Vivienne barely registered it, too wrapped in Lucian’s arms, too lost in the press of his mouth against her throat, the cool slide of his hands under her clothes, the exquisite contrast of his centuries-old restraint snapping like a bone under the weight of their want.
Her telekinesis flared, sparking wildly as Lucian lifted her bodily onto the bed, his mouth trailing fire down her skin, his hands coaxing sounds from her she hadn’t known she could make. She gasped, arched, sobbed against him, clenching fistfuls of his hair as he kissed her like he was starving, like she was the only meal he had ever craved.
“Lucian…” she breathed, half-mad, half-sobbing, overwhelmed by the sheer physicality of him, the impossible cool of his skin against her fevered warmth, the inhuman smoothness of his motions — and yet how human he was in his desperation, his trembling, his whispered pleas.
They lost themselves to the hours. The moon crawled its slow arc across the window, shadows deepened, stars flickered and vanished.
Lucian’s mouth found every inch of her, reverent and ravenous, and Vivienne, practical, logical Vivienne, found herself laughing and crying at once, clinging to him like a drowning girl. Her magic crackled uncontrolled, sending books fluttering from shelves, making the walls tremble faintly — but she no longer cared. For once, for once, she let herself shatter.
When they collapsed at last, tangled together in the sweat-damp sheets, she buried her face in his chest, inhaling the cool, dark scent of him, trembling from exhaustion and exhilaration alike.
“I hate you,” she whispered weakly, smiling against his skin.
Lucian’s arms tightened around her, his voice a velvet rumble against her ear. “No, darling. You don’t.”
Chapter 9: Lucian’s POV
Lucian Vale had not known fear for centuries.
He had known hunger, certainly — the relentless ache of it, the slow, creeping rot of time gnawing through desire until only a hollow craving remained — but fear? True, bone-deep fear? No. Not until now. Not until her.
Vivienne lay tangled in the sheets beside him, one arm flung carelessly across his chest, her breathing soft, her pulse a steady human rhythm against his cold skin. The pale dawn light fractured across her hair, turning the dark strands silver, and Lucian, ancient, immortal, predator and prince, stared at her with a quiet, desperate ache blooming like a bruise behind his ribs.
She will leave you, whispered the voice inside his mind — the one that had followed him through centuries, through empires risen and fallen, through lovers gained and lost. Not because she wants to, but because she must. Because you will stay, and she will fade.
The thought made his throat tighten, made his arms wrap more tightly around her. His hunger — that old, constant companion — twisted not toward her blood, but toward her being, her laugh, her infuriating logic, her biting wit, her exquisite, mortal impermanence.
He pressed his mouth softly to her hair, breathing her in, aching.
***
They tried, in the days that followed, to be ordinary.
If you could call it that.
They sat side by side in the great hall, her head bent over spell diagrams, his long fingers absently tracing idle patterns along her wrist. They trained in the duelling halls, Vivienne flinging telekinetic bursts at him with ferocious precision while he dodged with inhuman speed, grinning, laughing, taunting — until she tackled him flat to the mat, breathless, flushed, triumphant.
They walked the courtyard between classes, drawing stares and smirks from every corner, her practical scowls softened now by reluctant smiles, his cool arrogance sharpened into something tender when he looked only at her.
They endured the competitions, the pranks, the whispered bets behind their backs: how long would she last, how long before the vampire grew bored, how long before the human broke?
Lucian ignored them. For the first time in centuries, he felt — sharp, vivid, intoxicating feeling — and he clung to it with all the silent desperation of a drowning man.
***
One night, under the shadowed arch of the library tower, Lucian reached for her hand, cold fingers closing gently around her wrist. She arched a brow, lips quirking faintly.
“You’re brooding, Vale.”
“I’m thinking,” he murmured, his voice low, edged with something raw.
She smiled softly, touching his cheek with the barest brush of fingertips. “That’s dangerous.”
Lucian caught her hand, turned it, kissed her knuckles — a gesture so old, so painfully courtly, it made her laugh under her breath.
“Marry me,” he said softly.
The words hung in the air between them, sharp and startling.
Vivienne blinked. “What—?”
