Chapter 1: The Girl who Feared the Night 

Hollowshade village had its myths as a second skin. Travelers who stumbled upon its cobblestones during the day were more likely to leave enchanted, muttering under their breaths of the charming little market square, children's happy screams whizzing past horse-drawn carriages, the toll of the church bell each hour with professional punctuality. But those who stayed longer, beyond twilight, carried away with them a different story.

Since Hollowshade was not a place designed for the evening.

The woods that surrounded it rolled out far and unbroken, a puzzle of oaks and pines that sipped the moon until only shadow remained. The air grew cooler as the sun dipped, and the stillness… the stillness unsettled Evelyn Marlowe the most. It wasn't the soft hush of an ordinary countryside evening. It was the heavy, crushing stillness of a world that was holding its breath.

She had felt that breath her entire life.

Evelyn was twenty now, her hair a deep auburn color she styled back in simple ribbons, her eyes too large, too expressive to cover the constant hint of worry she carried. By day she was ordinary—a weaver's daughter who sold colored cloth at the marketplace and returned home to tend her father. But at night, she was something quite other. A scaredy-cat child. A child who couldn't step foot into the darkness without every nerve within her screaming.

They ridiculed her for it. "The little girl who still clings to her lantern," they would whisper. But Evelyn knew what they didn't. She knew that the myths were not mere bedtime tales intended to frighten children.

She had seen him.

Not a man. Not a shadow. Not a monster she could intellectualize.

She had seen eyes that glowed red in the row of trees when she was fifteen, and that had burned its way into her very bone. Her father told her it was imagination, a deceit of tired eyes. Clara, her best friend, vowed she had mistaken fireflies for something else. But Evelyn never did. For when the eyes met hers, she had felt it: the stillness in the air, the pricking in her throat, the cold certainty that something very ancient was looking at her.

Now, five years later, the fear was unaltered.

That night, while the bell tower rang nine, Evelyn was still making her way through Hollowshade's turning streets. She had lingered too long at Clara's, listening to her friend chat on about her upcoming betrothal, the dowry, what she would wear. It ought to have been comforting, ordinary talk—but it only served to remind Evelyn of all that she was not like the others. Others dreamed of suitors and ballroom dances, Evelyn dreamed of flight. Flight from Hollowshade, from the gossip, from the woods that seemed to whisper her name.

She tightened her shawl and hurried through the square. The lanterns along poles cast scrawny shadows, casting more darkness than light. Shops had shut their doors hours ago, and the square was vacant. The circle of her boots was too loud, and she could not help sneaking glances back every few steps.

The streets were not right. Not vacant—watched.

Her father would scold her if he knew she was out as late as this. "A Marlowe must follow rules," he would say every time. And Hollowshade's rules were simple: In by sundown. Do not wander in the woods. Do not discuss the vanishing.

Missing persons. That was the truth behind the jokes and the booths. Evelyn had heard of them all growing up—field hands, woodsmen, even a priest one time. Vanished without warning. Wolves were the culprits, the elders said. Wolves did not leave hushed rumors of white bodies found deep in the woods, drained of blood. Wolves did not make people cross themselves at night, praying to gods that no longer cared.

She rushed. The weight of the basket tugged at her arm, weighed down with the stale bread Clara had pressed into her hands when she left. "For your father," Clara had whispered. Evelyn had smiled and accepted it, moved by the act, but now the basket slowed her. Every step was a mile. Every shadow hailed her name.

Her breathing had quickened by the time she reached the edge of town. Her cottage waited beyond, alone at the edge where Hollowshade ended and woodland began. She had begged her father to move further in, but rates were cheaper on the fringe, and cash was never plentiful. The Marlowes had been stretched since her mother died twelve years ago.

Evelyn's throat closed at the prospect. Her mother, Celeste Marlowe, was a quiet woman who smiled and comforted and whose laugh could banish storms. She had disappeared unexpectedly, no sickness, no warning—just a disappearance on a winter evening, leaving Evelyn more questions than answers. Her father never talked about it, burying himself in work. But sometimes Evelyn couldn't help but wonder if her mother's death hadn't been the accident everyone made her out to be.

The shadows deepened as she prepared her gate. A chill crawled up her arm, making her shiver under her shawl.

Then she felt it.

Iron. Metallic, biting. Blood.

Her heart skipped a beat. She glanced around the yard, gasp frozen in her throat. There was nothing, at first. The windows sent pale gold through the fire her father had left burning. The fence creaked softly on its posts.

And then she saw him.

A presence in the corner's farthest distance.

