By the time the room goes quiet again, Seina still doesn’t feel anything close to steady.
The blood helped.
That is the part she hates most.
It didn’t fix the hunger—not fully, not in any way that made her feel safe—but it dulled the sharpest edge of it. The wild, tearing need that had clawed through her the second she woke has settled into something lower now, something watchful and patient and somehow worse for being able to wait. She can still smell Rowan’s blood under his skin if she lets herself focus on it. She can still hear Emerson’s heartbeat from across the room. She can still feel the presence outside the windows like a living thing pressed to the edge of her awareness.
But now, at least, those things are not enough to drag her out of herself.
For the moment.
That feels like the best anyone in the room is willing to hope for.
Emerson is the first one to move. He doesn’t say goodnight, doesn’t offer reassurance, doesn’t do anything that pretends this situation is one he knows how to soften. He just studies Seina one last time with that too-sharp, too-careful gaze of his, then looks at Rowan.
“She’ll need to test daylight before she leaves this room.”
Rowan nods once.
“I know.”
Emerson’s eyes narrow very slightly, not because he disagrees but because he clearly doesn’t enjoy being reminded that Rowan already knows things he hasn’t said out loud yet. Then his attention shifts back to Seina.
“Don’t take it off.”
Seina blinks.
“What.”
Emerson doesn’t answer her. He only gives Rowan one last unreadable look and heads for the door, opening it with the same precise, controlled movement he seems to do everything with.
The door closes softly behind him, and just like that, the room feels smaller.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
Seina is suddenly too aware that it’s only her and Rowan now, only the vampire who turned her and the girl who woke with no heartbeat and too many teeth. The silence that settles after Emerson’s exit isn’t empty. It’s full of everything neither of them has said yet.
Rowan crosses to the chair near the bed, but instead of sitting, he reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulls something out.
At first, Seina only sees the chain.
Dark silver, fine but strong, old enough that the metal has lost any cheap shine it might once have had. Then the pendant swings slightly in the low light, and the stone at its center catches the lamp glow in one deep, dark red flare.
Seina stills.
It’s small enough to fit against the hollow of her throat without drawing much attention, but there’s something weighty about it all the same. Not just physical weight. Presence. The gem itself looks almost black until the light hits it, then red blooms through it like wine held against a candle.
A blood gem.
She knows what it is immediately, though she isn’t sure how much of that comes from memory and how much comes from the new shape of her world.
Rowan steps closer, the chain looped carefully over two fingers.
“This stays on.”
His voice is quieter now than it was earlier. Not softer. Just lower, more controlled, like he is forcing all of himself into calm because there is nothing to be gained from letting the room feel how tightly wound he still is.
Seina’s gaze stays on the gem.
“What is it.”
Rowan looks down at the stone once before answering.
“A blood gem,” he says. “It’ll let you tolerate sunlight.”
The sentence lands in the center of the room and changes the air immediately.
Sunlight.
Until now, Seina had been too caught in the hunger, the stillness inside her chest, the wrongness of waking healed to think far enough ahead to day. To morning. To what happens when the sun rises and finds her like this.
Her throat tightens.
“Let me tolerate it,” she repeats.
Rowan holds her gaze.
“All vampires burn in the sun.”
There it is.
The rule said plainly.
The word vampire sits between them, more solid than it has before, heavier for being attached directly to her now.
Seina looks back down at the gem.
It glows faintly in his hand.
Dark red.
Old.
Important.
She knows that too somehow, though this time she thinks it’s less instinct and more the way Rowan is holding it—carefully, precisely, like something not easily replaced.
“Where did you get it.”
For the first time in several minutes, something almost like dry humor touches the corner of his mouth.
“Does it matter?”
Seina lifts her eyes to his.
“That sounds suspicious.”
“It should.”
A beat passes.
Then, because she knows him well enough to hear the answer already sitting behind the refusal, she says, “You stole it.”
The expression doesn’t leave his face exactly, but it thins.
“I acquired it.”
That makes her stare at him.
Even now. Even like this. Some part of her wants to laugh at that. Another part wants to cry. A third—newer, darker, colder—wants to know who he took it from and whether they bled for it.
