If power had a scent, it would be blood and perfume.
That was the first thing Aerin thought as she stepped fully into the chamber of the Night Court. The room didn't just smell like politics—it pulsed with it. Heavy velvet drapes framed towering stained-glass windows that didn't open to sunlight, but to a view of the moonlit inner courtyard, where pale roses bloomed under shadow. Every detail screamed control: of light, of temperature, of narrative.
Six sets of eyes dissected her the moment she entered. Cassius stood behind her now, his presence a cold pillar at her back.
"Take your seat," he murmured.
She moved forward slowly, deliberately. No stumbles, no hesitations. Her heels clicked once against the black marble floor, then fell silent on the velvet rug beneath the round table. The seventh chair, her chair, was carved from deep wood streaked with veins of silver. A sigil glimmered at its top: the crest of House Velas.
She hadn't seen that emblem since the king had it burned off her family's gates.
They expect you to be meek, a voice in her head whispered. They expect you to flinch.
So she sat with her spine straight and hands relaxed, as if she belonged there.
Let them wonder.
The silver-haired woman to her left was the first to speak. Her voice was smooth, cold, and utterly without warmth.
"So. The human girl speaks for House Velas now."
Cassius didn't flinch, but Aerin felt him stiffen slightly behind her. She turned to the woman, lifted her chin.
"The human woman holds the seat, yes. My name is Aerin Velas. I assume you are?"
A smile bloomed on the woman's lips, slow and sharp as a blade unsheathed. "Lady Vaela of House Korven. Keeper of the Pale Archives and Judge of Lesser Tithes. Your tongue is quick, Velas. I wonder if your mind can keep pace."
"I suppose we'll find out."
A chuckle came from the man two seats down—tall, dark-skinned, with glowing runes across his collarbones. He inclined his head toward Aerin. "I, for one, am intrigued. It has been centuries since a mortal sat among us."
"I thought the Accord required it," Aerin said.
"It does," he replied, "but tradition… interprets requirements."
Cassius finally stepped forward. "You all knew this would come. The bond is sealed, the seat is hers. Challenge it if you wish, but the treaty binds us."
A heavy silence followed. Aerin could feel the unspoken thoughts crackling like a storm around her.
Then the oldest vampire among them, with skin like old stone and eyes like embers, raised a withered hand.
"We will not challenge the seat," he rasped. "But we will test it."
Later, Aerin stood with Cassius in a side hall lined with statues—heroes of past courts, mostly dead, some simply vanished. The cold in the stone seeped into her bones.
"They want me dead, don't they?" she said.
"Some of them."
"And the others?"
"They want to use you."
She nodded, jaw tight. "Honest. I appreciate that."
He turned to her, face unreadable. "Do you regret accepting the bond?"
She looked up at him, searching his features. "Do you?"
Something passed between them—brief, like the flicker of wind through a locked window.
"No," he said.
That night, Aerin couldn't sleep.
Not because of fear—though that was certainly curled somewhere beneath her ribs—but because of the weight of everything she didn't know. The court was a maze, and she had no map. No allies. Just a blood-bound husband whose motives were as opaque as the moon behind the castle's shrouded glass.
So she did what she had always done when fear threatened to swallow her: she moved.
She rose quietly, dressed herself in dark trousers and a high-collared shirt, and slipped from her room.
Thorne was waiting in the corridor.
Of course he was.
"You're not supposed to leave the wing unescorted," he said mildly.
"I'm not a prisoner," she replied.
"No," he said, "you're bait."
She paused.
"That's what they think, anyway," he added, softer. "You're the first human in court in three hundred years. They're watching to see if you break. Or bleed."
"Let them watch."
He studied her for a moment, then tilted his head. "Where would you like to go?"
"The library."
Thorne blinked. "Really?"
"Books don't lie. Or if they do, at least they're consistent about it."
The Night Court's library was not a place of comfort. It was vast, shadowed, and smelled like dust and long-dead languages. Scrolls and tomes lined shelves that reached toward a ceiling lost in gloom. Gargoyle sconces lit with flickering blue flame cast long, uncertain shadows.
"What are you looking for?" Thorne asked as she scanned the rows.
"Everything. Anything. History, court records, blood laws, the Accord."
"Start with the red-bound volumes," he said, pointing. "They're categorized by era. And watch for glyph traps."
"Excuse me?"
"Some books bite."
She read until her eyes ached.
Until the candle burned low.
And in the pages of an old treaty analysis, bound in cracked leather and written in both Vampyric and Old Common, she found something.
A clause.
Tiny. Obscure. Written in ceremonial Latin.
"If the bound blood is awakened, and the pact upheld by oath and will,the mortal may ascend through rite and rite again—becoming not thrall nor meal,but bearer of the second throne."
"What the hell does that mean?" she murmured.
"It means," said a low voice behind her, "you may be more dangerous than anyone realizes."
She spun.
Cassius stood in the shadows near the door, arms crossed.
"You knew?" she asked.
"I suspected."
"Why not tell me?"
"Because you would've run."
Aerin stared at him, heart thudding.
"What am I becoming, Cassius?"
He didn't answer right away. When he stepped into the light, his face was not cold, but solemn.
"You're not just a symbol," he said. "You're a key."
And far beneath the castle's roots, where blood soaked stone and ancient chains still stirred, something began to wake. The pact had been sealed. But the consequences had only just begun.