Chapter 36 Victoria's Personal Message (Mira POV)
My phone buzzes. Unknown number. Video file attachment.
I should delete it immediately. Unknown senders during wartime situations are never good news.
Instead, I open it.
Victoria's face fills the screen, and the familiarity of it hits like a punch to the gut. I've seen that expression a thousand times. Cold. Controlled. The face she wears when delivering difficult truths to subordinates who need correction.
"Hello, Mira." Her voice is exactly as I remember. No warmth, but no overt hostility either. Just clinical observation. "I'm sending this directly because you deserve to hear certain truths without filter or intermediary."
I should close the video. Should delete it and pretend I never saw whatever poison she's about to deliver.
I keep watching.
"You asked me about your father during our last conversation. About how he died. I told you it was a vampire attack when you were six months old. That was partially true. He did die when you were six months old." She pauses, and something that might be satisfaction flickers across her face. "But it wasn't vampires who killed him. It was me."
The words don't process immediately. They just sit there, sounds without meaning.
"Your father was weak," Victoria continues, her tone suggesting she's discussing a failed training exercise rather than murder. "He believed in coexistence. In peace between humans and supernatural beings. He'd been secretly helping vampires escape hunter raids for over a year before I discovered it."
No. This isn't real. Can't be real.
"I gave him opportunities to correct his behavior. Explained that protecting monsters made him complicit in their crimes. Warned him that continued betrayal would have consequences." She leans closer to the camera. "He chose the vampires anyway. Continued undermining legitimate hunter operations. Left me no choice but to eliminate the threat he represented."
My hands are shaking so badly I almost drop the phone.
"I staged it as a vampire attack. Killed him with methods that would leave appropriate evidence, placed the body where it would be found, created a narrative that protected the Order while removing a compromised operative." No remorse. No hesitation. Just matter-of-fact description of murdering her husband. "You were six months old. Too young to remember him. Too young to be damaged by the truth."
"No," I whisper, but the video continues regardless.
"I've spent seventeen years building you into what he refused to be. Strong. Committed. Willing to sacrifice everything for humanity's protection. You were supposed to be the correction of his weakness. The weapon I created from the ashes of his betrayal."
Victoria's expression hardens into something almost resembling disappointment.
"But you're just like him, aren't it? Choosing monsters over your own kind. Betraying the Order for some misguided belief in coexistence. Throwing away everything I built you to be for vampires who will eventually kill you anyway." She stands, moving out of frame for a moment before returning with something in her hand.
A photo. She holds it up to the camera.
It shows a man I don't recognize, holding a baby. Me, presumably. He's smiling at the camera with genuine warmth, and the baby in his arms looks happy.
"That's what weakness looks like," Victoria says, contempt clear in her voice. "A man who chose protecting monsters over protecting his own daughter. Who cared more about saving vampires than building a safe world for his child to grow up in."
She tears the photo in half.
"I won't make his mistake with you, Mira. I won't let sentiment override necessity. If you won't serve the cause, you're just another target. Another compromised operative who needs elimination." The pieces of the photo fall from her hands. "When we come for Silvercrest, I'll be watching specifically for you. And when I find you, I'll do what I should have done months ago. End the bloodline that's produced nothing but traitors and failures."
She moves closer to the camera again, and for the first time I see something like emotion in her eyes. Not love. Not regret. Just cold calculation.
"You had every advantage. The best training. The clearest purpose. A mother who dedicated her entire life to making you strong. And you threw it away for creatures who see you as food or weapon or both." Her voice drops. "Your father died because he was weak. You'll die because you chose to follow his example. The only difference is I won't mourn you the way I mourned him."
The video ends.
I stare at the blank screen, my mind unable to process what I just witnessed. Victoria killed my father. Murdered him when I was six months old. Staged it as a vampire attack. Spent seventeen years lying about it.
Everything I know about my family is fiction. My father wasn't killed protecting me from vampires. He was killed by my mother for protecting vampires. The story I've carried my entire life, the narrative that shaped my training and purpose, is just elaborate cover for domestic murder.