The thought unsettles her enough that she looks away first.
“You stole it,” she says again, quieter this time.
Rowan doesn’t deny it.
“No one was using it properly.”
Seina gives him a flat look.
“That is not a moral defense.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
And there he is again. Rowan. Infuriatingly calm in places where calm should not exist. Standing at the side of her bed holding a stolen blood gem like a practical solution to a nightmare.
She studies the pendant again.
There is no softness to it. No decorative flourish. It wasn’t made to be pretty, even if it ends up beautiful anyway. It looks functional. Made with purpose. Built to survive.
A little like the rest of him.
The thought arrives before she can stop it, and she resents that too.
“Do I have a choice.”
Rowan’s expression changes almost imperceptibly at that.
Not because of the question itself.
Because he knows what’s underneath it.
How many choices she didn’t get. How many lines have already been crossed on her behalf before she opened her eyes.
His answer, when it comes, is very careful.
“You can say no.”
Seina looks at him.
Really looks.
And something hot and brittle twists in her chest, not because she believes he’s lying, but because technically having a choice now does not undo the fact that the bigger one was taken from her on a blood-soaked front walk under a broken porch light.
He sees that thought cross her face.
Of course he does.
And still he doesn’t take the words back.
Good, she thinks suddenly, fiercely. Good. Let him stand there and live inside the truth of it.
Her gaze drops to the gem again.
“If I say no, I burn.”
“Yes.”
“If I say yes, I wear a stolen vampire jewel because I can’t survive daylight on my own.”
Rowan’s jaw tightens slightly at on my own, but his voice stays level.
“For now.”
That makes her lift her eyes again.
“For now.”
It’s the kind of phrase that’s supposed to comfort people.
Instead it hooks into her.
Because Rowan does not say things he doesn’t mean. If he says for now, then some part of him is still unsure about what her body will or won’t do.
She narrows her eyes slightly.
“You don’t know if I’ll react like you do.”
His silence lasts one second too long.
That is answer enough.
Seina’s pulse doesn’t kick at the realization because there is no pulse left to do it, but something else shifts in her, some cold electric current moving through the place her fear now lives.
“What aren’t you telling me.”
“I’m telling you exactly what I know.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
No, it isn’t.
They both know that.
The room settles around the silence again.
Not hostile.
Not soft either.
Just honest in the way all the worst moments are.
Finally, Seina exhales a breath she doesn’t need and holds out her hand.
“Give it here.”
Rowan looks at her for a second, then steps closer to the bed and places the chain in her palm.
The instant it touches her skin, she feels the cool weight of the metal and the denser, stranger presence of the stone itself. It isn’t warm. It isn’t alive. But it carries something in it all the same—old blood, old magic, old House craft bound into the center of it until it became more than jewelry and less than a relic.
Her fingers close around it instinctively.
It feels expensive.
Dangerous.
Necessary.
And somehow, almost immediately, humiliating.
“Fantastic,” she murmurs. “Now I have accessories.”
That does earn the faintest shift in Rowan’s expression.
Not amusement exactly.
Something gentler. More tired.
“If sarcasm’s back, you’re stabilizing.”
“That is a deeply annoying thing to say.”
“It’s still accurate.”
Seina looks down at the chain in her hand, then back up at him.
“I don’t know how to put this on without making it feel dramatic.”
Rowan doesn’t answer right away.
Instead, he reaches out his hand.
The gesture is simple.
Wordless.
Not forceful. Not presumptuous.
Just an offer.
Seina hesitates for half a second.
Then gives him the gem.
His fingers brush hers as he takes it, and the contact sends a fine, bright line of awareness through her all over again. Not hunger this time. Something worse. Something more intimate because it is quieter. She hates that she notices it. Hates that her body does too.
Rowan steps closer, lifting the chain carefully.
“Move your hair.”
His voice is low enough now that it almost blends into the room.
Seina obeys before she can stop to resent that, gathering her hair over one shoulder with hands that are steadier than she feels. The back of her neck is cold where the air touches it. She can hear Rowan’s pulse more clearly now that he’s close, can smell him more clearly too, and some part of the hunger lifts its head immediately at the proximity.
