I Was Always the Queen You Failed to See novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: One Hundred Nights
On the hundredth night, I stayed awake until the last candle in the hallway burned out.
I kept count in a small notebook, a tally mark for each night, hidden under my pillow.
One hundred marks.
Six months since we'd returned to the Emberfang Coven, to the stone house in the mountains, where Zenón had inherited his brother's title.
His dead brother had left behind two things: the Lord Vampire's throne, and his widow.
Leocadia Fontanar.
The former Blood Queen, with her dark red hair in a perfect bun and her green dresses, who called me cousin by pact every time we crossed paths in the hallway.
"She's only my Chosen Consort, Evangelina," Zenón had told me the first night, returning from her chambers and taking me in his arms with tenderness. "Once she gives birth to the Coven's heir, I'll bind myself to you with a blood bond."
"Why her?" I'd asked then.
"It's my family's condition. If not, I can't ascend as Lord."
He kissed my forehead.
And I, who had loved him for five years, believed him.
At first, he went once a month.
Then, once a week.
And for the past few days, every night.
That night—the hundredth—he didn't come back.
Dawn broke, and I was still sitting in bed, the notebook on my knees and my eyes dry.
At ten in the morning, a maid knocked on my door.
"You're expected in the Hall of Blood, Lady Soto. Everyone."
I put on the gray dress, the only one I had without embroidery.
And I went down the stairs.
The Hall of Blood was full.
Three hundred vampires standing in a semicircle beneath the chandeliers, and at the far end, on the dais, the two stone thrones of the Lord and the Queen.
Zenón was standing beside the first one.
Tall, brown-haired, in his black suit, with the gray eyes I had loved so much.
Beside him, Leocadia, in an emerald green dress, her hand on her belly.
She was smiling.
"Emberfang Coven," Zenón said, and his deep voice filled the hall. "I have an announcement to make."
I felt something cold slide down my throat.
"This morning, our Chosen Consort has conceived. Within seven moons, the heir of Emberfang will see his first night."
A murmur of celebration rippled through the hall.
Applause.
Someone shouted "Long live the Lord!" and another answered.
Zenón raised his hand.
"And so, fulfilling my family's law, I announce that in three weeks I will bind myself to the Blood Queen, in a blood bond, before all the houses."
More applause.
Leocadia bowed her head with modesty, and for an instant her gaze met mine.
She smiled at me.
A short smile. A cat's smile.
I didn't move a muscle.
No one in the hall knew who I was.
That woman in the gray dress, in the last row, with no title and no name of weight.
Only Zenón looked at me.
One second.
Then he looked away.
I left the hall without anyone stopping me.
I climbed the stairs to the second floor, where the children's room was.
Gedeón was napping, on his back, one arm stretched out and his dark hair stuck to his forehead.
Four years old.
His father's gray eyes, closed.
I sat on the edge of the bed and stroked his hair.
He woke up slowly.
"Mommy?"
"I'm here."
He rubbed his eyes with his fist.
"Did Daddy come yet?"
"No, my love."
"Why doesn't he come?"
I swallowed.
"He's busy."
Gedeón sat up, thoughtful, hugging his stuffed bear.
"Mommy, didn't they say Daddy was going to bind himself to the Blood Queen he loves? Why hasn't he come to take us home yet?"
He had heard it.
He must have heard it from some maid, from the mouth of some cousin, from the voices in the hallway.
Children hear everything.
I took his little face in my hands.
"Because," I said softly, stroking his hair, "the Blood Queen he loves was never your mother."
Gedeón looked at me.
Those gray eyes.
So serious.
"It doesn't matter," I added, smiling. "I'm going to take you home."
"To which home?"
"To one of our own. Just the two of us."
He thought about it for a moment.
Then he nodded, with all the solemnity of his four years.
"Okay."
I dressed him in his blue coat.
And what Zenón never noticed, in five years of living by my side, is that I was the only daughter of a reigning Vampire King, and that I had never in the slightest been interested in the title of Blood Queen of Emberfang.
I took out a piece of paper and a quill.
I wrote three lines.
"Father. It's time. Send me Lisardo."
I tied the envelope to the leg of a messenger raven and released it through the window.
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