The phone falls from my hands. I'm vaguely aware of standing, of moving, of needing to be anywhere except in this room with that video and those revelations and the crushing weight of knowing my entire existence is built on lies.
I make it to Cain's room purely on autopilot. Knock on his door. Hear him answer but can't process the words.
Then I'm inside and the door is closing and everything I've been holding together just shatters.
"Mira? What happened?" Cain's hands are on my shoulders, steady and grounding. "Are you hurt?"
I can't speak. Can't form words. Just pull out my phone with shaking hands and play the video.
Cain watches it in silence, his expression shifting from confusion to horror to cold rage. When it ends, he's perfectly still in that way very old vampires get when they're controlling violent impulses.
"I'm going to kill her," he says quietly. "Not during the assault. After. When there's time to make it last."
"She murdered my father." The words finally come, broken and raw. "Not vampires. Her. She killed him because he was helping you. Because he believed in coexistence. Because he was good and she couldn't tolerate that."
"Mira..."
"Everything was a lie. His death. My training. My purpose. I was created to replace him. To be what he refused to be. A weapon. A killer. Everything Victoria wanted and he rejected." I'm crying now, unable to stop. "And when I refused too, when I chose the same path he did, she just discarded me. Called me a target. Promised to kill me the same way she killed him."
Cain pulls me against his chest, careful despite the circumstances, and I collapse into him completely. Seventeen years of Victoria's conditioning, seventeen years of believing I understood my family's story, seventeen years of lies, all crashing down simultaneously.
"He tried to protect vampires," I sob into Cain's shirt. "He was good. He believed in peace. And she killed him for it. Killed her own husband because he wouldn't kill you."
"I'm so sorry." Cain's voice is rough with controlled emotion. "Mira, I'm so sorry. Your father deserved better. You deserved better. None of this is fair or right or acceptable."
"She tore up his photo. Just ripped it in half like it meant nothing. Like he meant nothing. Like seventeen years of lying about his death wasn't enough, she had to destroy the evidence he ever existed with genuine kindness."
"She's a monster. Not the supernatural kind. The human kind. The kind that justifies atrocity through ideology and calls it righteousness."
I pull back enough to look at his face, seeing the barely controlled rage there. "She's going to try to kill me during the assault. Personally. She said she'd be watching for me specifically."
"Then we make sure she doesn't find you. Or if she does, we make sure you're protected enough that she can't succeed."
"I don't want to hide. I don't want protection." The grief is shifting now, transmuting into something harder. Anger. "I want to face her. I want her to look at me and see exactly what her lies created. I want her to know that she failed. That I chose my father's path despite never knowing him. That I'm everything she tried to prevent me from being."
"That's dangerous."
"I don't care. She killed my father. She killed three people in Pinehurst. She's planning to kill hundreds more during the assault. She doesn't get to do that without facing consequences."
"Consequences delivered by her seventeen-year-old daughter who's currently sobbing in my arms?"
"Consequences delivered by the Shadowborn she created and couldn't control." I wipe my eyes roughly. "I'm not crying because I'm weak. I'm crying because I'm mourning the father I never got to know and the mother I wish I had. But Cain, once I'm done mourning, I'm going to make sure Victoria answers for what she's done."
"I'll help you. We'll all help you. Victoria doesn't get to murder people and walk away clean."
"No, she doesn't." I lean against him again, needing the solid presence of him. "Tell me about my father. You're old enough that you might have records, histories, something about hunters who helped vampires escape."
"I can research it. See what archives mention. But Mira, even if we find information about him, it won't change what Victoria did."
"No. But it might tell me who he actually was. What he believed. Why he thought coexistence was worth dying for." I pause. "I need to know him. Need to understand the man Victoria murdered. Because right now all I have is her contempt and a torn photograph."
"I'll find everything I can. Rafael's good at archival research. Between us, we'll build a picture of who your father was."