"Lionel, are you abandoning me for those vampires' lives?" My voice cracked like thin ice beneath winter's weight. The car's leather seats creaked as I turned fully toward him, my nails digging crescent moons into my palms. Outside, Parisian streetlights streaked golden tears across the tinted windows.
He fell abruptly silent, his aristocratic profile carved from moonlight and marble. The dashboard lights painted his knuckles bone-white where they gripped the steering wheel.
Enraged, I wiped my tears with the back of my hand, the salt stinging my chapped lips. "You refuse to suffer alone," I snarled, the words laced with venom, "yet you'd condemn me to an afterlife with strangers?" A bitter laugh escaped me. "What a noble prince you are! Compared to your precious Blood Clan, I must seem utterly insignificant, huh?" The scent of his cologne - bergamot and winter frost - suddenly felt suffocating.