Tall. Standing motionless. Too still to be human.

Her lantern light trembled as if it drew back from him. She gripped the handle more tightly, but her hands slipped—the lantern fell to the ground, shattering. The flame hissed and went out.

Darkness engulfed everything.

Her heart raced. She stumbled backward, banging against the wooden fence. And in an instant of time, the shadows disappeared from the fence—

And there, inches from her.

Evelyn was frozen. The world turned upside down, her lungs failing to recall how to breathe.

The man before her wasn't what she had expected. White, his skin was polished like sculpted stone. Dark hair framed a face of malicious beauty and stark lines, a face that belonged to no human. But it was his eyes that captivated her—the same carmine fire she had seen five years ago. Blazing, but not out of control. Caged. Lethal.

Her throat tightened. "Wh-what do you want?"

He tilted his head, looking at her like she was a puzzle. The air around him seemed to grow heavier, pushing against her breast, seeping into her lungs and making her cold.

When he spoke, it was deep, the velvet worked with steel. "You shouldn't be out after dark."

The words are a punch to her solar plexus. She had been preparing for hunger, for threat, for threat of death. Not for warning.

"I—I was just going home," she breathed.

A glimpse of something crossed his eyes, too fast to read. Amusement? Pity?

"Then go," he said. "And remember this—" His voice fell to a deep rumble that clung to her. "The night forgives not the curious."

In the blink of an eye, before she could move, he was gone. One instant he loomed over her, the next the yard was empty.

Evelyn's knees gave way. She clutched the gate, her air heaving in huge gasps, her head spinning. She had seen him. Really seen him. Not a dream. Not a delusion.

The legends were true.

There were vampires in Hollowshade.

And one had just saved her life.

Evelyn pushed open the gate with trembling hands, forcing herself through the yard. Her boots were lead weights, her limbs numb with fear still coursing through her veins. She expected at any moment glowing eyes to appear before her, burning through the night, but the yard remained silent. Too silent.

Her cottage entrance was mere steps away, yet somehow impossibly far away. The gentle glow spilling from the shutters was a guarantee of protection, but this evening even protection hung precariously in the balance.

She had her hands slick with sweat by the time she came to the doorway, fighting with the latch. The door groaned as she pushed it wide, and the familiar scent of smoke and herbs enveloped her.

Her father looked up from his chair by the hearth. Elias Marlowe was a tall man once, broad-shouldered and commanding, but grief and years of hard labor had carved him into something weary. His hair, once dark, was streaked with silver, and his eyes carried shadows as deep as Hollowshade’s woods.

“You’re late,” he said, his voice rough.

Evelyn slammed the door shut behind her, locking it. She pressed against the wood with her back, still shaking with a pounding heart. "I—I know. I'm sorry."

Her father's eyes blazed with fury as he gazed at her pale face. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head too rapidly. "Nothing. I just lost track of time at Clara's."

It was half a falsehood. She could not lie to him. He would not hear her out. He never did.

Her father leaned back in his chair, scowling. "I have already instructed you not to stay out after sundown, Evelyn. You know the rules. Hollowshade is not safe at night."

The words closed her lungs. Not safe to venture out after dark. She ached to yell at him, to have him grasp that she had just stood eyeball to eyeball with the very thing people whispered about behind closed lips. But when she parted her lips to speak, nothing came out.

Elias rubbed his temples. "Drop it, put aside that basket. I won't lecture you anymore tonight. Just. don't make a habit of it."

She put the basket down on the table, her hands still trembling. The bread inside carried the sweet scent of honey and rosemary, but her stomach twisted too tightly to permit hunger. She caught sight of herself in the window—her face pale, eyes too wide. She looked like a scared child.

She whipped away from the window. If she looked too long, she half-hoped she'd glimpse those red eyes looking back through the glass.

Her father interrupted the quiet. "Did you hear? Another farmhand disappeared yesterday. Out by the southern pastures."

Evelyn tensed. "Missing?"

"Aye. He was called Bran. Big fellow, just nineteen. They say he was making his way home from the fields after dark. Never reached there.

Her throat tightened. "Do they think wolves did it?"

Her father's eyes went cloudy. "They always say wolves. But we both know the truth."

The words hung there. He did not say anything more, and Evelyn did not inquire. Her father never admitted he believed the myths, but occasionally, in a moment such as this one, she wondered.

She cleared her throat. “Clara said her parents are forbidding her from leaving the house after dusk now. They’re terrified she’ll be next.”

Elias gave a humorless laugh. “Terrified they’ll lose their daughter, or terrified of scandal?”