He cupped her face gently, reverently, his thumb brushing along the edge of her jaw. “Come with me. To my estate, to my family. To my life.” His mouth twisted faintly, self-mocking. “As though you don’t already know the wealth, the lands, the name — the whole school knows, darling — but I would give you more. All of it. I would give you eternity.”
She froze, breath catching.
Lucian closed his eyes briefly, pressing his forehead to hers. “I know it’s selfish. I know it’s dangerous. But the thought of you…” He swallowed hard, voice shaking. “…the thought of you slipping away from me, of your time running out, of your body aging and breaking while I stay…”
He broke off, trembling faintly.
“Lucian…” Vivienne whispered, her voice raw.
His mouth brushed hers, soft, aching, full of centuries of want. “Let me keep you,” he breathed. “Let me make you mine, truly mine.”
Her hands pressed to his chest — not to push him away, not yet, but to feel the impossible stillness of his heart. She was shaking. He was shaking.
They stood together under the library tower, two silhouettes tangled in shadow, one immortal, one fiercely, heartbreakingly mortal, their futures poised on a knife’s edge.
Lucian kissed her again, slowly, hungrily, his hands cradling her like she was the only thing anchoring him to the earth. And as her arms wound tightly around his neck, her body arching into his, he felt it again — the fear, the desperate, blinding terror of losing her — and he knew, with aching certainty, that he would do anything, anything, to keep her at his side.
Even if it meant offering her forever.
Chapter 10: Vivienne’s POV
Graduation night hung heavy over St. Ethelred’s Academy, as if the air itself knew the finality of things. The ivy-wrapped spires carved long, black fingers into a bruised violet sky, moonlight drowning the old stone in ghostly silver. The quad was empty now, banners taken down, laughter fading into the city beyond the walls. Inside the ancient corridors, spells dimmed and wards shivered in their final sweeps, the great clocktower above tolling the hours like a cathedral bell marking the end of childhood.
Vivienne Hartley stood beneath that tower, her arms folded tight around herself, trembling, heart battering her ribs. She had never shaken before — not in exams, not in duels, not even the night her powers had first erupted and nearly shattered a room. But now, here, under the heavy shadow of choice, her body betrayed her.
Lucian was there, of course. He emerged from the dark like a wraith, his long black coat sweeping the ground, his dark hair tousled as always, eyes burning like garnets in the dim. He moved with a predator’s patience, every step measured, every breath unbearably still. When he stopped before her, Vivienne felt the air ripple faintly — a shift, like the world pulling taut.
“You came,” he said softly, voice a silken thread in the hush.
“I came,” she whispered, clutching her arms tighter.
Lucian’s smile was faint, almost sad. “You don’t have to stay, Vivienne. You can walk away. You can live — truly live — a human life. Age, change, leave me behind. You can be free of this.”
Her breath hitched. “And you’d let me?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, pain flickering through his features, beautiful and terrible all at once. “I would let you,” he murmured, “because I love you enough to set you free.”
Something inside her broke, sharp and sudden — a sob, a laugh, a gasp, she couldn’t tell. She reached for him before she could think, her fingers trembling as they closed over his, cool and still.
“I don’t want free,” she breathed, tears stinging her eyes. “I want you.”
Lucian’s eyes snapped open, wide, blazing. His hands trembled as they rose to cradle her face, his thumbs brushing away the tears she hadn’t realised were falling. “Vivienne…”
“I want you to keep me,” she whispered. “I want to stay. I want — forever.”
He groaned, low and guttural, pulling her into him, his mouth crashing onto hers with a ferocity that stole her breath, his body shaking against hers as if centuries were crumbling between them. And when he pulled back, his fangs bared, his eyes wet with something ancient and raw, she tilted her head without hesitation, offering her throat.
“I’m scared,” she whispered, voice breaking.
“So am I,” Lucian breathed, his mouth trembling against her skin. “But I swear, I will love you until the stars fall, Vivienne. I will love you through everything.”
And then — oh God, then — she felt the sharp, exquisite puncture of his fangs sinking into her flesh, the cold burn of it, the jolt of magic, of blood, of life flooding out of her in a rush that left her gasping, arching, clawing at his shoulders.
