"Long enough for you to rest," Boarstaff replied, signaling the guards to withdraw. "Leave us."
"Warchief, he's been without blood for too long," The guard's words died at whatever he saw in his leader's face.
"Do you question my ability to handle what I've allowed to stay in our home?"
The guards withdrew, their footsteps echoing up the spiral stairs carved into living wood.
Boarstaff descended the remaining steps into the sacred chamber. Sebastian tracked every movement through sound, through scent, through the vibration of boots against the Heart Tree's living floor. Without mechanical enhancement, every sensation felt rawer. More immediate. More overwhelming.
"How many components have failed?" Boarstaff asked quietly.
Sebastian tried to laugh, but the sound emerged closer to a growl. "You can't tell? By how much is pooled under my back?" Another surge of hunger hit as Boarstaff drew closer. "By how little control remains?"
"I can tell plenty." A pause, measured and careful. "The question is whether you can."
The words struck deeper than they should. Without artificial regulation, everything struck deeper. Everything felt more real. Moredangerous. More honest than his father's improvements had ever meant him to be.
"The chambers..." He had to pause, had to fight against fangs that descended further at Boarstaff's proximity. "They respond to intention. To need. To-,"
"To hunger." Boarstaff walked closer, each step measured and precise. "Show me you can control it. That there's still something of nobility beneath all that desperation."
The scent of blood cut through Sebastian's thoughts as Boarstaff drew his knife. Sharp. Sudden. Real.
The world narrowed to that single point of scent. Sebastian's remaining systems seized as pure need overrode everything else, pride, strategy, even self-preservation. His body strained against the wards, fighting magic older than mechanical control.
"Still," Boarstaff commanded. "Prove you can choose to be still."
Sebastian wanted to snarl that a predator didn't have to prove anything to prey. But that wasn't entirely true anymore, was it? Not here. Not with ancient magic holding him down while Boarstaff stood over him with blood, blade, and the power to deny what he desperately needed.
The effort to remain motionless sent yellow mist rising in curling wisps. Each heartbeat pounded in his ears. Each breath drew that maddening scent deeper into his awareness.
"Good." Boarstaff knelt beside Sebastian with fluid movement. Close enough to strike. Close enough to feed.
The knife pressed against Sebastian's throat, drawing his attention from the blood already welling on Boarstaff's wrist.
"Choose," Boarstaff said quietly. A predator's understanding of limits. Of control. Of exactly what the moment meant for them both. "Show me you can choose something beyond pure need."
Sebastian forced his next words past fangs that felt like betrayal in his mouth. "And if I can't?"
"Then we find out if these chambers can hold you through true blood madness." The knife pressed deeper, making vapor rise in patterns of pure desperation. "Choose."
Sebastian's remaining organic parts screamed to strike, to tear, to feed without thought or permission. The scent of blood filled his worldwith overwhelming intensity. Boarstaff's heartbeat thundered in his ears, strong and steady and maddening in its proximity.
The blood's scent grew stronger, closer. Through the haze of hunger, Sebastian realized Boarstaff was offering his wrist. Giving him the chance to prove he could feed with something resembling control.
Instead, Sebastian's fangs struck for Boarstaff's throat.
The warchief moved like water. One moment within reach, the next beyond it, blade drawing a line of pain across Sebastian's chest that made vapor rise from his collar in patterns of fury and need.
"There it is," Boarstaff said, dark satisfaction in his voice. "There's what you truly are beneath all that fake control." The knife pressed deeper, drawing more blood that made hunger surge past any possibility of restraint. "Show us again. Show me exactly what I'm dealing with."
Sebastian's laugh emerged as something closer to a snarl. "You offered me a choice. I made it."
"You did." Boarstaff moved with predator's grace of his own, circling just beyond the wards' barrier. "And now we all know exactly where we stand. What you'll always be, no matter how gentle the handling."
The Heart Tree's magic surged stronger, responding to Sebastian's failed lunge with ancient power that remembered exactly what vampires were. What they would always be, beneath any pretense of civilization.
Through the pain of the wards' heightened restraint, the thud of boots came from the chamber's threshold. The guards had returned at the sound of struggle.