Evelyn frowned. “You’re too harsh.”

He didn’t answer, staring instead into the fire. His face softened, and in that light she saw traces of the man he used to be—the man her mother had loved.

Silence stretched. Evelyn shifted uneasily, her body still aching with the memory of the vampire’s presence outside. She could feel the weight of his gaze as if it still lingered, seared into her skin.

She excused herself quickly. “I’ll go to bed.”

Her father nodded absently, not looking away from the flames.

Upstairs, Evelyn slipped into her small room under the eaves. The bed creaked as she sat down, huddling the shawl tighter around her shoulders. The house was warm, safe, homey. But she couldn't stop shaking.

The encounter played itself out in her head time and again. The vampire's face, so white and so absolutely perfect. His voice, dark velvet, commanding her instead of killing her. His eyes, crimson fire that ought to have terrified her—but didn't, not quite.

That was the worst of it.

She had been frightened, yes. Frozen. But underlying the fear, another sensation stirred. A pull. As if something in her very blood recognized him.

She reclined against her pillow, staring up at the ceiling beams until her lids became heavy. Her heart rate decreased, weariness finally bearing down on her. But just as she was drifting off to sleep, one question would not leave her.

He had spared her.

Why?

Sleep was elusive.

Evelyn flung under blankets, the vision of red eyes burned on the blackness behind closed eyes. She shrank from each creak of the wooden beams above. The wind howled past the shutters, and though she comforted herself that it was the forest, her mind refused to believe.

When at last sleep claimed her, it was not rest, but a storm.

She dreamed that she stood again on the border of the forest, lantern raised high, its weak light doing little to keep at bay the shadows. The trees loomed taller than before, their branches grasping like claws, their roots contorted into faces that seemed to snarl. The road beneath her stretched out into infinity, deeper into the darkness.

She attempted to reverse, but her body would not listen. Her legs moved forward as if compelled by the invisible hands of a puppeteer. The air thickened, clinging to her lungs, suffocating her with terror.

Then she saw him.

The shape stepped through the trees, big and unchanging, his bulk heavier than the forest itself. His eyes glowed here, two red embers of fire in the blackness. His face came gradually out of shadow, white and beautifully cruel, just as she had seen before hours.

But in the dream, he spoke.

You can't escape," his voice repeated, deeper, richer, as if many were speaking from his one. "The night has claimed you."

She tried to scream, but no sound came from her throat. She tried to retreat, but the forest shifted with her, the trees bending, the earth sloping, always keeping him beside her.

The vampire approached, each step slow and impossibly fast, until he was standing before her again, towering over her. His fangs glinted, sharper than a knife.

"Do you fear me?" he asked.

Her heart was racing. She ached to scream yes, but her lips betrayed her.

"No."

The one word slipped out of her like a betrayal, soft but unmistakable.

His eyes darkened with something unreadable—approval, amusement, hunger. Then, in a single sweeping motion, he leaned his head. She could sense his cold breath on her neck, the sharp tip of fangs against her flesh—

Evelyn woke up with a gasp, her body drenched in sweat.

The room was dark, the flames below burning long. She set a trembling hand upon her neck. Her skin was unbroken, no wound, no blood. And yet she could still feel it—the otherworldly brush of fangs against her flesh.

Her heart would not calm. She sat frozen, struggling to breathe, reminding herself that it was just a dream. But it had felt so real, so vivid, that she felt as though she had stepped into another reality.

She crept silently to the window, holding back the curtain. The sky lightened, its initial dawn flush creeping into sight. A mist climbed over the fields, pale and ethereal. The instant she saw it, she was reassured. Morning meant security. Morning meant surviving the night.

Then her breath caught.

On the outer edge of the fog, where the field melted away into the fronts of the trees, there was a figure.

Tall. Motionless. Standing.

Her stomach turned to ice. She blinked furiously, thinking it some kind of optical trick of the fog. But by the time her eyes focused, the figure remained. His form was half-hidden in mist, his face a blur, but she recognized.

She recognized.

It was him.

The vampire.

He did not move. He did not need to. His presence seemed to reach her even across the distance, a weight within her chest.

For a torturous, impossible moment, she thought she saw the faintest glimmer of his eyes again—red flame in the mist. The fog shimmered, and he was gone.

Evelyn moved back from the window, her heart thudding against her ribcage.

She was not dreaming. She was not fantasizing this.

He was real. And to make matters worse—wedding bells were seeing her.

Myths of Hollowshade were not just tales. They were lessons.

And Evelyn Marlowe had just entered their midst.

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