Octavia Grigore/Background/1673

Octavia's pale eyes shifted toward me, suddenly sharp and raw, glinting with a chill that was colder than the air around us. A long silence lingered, thick as velvet, heavy as stone. Then, with deliberate care, she placed the glass down, folding her hands in her lap.

"My family survived," she began slowly, the silk of her voice now tinged with bitterness, "because something far worse than death found my father that night."

Her gaze drifted into the distance, as though she could see it unfolding even now, her elegant features sharpened by a deep, simmering anger she'd kept buried for centuries.

"He returned to us, in shadows and blood, wearing an unsettling smile. He had been...claimed… by one of our clan. Tzimisce." She frowned deeply. "Father had always craved power, and something monstrous enough to grant it to him saved him from the peasants’ revolt."

The lantern's amber glow caught the edge of her jaw, tight with tension, and I saw the flicker of something dark, wounded, and dangerous. ”Mad with hunger, he slaughtered some villagers, scared off the rest. His Sire was a Bestial, monstrous sort, and watched from the shadows to see what my father would do. He found my mother and we waited. The manor was stone, but we lost a lot to the fires that night.”

She frowned, deeply. “Unlife did not sit well with my father.”

"He was… obsessed, you see—dark, possessive, cruel. It festered within him. Eventually, the monster he became was no longer content with simply following his sire's cryptic, distant orders. One night, his Sire actually came to visit — I think he wanted to ghoul my mother and I — and I watched as my father tore that ancient creature apart. He sank his teeth into his sire's veins, drank hungrily, and stole power that did not belong to him. Diablerie, they call it. The crime stained his soul—but I doubt he cared. He laughed, triumphant, covered in blood like some manner of demon."

Her voice dropped, dangerously low now, the veneer of careful control thinning.

"And my mother, my beautiful, strong mother—she screamed, aghast. She begged him, pleaded with him to spare me from whatever hell he'd forged in his twisted heart. But he was beyond listening. Something inside him broke. He tore into her as though she were nothing, flesh and bone shattered beneath his rage. I...couldn't move, couldn't scream. I could only watch, numb, as the last flicker of life drained from her eyes, forever."

Octavia paused, visibly gathering herself, and when she continued her voice was laced with a quiet fury, cold as ice, sharp as steel.

"When he'd calmed from his fit of frenzy, he turned to me, his eyes filled with a fevered madness. He reached for me, whispering that I was his Little Blossom—'Mine forever,' he said, his lips still slick with my mother's blood. I fought him, clawing, screaming, but he only laughed, holding me tight, as though my resistance delighted him."

Her fingers clenched slowly, deliberately, as though gripping an invisible throat.

"And then came pain," she whispered, voice breaking only slightly—a tremor beneath layers of centuries-old composure. "His fangs sank deep, tearing into my neck, not gently, not lovingly, but with the ruthless hunger of possession. The world faded to shadows, agony flooded every nerve, and death found me at last—but refused to keep me."

She exhaled slowly, the night around us impossibly still, as though the world itself had paused to listen.

"I awoke forever changed. He'd stolen from me even my death, binding me eternally to him through blood and darkness. My father smiled over me, proud of his abomination. 'Now,' he whispered, 'you'll never leave me.' But he was wrong."

Octavia turned, her glacial eyes suddenly piercing, fierce and unflinching.

"I've hated him from that moment. I still do." She spoke quietly, then paused, leaning in with deliberate intensity, "no… hate is not strong enough a word. I despise him. And that, dear one, is how my family survived—by becoming something far worse than the monsters we feared."

The veranda fell into silence once more, and the wind whispered through the vineyards like a ghost.