She clenches her jaw.
Not now.
His fingers brush the nape of her neck as he brings the chain around.
The touch is brief.
Careful.
And somehow that makes it worse.
Not because it feels romantic. Not exactly. Because it doesn’t. It feels necessary. Protective. Familiar in a way it should not after what he did to save her and what that saving cost. That kind of tenderness has no business existing this soon after a turning.
Yet there it is anyway.
His knuckles ghost once against the side of her throat as he fastens the clasp, and she feels the exact second the gem settles against her skin at the base of her neck.
Cool.
Heavy.
Definite.
Almost like a claim.
That thought shoots through her before she can stop it, and she goes still all over.
Rowan notices.
Of course he does.
But when he steps back, he says nothing about it.
The stone rests just above her collarbone, dark in the lamp light until she shifts and red wakes inside it again for one brief second.
Seina touches it with two fingers.
It looks like something that belongs to another version of her.
Another world.
Another life.
Not this one.
Not the girl who used to stand in kitchen light and roll her eyes at Faylan and feel her own heartbeat without ever having to think about it.
“This is temporary,” Rowan says.
Seina looks up.
He’s watching her in that too-steady way again, as if he’s measuring every reaction and filing it away behind the calm. “Keep it on,” he adds. “Until we know what your body will and won’t do.”
There.
That line again.
Not certainty.
Observation.
Possibility wrapped in caution.
She should ask what he means. Should push harder. Should demand to know why he keeps speaking like she might not follow the rules the rest of them do.
But she is too tired, too raw, too new in her own skin to tear that open yet.
So instead she leans back slowly against the headboard and lets her fingers fall from the gem.
Outside the window, that wild living presence still waits in the dark.
Near.
Watchful.
And now that the chain lies against her throat like a promise she never asked for, Seina can’t shake the terrible rising sense that whatever comes next won’t be about learning how to be a vampire. It will be about learning why she isn’t one in the way she’s supposed to be at all.
The thought lingers as Seina’s fingers fall from the blood gem, the cool weight of it settling against her skin like something that belongs there more than she does.
For a moment, neither of them moves.
Rowan stands at the edge of the bed, watching her with that same careful stillness, and Seina leans back against the headboard, trying to ignore the way everything inside her feels too sharp, too awake, too wrong. The hunger has quieted, but it hasn’t left. The presence outside hasn’t moved. The room hasn’t changed.
She has.
And that change sits between them heavier than anything either of them has said.
Finally, Rowan glances toward the window.
“We should test it before sunrise.”
Seina follows his gaze automatically, though the curtains are still drawn enough that she can’t see the sky beyond them. Only darkness. Only that same distant pull that feels like something waiting just out of reach.
Her stomach twists.
“Test what.”
Rowan looks back at her.
“The gem.”
Of course.
The answer should have been obvious, but the word sunlight still feels unreal in her head, like it belongs to a life she hasn’t caught up to yet.
She pushes herself off the bed slowly.
Again, the movement is too easy.
No stiffness. No hesitation. No reminder that she should be recovering from anything at all. Her body obeys her perfectly, immediately, and that alone is enough to make her pause halfway to standing.
“I don’t like this,” she mutters.
Rowan doesn’t ask what she means.
“I know.”
That might be worse.
Seina straightens fully, her bare feet touching the floor, and for a second she just stands there, waiting for something to go wrong. For her balance to shift. For the world to tilt. For her body to remind her that it isn’t supposed to work like this after what happened.
Nothing does.
She feels… stable.
Too stable.
Her gaze drifts to her reflection again in the mirror across the room. The girl staring back at her is still Seina. Same face. Same shape. Same everything.
Except for the stillness.
Except for the way her eyes hold light differently now.
Except for the fact that she knows, without touching her chest, that nothing inside it is moving.
She looks away first.
“Alright,” she says, more to fill the silence than anything else. “Let’s get this over with.”
Rowan steps toward the window.
Seina follows him, slower this time, not because she needs to be careful but because she wants to be. Because this feels like a line she hasn’t crossed yet. Because everything after this will make things more real than they already are.
The closer she gets to the window, the more she feels it.
Not the sun.
