The sun had already pulled itself below the horizon, leaving the sky bruised and red in its wake.
Roxanne stirred.
Her eyes opened slowly, crystal clear now in a way they had not been before, catching the last of the dying light as they moved across the unfamiliar room. She lay still for a moment, taking inventory of herself, of where she was and how she felt and what she could and could not remember.
"Water."
A glass appeared before she had finished the word. She took it, murmured her thanks and pushed herself upright on the bed, wrapping the sheet around her.
Corrine stood across from her. The warmth Roxanne might have once read in her face was absent. In its place was something measured and deliberate, the look of someone who had decided exactly what they were going to say before they walked into the room.
"I hope you are well enough for a conversation," Corrine said. It was not really a question.
Roxanne met her eyes and nodded once.
Corrine did not ease into it.
"My brother does not love you." She held Roxanne's gaze without apology. "Cassius has no feelings for you. Whatever happened between you, it was not meant to happen. It was a convenient act in a desperate moment, nothing more. A means to keep you alive." A pause, brief and deliberate. "One that I personally believe should never have occurred."
The room was very quiet.
"And if you feel something beginning to grow inside you because of it," Corrine continued, her voice neither cruel nor kind, simply certain, "stop it now. Tend to it before it takes root. Because it will find nothing waiting on the other side. Nothing will come of it. Nothing at all."
She held Roxanne's gaze a moment longer, making sure every word had landed exactly where she intended it to.
Then she waited.
Roxanne was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was steady but there was something fragile living just beneath the surface of it.
"I do not know why you felt the need to say all of that to me." She held Corrine's gaze without flinching. "Perhaps you are afraid that my focus on our plan will flop . Perhaps that is what this is really about." She paused, something tightening in her jaw. "But you have gone too far."
She shifted on the bed, and the effort of it alone betrayed how much her body was still fighting.
"I do not love your brother. Not for a single moment. Whatever happened between us was exactly what you called it. Convenient. Nothing more." Her voice remained even but her eyes had grown glassy, the threat of tears sitting at their edges without falling. "But I can barely remember any of it. I woke up in pain. My entire body feels wrong and unfamiliar to me. I am in distress." Her voice dropped slightly. "And instead of being given a moment to simply breathe, you walked in here and came at me with this."
Corrine's expression shifted almost imperceptibly.
"I am concerned because he has claimed you," she said, quieter now. "It is rare for a wolf to claim twice. Very few ever do. And he does not love you. I do not want you to find yourself trapped inside something that was never meant to hold you."
Roxanne looked at her for a long moment.
When she spoke again, the fragility was gone.
"I know exactly what you were doing, Corrine. You reversed it. You dressed it up as concern but underneath it you believe I am a burden to your brother. A cheap, powerless, low class vampire with nothing to offer, latching onto him to climb somewhere she was never meant to reach." Her voice did not rise. It did not need to. "So let me say this clearly and only once."
She straightened.
"Your brother walked out of that prison because of me. He is moving freely in this world because of me. And I will be the one to return him to the palace and restore what rightfully belongs to him. Not by asking. Not by negotiating. By making it so undeniable that not even the king himself will be able to stand against it."
The silence that followed was absolute.
"I have always respected you, Corrine. I have treated you well and I meant every bit of it." Her eyes held steady. "But what you said today was beneath you. You only see me as a tool and it will not happen again." A pause, quiet and final. "From this point forward, we are tools to each other. Nothing more. That is the arrangement you wanted and that is exactly what you will get."
She looked away, signalling the conversation was over.
A week had passed since Roxanne returned to the abandoned castle.
Seven days, and she had not once set eyes on him. Whether he was avoiding her or somewhere out in the world causing chaos in his usual unhurried way, she could not say. Perhaps both. She had stopped trying to determine which.
What she could not ignore was what was happening to her own body.
Her hair had grown, fuller and longer than it had ever been, falling around her in a way that felt almost deliberate. Her skin had lightened to something luminous, her features sharpened and softened all at once in a way that made her somehow more than she had been before. She had not asked for any of it. But the mirror did not lie and neither did the eyes of everyone around her, unable to look at her only once.
She dressed in the golden gown that had arrived from the king that morning, its fabric catching the light as she moved, and descended the stairs.
Cassius was at the bottom.
He held a cup in one hand, something dark and faintly luminous swirling inside it. He did not greet her. He simply extended it toward her as she reached the last step.
"I prepared this over several days," he said, his voice carrying its usual absence of ceremony. "It will mask the new colour of your eyes and conceal the claim mark." A brief pause. "I have not yet found what is needed to unclaim you fully. That will take more time."
Roxanne looked at him. Not at the cup. At him.
Beneath the composed surface of his face there was something else, small and carefully contained. A curiosity. He was watching to see if his words would land somewhere tender. Waiting to find out if she would flinch or break.
She reached out and took the cup.
She drank the entirety of it in one motion without breaking eye contact.
Then she lowered the cup and met his gaze with something smooth and unbothered.
"I am deeply troubled that you have not found it yet," she said, her tone carrying not a trace of the emotion he had been looking for. "I pray you locate it quickly so that you may unclaim me at once."
She handed the empty cup back, turned and walked to the carriage waiting outside without another word.
Behind her, the new colour of her eyes ;crystal color dissolved quietly into her previous eye color and the claim mark suddenly concealed.