5
Pink Velvet & Vampire Taming
The black cloak had been mocking me for days.
It hung in the foyer like a monument to everything Darius represented: control, authority, an aesthetic so relentlessly dark it made Wednesday Addams look like a pastel influencer. Every time I passed it—draped over its designated hook near the grand staircase, immaculate and imposing—I felt an irrational urge to set it on fire. Or tie-dye it. Or replace it with something so absurdly cheerful that the vampire crime lord would be forced to acknowledge that color existed in the world.
The idea came to me fully formed while I was eating breakfast alone in the kitchen. Selene had left a bolt of pink velvet in her workshop—leftover from some decorative project she'd abandoned—and I'd been staring at it for two days, wondering what to do with it. The answer arrived with my third cup of coffee: I would make Darius a new cloak.
Not just any cloak. A perfect replica of his beloved black one, identical in cut and shape and dramatic sweep, butrendered in the most aggressively cheerful shade of pastel pink I could find. With black trim, because I wasn't a complete monster. Just a mostly complete one.
It took me the better part of a morning to sew it. I wasn't a skilled seamstress—my previous experience was limited to hemming pants and once attempting to make a Halloween costume that ended up looking like a haunted potato sack—but I was motivated. Every stitch felt like a tiny rebellion. Every seam was a declaration of war against the oppressive gloom that permeated the manor.
When I finished, I held up my creation and grinned. It was perfect. Ridiculous and beautiful and utterly, devastatingly pink.
Now I just had to swap them without getting caught.
The opportunity came that evening. Darius was in a meeting with some shadowy associate in the west wing—I could hear the low rumble of voices through the closed door—and the foyer was empty. I crept down the staircase, my heart pounding with a mixture of terror and glee, and approached the hook where his cloak hung.
Up close, the black fabric was even more impressive. It was made of some material I couldn't identify—soft as silk but heavy, clearly expensive, probably older than my entire bloodline. I lifted it carefully from its hook, half-expecting an alarm to sound or a curse to activate. Nothing happened. The cloak was just a cloak.
I pressed it to my face and inhaled. Cedar. Spice. Something dark and ancient that made my stomach flutter.Focus, Lizzie.I hung the pink replacement on the hook, adjusted the collar so it draped just right, and stepped back to admire my handiwork.
From a distance, it almost looked like his usual cloak. Same shape, same black trim, same dramatic sweep. But thecolor—God, the color wasobscene. Pastel pink velvet, soft and luminous, catching the candlelight like a confectionery nightmare.
I bundled the real cloak against my chest and fled to the kitchen, where I stuffed it into a storage closet beneath a stack of linens. Then I made myself a cup of tea and waited.
The explosion came approximately two hours later.
I was in the sitting room—the one I'd redecorated, now draped in colorful blankets and cheerful pillows—when I heard the footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate. The footsteps of a man who had just discovered that his signature garment had been replaced by something that belonged in a Barbie Dreamhouse.
Darius appeared in the doorway, and I nearly choked on my tea.
He was wearing it. The pink cloak was draped over his broad shoulders, the velvet catching the firelight in soft, rosy waves. It should have looked ridiculous. It should have made him seem less threatening, less imposing, less like the vampire crime lord who could kill me without breaking a sweat.
Instead, he lookedmagnificent.
The pastel pink contrasted with his dark hair and stormy silver eyes in a way that was almost painful to look at. It softened nothing; if anything, it made him seem more dangerous, like a predator who was so secure in his power that he could wear bubblegum velvet and still command the room. The cloak swept the floor as he moved, swirling around him with the same dramatic flair as the black one, and I realized with a jolt of pure, unfiltered want that I had made a terrible miscalculation.
I'd meant to embarrass him. Instead, I'd made him somehowhotter.
"Lizzie." His voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that preceded natural disasters and murder. "Would you care to explain why my cloak is pink?"
I set down my tea with exaggerated care. "I thought it suited you. Brings out your eyes."
His jaw tightened. A muscle ticked in his temple. "Where is my real cloak?"
"That is a real cloak. I made it myself. Same cut, same shape, same black trim. Just... a more cheerful color palette." I smiled sweetly. "You're welcome."
He crossed the room in three long strides, and suddenly he wasright there, looming over me, his silver eyes blazing with barely contained fury. The pink cloak brushed against my knees. I could smell him—cedar and spice and that ancient, intoxicating darkness—and my pulse quickened despite my best efforts to appear unfazed.
"You think this is a game," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "You think you can waltz into my home, rearrange my furniture, steal my belongings, and mock me to my face."
"I'm not mocking you." I rose to my feet, refusing to let him tower over me. It didn't work—he was still a head taller—but the gesture mattered. "I'mimprovingyou. You're so repressed, Darius. Everything about you is dark and controlled and suffocating. When was the last time you let yourself feel something that wasn't anger or duty?"
His eyes flashed. "You know nothing about what I feel."
"Then tell me." I stepped closer, close enough to see the flecks of silver in his irises, the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, the way his lips parted slightly as I invaded his space. "Show me. Or are you too afraid of losing control?"
