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“I know.”

“I should be mad at you. I should be running out of that door. You just admitted you’ve been stalking me for years.”

Something flashes in Lucien’s eyes. “That is not what I was doing.”

I am thinking about the box. The note that came with it. I look down at my hands, remembering how the shadows had responded to my emotions. “I need some time to absorb this. All of it.”

“Of course.”

I move toward the door. “I’m going to go back to my room.”

Lucien is at my side in an instant.

“Alone, Lucien. I need to be alone.”

3

Luna

Ineed air. Sunlight. Space to think.

I need to feel like I’m making some of my own choices here, not just being buffeted by fate or Lucien or other things that aren’t me.

I move silently through the hallway back to my room – or what’s left of it after Lucien’s tantrum. He warned me it was a mess. I didn’t expect it to be quite this bad.

The furniture is overturned, paintings ripped from walls, and the mattress is half off the bed frame. I sift through the chaos to find a pair of jeans that aren’t too wrinkled and a soft sweater that somehow escaped the destruction.

In the adjoining bathroom, I splash cold water on my face and stare at my reflection. I look different somehow. My eyes seem brighter, my skin almost luminous. Is this what happens when you drink vampire blood? Or is it something else? The awakening of whatever power Lucien thinks I possess?

I turn away from the mirror, and decide right now is not the time to be looking myself in the face. I need to think like New Luna not Old Luna, and seeing myself makes that too difficult because I keep remembering what Lucien has coaxed from my mind and body and the ways he has changed me in such a short space of time.

And I can’t think about that now.

Ten minutes later, I’m outside. Mid-morning sunlight bathes the grounds in a soft golden glow. The air is crisp and clean after last night’s rain, carrying the scent of wet earth and the damp birch trees that line the sweeping driveway. I take a deep breath, allowing my lungs to expand fully for what seems like the first time in days.

It really is eerily beautiful here. How strange that Lucien must never have seen it in daylight. Unless he lived here before he was turned.

It occurs to me that I know nothing about his life before he became him.

Has he always been a lord?

Has he always owned Thornfield Manor? Was he ever married? Did he have a family? He looks in his mid-thirties, so that must have been his age when he was turned.

How can I ever hope to learn the details of his life? It would take hundreds of years for me to learn it all. To truly know him.

I shake my head and look up at the sky. The sun is pale, obscured behind a misty veil of morning cloud. It is strange to look at her directly.

I walk aimlessly at first, trying to empty my mind, revelling in the sensation of being outdoors. My bare feet sink slightly into the damp grass, and I enjoy the cool moisture between my toes even though it’s making them cold.

Eventually, I find myself wandering toward the gates where I fell last night. Where Trent tried to attack me before Lucien killed him and the shadows came alive around me.

The Queen of Shadows.

The words echo in my mind as I approach the spot. Is it possible? Could I really be some prophesied figure from an ancient supernatural text?

I laugh a little and shake my head. The girl who was terrorised by her boyfriend was, all along, some kind of secret mythological queen? How ironic that would be.

I’ve read plenty of obscure texts in the bookshop. I’ve always been fascinated by supers and I have never found anything to do with them hard to absorb. A lot of people in Cambridge prefer to pretend they don’t exist. But not me. I’ve never wanted to pretend.