Her cries echoed — wild, sharp, echoing through the ancient spires of St. Ethelred’s, through the ivy-wrapped halls, through stone and shadow and the heavy, oppressive air steeped with centuries of secrets. She felt herself breaking apart, shattering, dissolving under his mouth, his hands, his impossible, desperate love.
The stars spun overhead; the clocktower tolled once, twice — time collapsing in on itself. Her body burned, froze, trembled, wept. She thought she heard herself scream his name, or maybe it was him whispering hers, again and again, like a litany.
And then — silence.
When Vivienne opened her eyes, she was no longer trembling. She was no longer crying. She was no longer breathing.
Lucian knelt before her, blood staining his mouth, his hands clutching hers, his face awash with terror and awe. She lifted her fingers slowly, marvelling at the unnatural grace, the sharpened sense, the way the world seemed to thrum beneath her skin.
“Lucian,” she whispered, her voice a new, strange music.
He smiled — wide, broken, radiant — and pulled her into his arms, kissing her fiercely, kissing her as if they had all the centuries in the world.
And under the moon, under the great tolling clock, under the watchful, whispering stone of St. Ethelred’s Academy, Vivienne Hartley gave herself over to forever — and, for the first time in her life, did not regret a single thing.
Epilogue
Years later — decades, perhaps centuries, for time had become a fluid, languid thing — St. Ethelred’s Academy still whispered their names. Its ivy-clad towers sighed under the weight of memory, its enchanted stones pulsing faintly with the aftershocks of old magic, old blood, old love. Students passed beneath archways that had once cradled their secrets, whispering of the telekinetic girl who had dared to love the immortal, of the vampire boy who had broken every rule of his cold, ancient lineage to bind himself to her. Professors spoke of them in hushed tones, as cautionary tales or fairy stories, depending on their mood. Ward keepers still touched the ruined clocktower walls with uneasy reverence, where her cries had once echoed, where their pact had been sealed.
But Lucian and Vivienne Vale had long since left the cloisters and the lecture halls, the dusty libraries and trembling wards. They had stepped out into the wide, dark world — and conquered it.
Their London townhouse perched like a shadowed jewel along the Thames, all black stone and glittering windows, its ironwork curling into ornate roses, its gardens dense with night-blooming flowers. But it was only one of many. There was his family estate, a vast, brooding castle in the northern hills, where the Vale lineage had ruled from shadowed halls for a thousand years, its vineyards spreading like dark silk over the countryside. There were the servants, loyal, unaging, their eyes sharp with magic and blood oaths. There were the vast inheritances, the old titles, the wealth that no mortal bank could contain.
And there was Vivienne.
Vivienne, crowned in a thin, delicate tiara of black diamonds, her steel-grey eyes sharper now with immortal light, her body languid and lethal, a woman no longer bounded by mortality or timidity. She moved through Lucian’s world — no, their world — with the cool precision she had always wielded, but now softened by centuries of laughter, of shared nights, of tangled limbs and whispered promises.
Tonight, they danced.
In the vast ballroom of their castle, beneath a chandelier dripping with spectral light, Vivienne let Lucian spin her under his arm, her dark gown sweeping around her legs like smoke. His hands were cool on her waist, his mouth brushing the shell of her ear, his voice curling against her skin.
“You’re still the most infuriating woman I’ve ever known,” he murmured, a grin sharpening the words.
She smirked, tilting her head up to meet his gaze. “And you’re still the most dramatic man I’ve ever endured.”
Lucian swept her closer, their bodies flush, his eyes gleaming wickedly. “Endured, darling? Is that how you describe all those nights on this very floor, when you couldn’t even remember your own name?”
Vivienne laughed, a low, dark sound, curling her arms around his neck. “You’ll have to remind me, Vale.”
And just like that, the teasing dissolved into something hungrier, fiercer.
The dance turned sharper, their movements more chaotic, more intimate. Vivienne shoved him lightly, her telekinesis sparking just enough to tip him off balance; Lucian caught her wrist, pulled her against him, fangs flashing in a wicked grin. She bit his lower lip with a playful snap; he pressed her back against the marble column with a growl, his hands sliding under her gown, lifting, coaxing, claiming.