Not yet.
The thing outside.
It’s stronger here.
Closer.
Her body reacts before her thoughts do, a subtle tightening under her skin, awareness sharpening in a way that has nothing to do with sight. She stops a few feet behind Rowan without meaning to.
He notices immediately.
“Still there?”
She nods once.
“Closer,” she says quietly. “Or maybe I just—” She hesitates. “I can feel it better from here.”
Rowan’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t comment on it yet. Instead, he reaches for the curtain and pulls it back just enough to let a thin strip of early light spill into the room.
It isn’t full sunlight.
Not yet.
Just the first hint of dawn breaking at the horizon, pale and soft and deceptively harmless as it stretches across the floor toward them.
Seina freezes.
Every instinct in her body recoils.
It isn’t pain.
Not yet.
But something deeper—something instinctual and ancient—recognizes it as wrong.
Danger.
She takes a step back before she can stop herself.
Rowan’s voice cuts through it.
“It won’t kill you.”
She lets out a short breath.
“That’s a comforting way to say that.”
He glances at her.
“It’s accurate.”
Seina glares at him.
“Your version of reassurance is awful.”
“I’ve been told.”
Despite everything, that almost makes her smile.
Almost.
The light stretches a little farther across the floor.
Closer.
Seina stares at it like it’s something alive.
Something waiting.
Her hand lifts slightly, then stops.
“I’m supposed to just… walk into it.”
“Yes.”
“That feels like a terrible plan.”
“It’s the only one we have right now.”
She looks at him.
There’s no fear in his expression.
No hesitation.
Of course there isn’t. He’s done this before. He knows exactly what it feels like to burn. He knows exactly what this could do to her if the gem fails.
And he’s still standing there telling her to try.
Seina swallows.
Her fingers brush the blood gem at her throat.
Cool.
Steady.
There.
She takes a breath she doesn’t need.
Then another.
Then—
she steps forward.
The first touch of light hits her skin.
She flinches.
Not because it hurts.
Because she expects it to.
She waits.
One second.
Two.
Nothing.
No burning.
No blistering.
No immediate, violent reaction the way Rowan described it.
Just—
warmth.
Faint.
Strange.
Unsettling in its absence of pain.
Her brows knit together.
“That’s it?”
Rowan doesn’t answer immediately.
Seina looks at him.
His expression is different now.
Focused.
Careful.
Watching her like he’s waiting for something to go wrong a second too late.
“How does it feel,” he asks.
She looks back at her hand, still half in the light.
“…fine.”
The word feels wrong coming out of her mouth.
Fine is not what this is supposed to be.
She takes another step forward.
More light spills over her arm now, climbing slowly up her skin.
Still nothing.
No pain.
No burning.
Just that same strange warmth.
Not pleasant.
But not unbearable.
Seina frowns.
“That’s not—” She stops, then tries again. “That’s not how you described it.”
Rowan’s jaw tightens.
“No.”
Emerson’s absence in the room suddenly feels louder.
Seina’s hand curls slightly in the light.
Still nothing.
Her gaze flicks down to the gem at her throat.
It sits there, dark and steady, catching the faintest hint of dawn without reacting at all.
Protecting her.
That’s what it’s supposed to be doing.
That’s what they both think it’s doing.
Seina nods slowly, more to convince herself than him.
“Okay,” she says. “So it works.”
Rowan doesn’t answer.
And for just a second too long, his eyes stay on her skin instead of the gem.
Seina notices.
Of course she does.
“Rowan.”
His gaze lifts to hers.
“What.”
She narrows her eyes slightly.
“Why do you look like that.”
A beat passes.
Then he says, evenly, “Because I’m making sure it holds.”
That sounds reasonable.
It should settle something in her.
It doesn’t.
Because even now—
even with the light touching her skin and not destroying it—
something feels off.
Not wrong enough to panic.
But not right enough to ignore.
Seina steps back out of the light.
The warmth fades instantly.
She exhales slowly.
“I hate this.”
Rowan huffs a quiet breath that might almost be agreement.
“You’ll get used to it.”
Seina looks at him.
“No,” she says. “I don’t think I will.”
And for once—
he doesn’t argue.