Page 3 of Filthy Rich Vampires: For Eternity

JULIAN

Death was not peaceful. Not that I deserved peace. I’d done terrible things in my life. I deserved worse than the shadow world I found myself in now. Vampires never worried much about heaven or hell or the underworld. Not when we lived millennia. But I’d always secretly thought it might be peaceful, unlike living.

That was before her…before I had a reason to live. Before I knew what I would lose when death claimed me. Now? Eternity stretched before me—a realm of darkness and shadows deprived of any light, even her light.

I might as well be in hell. I’d prefer physical pain or torture to this nothingness. Because the lack of her—the lack of her light, her smile, her existence—that was hell.

I continued into the shadows, searching for signs of anything or anyone, but I was alone.

And then I heard a soft melody in that vacuum of nothingness and saw, for just a moment, a sparkle of light flash in the distance before billowing black clouds swallowed it again.

I opened my mouth to call her name, or I tried to. I tried to look down. I tried to lift my hand. I wasn’t really here. At least, my body wasn’t. I’d become something else. I’d become a memory, but I didn’t care. Something like hope wrapped itself around me. The light. The music.

She was alive.

And nothing mattered if I could cling to that. I could find my peace in this neverendingness and maybe sometimes I would see that light glinting or hear her music to remind me that not all of me was lost. Not if she lived.

Even…even if she had forgotten me. Even if that tether that had tied us together had been sundered.

And so, as I became darkness and shadow, I faded into memories of her.

THEA

“It’s not working.” I resisted the urge to cry as I knelt over Julian’s body. Cold stones bit into my knees, but I barely noticed. There was so much blood, even now after it had stopped seeping from him, his heart no longer pumping it through his veins. It covered my hands and my dress, mixing with my own.

“Listen,” Mariana coaxed. She stood beside me, her shadow falling over his body. Her sister—or, according to them, our sister—Zina, had not left her throne nor spoken since the crown had chosen me.

“I’m trying,” I said through gritted teeth, straining to hear the song she spoke of.

The one I’d sensed while in limbo.

Lysander moved into view, and I lifted my head to meet his eyes. What I saw there twisted like a knife in my stomach. Pity. He didn’t think it would work, and with each minute that passed, I was beginning to agree with him.

“Thea,” he said my name softly, “if you don’t—”

“Out!” Mariana commanded, no hint of softness to her now. “She needs to concentrate.”

“Why?” Zina called from her throne. “He’s not the first vampire to die. He won’t be the last.”

White-hot anger boiled inside me, threatening to unleash itself on her—needing to find an outlet before the rage and guilt ate me alive.

“Perhaps if you helped,” Mariana replied carefully.

I felt my control slip, but before I exploded, there was a commotion in the distance.

“Aurelia.” My companion turned to the cloaked woman. “Make sure no one gets in here. And take him with you.”

My eyes met Lysander’s as Aurelia approached him. He nodded slightly, shadows catching the sharp planes of his face as if to promise he would be nearby and ready to help.

But he couldn’t help me. No one could, it seemed.

When they were gone, Mariana relaxed. “It will be easier now.”

“I doubt it,” I grumbled, because I was running out of what I needed to keep trying. Not magic. Hope. Each second stole more of it from me and soon there would be nothing left at all.

When that happened, I didn’t know what I would do. I’d tried to follow him into death, only to be hauled back here—the real hell.

“Listen for the music,” she said for the hundredth time.

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