Their fight was not one of anger but of pleasure — the age-old battle between two lovers who knew every inch, every weakness, every devastating button to press. Vivienne tangled her fingers in his hair, yanking his head back, her mouth tracing the long line of his throat. Lucian’s laugh broke on a gasp as he pinned her hips, lifting her bodily from the ground, whispering her name like a prayer and a curse all at once.
“Do you remember, darling,” he murmured, voice a low, velvet threat, “when you thought you could resist me?”
Vivienne kissed him hard, fierce and biting, pulling back just enough to murmur, breathless, “Do you remember, Vale, when you thought you could control me?”
They tumbled together into laughter, into curses, into kisses that tasted of blood and eternity, crashing into the ancient walls that had seen them through centuries of love and war.
And as dawn crept silver over the distant hills, as the Thames glimmered beneath a pale morning sky, Lucian and Vivienne lay tangled together in the ruined wreck of their ballroom — two immortals, two fools, still desperately, madly in love, still tangled in the same blood oath they had once forged under the shattered clocktower of St. Ethelred’s.
Forever was a very long time.
But neither of them, even after all these years, regretted the bargain.
Bonus Scene: Years Later (Lucian’s POV)
Lucian Vale stood at the edge of the grand supernatural gala, his tall frame half-shadowed by the velvet curtains of the upper balcony, a glass of dark, aged wine — though he barely tasted such mortal things — resting loosely in his hand. Below, the great ballroom shimmered with eldritch glamour: witches in silver-threaded gowns drifted past warlocks wreathed in shadowed power, fae nobles with luminous skin laughed softly in corners, ancient vampires moved with the calculated grace of creatures who had stopped pretending long ago to be part of the living.
But Lucian’s eyes saw none of them.
He saw her.
Vivienne Vale — no longer Vivienne Hartley, no longer the sharp, practical schoolgirl with her nose buried in spellbooks and her telekinesis kept on a tight, trembling leash. No, this was Vivienne as she was meant to be: radiant, ageless, fierce, her steel-grey eyes blazing under a delicate tiara of black diamonds, her dark hair caught up in elegant coils, her gown a whispering marvel of black silk and silver embroidery that clung to every curve of her immortal body. She moved through the crowd with a queen’s poise, graceful and effortless, her laughter slicing through the music like the echo of a long-forgotten bell.
Lucian’s heart — which technically no longer beat, though he swore it always shuddered for her — twisted painfully in his chest. How many centuries had passed? How many kingdoms, how many wars, how many empires had risen and crumbled since that night beneath the clocktower, when she had offered him her mortal throat and he had made her his forever?
And still, when she turned — sensing his gaze, as she always did, as she had for hundreds of years — Lucian felt the world narrow, contract, focus down to the razor-sharp point that was her.
Her smile cut through him like moonlight through dark water. Slow, knowing, devastating. She excused herself gently from the knot of courtiers around her, her gloved fingers brushing their arms with absent charm, and began crossing the vast ballroom toward him — and just like that, just with that look, the centuries collapsed.
Lucian felt, absurdly, like that seventeen-year-old vampire again, half-seduced, half-terrified, wholly hers.
She reached him at last, stepping into his arms with the kind of casual, effortless intimacy that came only from centuries of tangled, passionate, bloody, desperate love. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, pressing his mouth softly to her temple.
“Darling,” he murmured, voice rawer than he intended.
“Lucian,” she breathed back, smiling, pressing a kiss to his throat. “You’re brooding again.”
“I was watching you,” he confessed quietly. “And wondering what fool of a boy thought he was clever enough to capture you.”
She pulled back slightly, cupping his cheek with one cool, gloved hand, her silver eyes shimmering faintly with mischief. “Ah, but you did, Vale. You always did.”
He kissed her then, slow and reverent, tasting the centuries on her lips, feeling the impossible, unbearable tenderness that had never dulled, never dimmed, no matter how many years they had torn through together.
And then, with a sly smile, she turned, beckoning.
Lucian’s breath caught as two figures emerged from the crowd — a girl and a boy, tall, sharp-eyed, their features unmistakably theirs: Vivienne’s fierce jawline, Lucian’s dark, liquid gaze, the easy, dangerous grace of creatures who knew they were something more than mortal.
“Our children,” Vivienne murmured softly, a hint of wonder still in her voice after all these centuries. “Lucian, meet Elara Moon.”
Lucian’s eyes widened slightly as Elara — ageless, laughing Elara, their old schoolmate, now a legend in her own right — swept forward to embrace their daughter, murmuring blessings in an old witch’s tongue, pressing a kiss to the boy’s pale forehead.
Lucian reached for Vivienne’s hand, lacing their fingers together, gripping tightly. His throat tightened with something sharp, something ancient, something that tasted suspiciously like joy twisted through with ache.
“Did you ever think,” he whispered, voice shaking, “that we would have this?”
Vivienne turned, eyes shining, mouth curving into the soft, fierce smile that had undone him for centuries. “I didn’t dare,” she said quietly. “But you gave me forever, Lucian. And I intend to live every moment of it — with you.”
Lucian closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to hers, feeling the endless, unstoppable pulse of time swirl around them. And in that moment, surrounded by the laughter of their children, the echoes of old friendships, the ache of centuries endured and conquered, Lucian Vale realised something he had never quite allowed himself to believe:
Forever was not a curse.
Not with her.
When I began writing Glass Hearts & Blood Oaths, I wanted to create a story that burned — a romance that was sharp and dark and lush, where the ache of longing mattered just as much as the bite of desire. I wanted immortal danger and mortal fragility, but I also wanted fierce, stubborn love: the kind that endures centuries, that weathers betrayals and heartbreak and still whispers, stay with me.
This novella was born from my love of dark romance, paranormal tension, and the haunting beauty of forever — the curse and blessing of immortality. To the readers who love these kinds of stories, I see you. I am you.
If you’re wondering what stories shaped me as an author, what books planted the seeds of this novel in my head long before I even wrote the first word — here’s my personal, heartfelt list. These are the books and worlds I devoured, the characters I ached for, the slow burns, the dangerous heroes, the untouchable heroines who demanded more.
Inspirational + Similar Reads
🖤 A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
Academic settings, vampires, witches, forbidden desire, immortal lovers — this series taught me how sensual and intellectual a paranormal romance can be. It made me want to write magic and blood and scholarship tangled together.
🖤 A Court of Thorns and Roses (especially A Court of Mist and Fury) by Sarah J. Maas
Who doesn’t love the tension, the slowburn, the mate bond energy? Feyre and Rhysand’s journey — all the anger, betrayal, lust, power, and fierce partnership — helped shape how I imagined Vivienne and Lucian’s dynamic.
🖤 The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith / the TV show
Ah, the classic: brooding vampires, high school drama, centuries-old longing. I grew up obsessed with the way vampires carry their past inside them, unable to shake the weight of every love and loss.
🖤 From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout
The addictive mix of steamy fantasy romance, secret identities, and forbidden relationships influenced how I built the stakes between Vivienne and Lucian.
🖤 Crave by Tracy Wolff
Set in a paranormal academy, this series nailed that claustrophobic, intoxicating environment where students are dangerous, secrets lurk in every hallway, and romance feels like a battle.
🖤 The Beautiful by Renée Ahdieh
The lush, gothic atmosphere of vampires in New Orleans — the intoxicating blend of elegance, violence, and forbidden kisses — showed me how setting can become a character itself.
🖤 Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Yes, I’ll say it: Twilight walked so all of us could run. There’s a reason the idea of the brooding, centuries-old vampire obsessed with the one girl who doesn’t fall at his feet remains iconic.
Why I Wrote This For You
I wrote Glass Hearts & Blood Oaths because I wanted to wrap readers in a world where passion is dangerous, where power comes at a price, and where love is both salvation and ruin.
I wanted you to ache, to sweat, to cry, to laugh, to tremble at the tension between Vivienne and Lucian — and I wanted you to believe in them. Believe in their flaws, their hungers, their desperate, trembling desire to hold on to each other across time, across mortality, across every damned thing the world threw at them.
To every reader who picks up this novella: thank you. Thank you for loving dangerous love, messy love, consuming love. Thank you for letting me offer you this dark little piece of my heart.
And if you’ve ever dreamed of someone watching you across the centuries, whispering choose me, stay with me, let me love you forever — this one’s for you.
— Sable Reyes 🖤
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