Chapter 17 The Hidden Sister
ARIA'S POV
"Wait, what?" I stared at the woman standing in our doorway. "Celeste? Sebastian's sister? But you died eight hundred years ago!"
Sebastian looked like he'd been punched. His face went completely white, and his hand gripped mine so tight it hurt.
The woman—Celeste—smiled sadly. "I know what the history books say. They're wrong."
"This is impossible," Sebastian whispered. But his eyes were filling with tears. "I watched you die. I held you while you bled out in my arms. You told me to live, and then you—" His voice broke.
Celeste stepped into the room made of starlight. She looked exactly like Sebastian—same ice-blue eyes, same dark hair, even the same way of standing. But where Sebastian looked cold and guarded, she looked warm and alive.
"I almost died that night," she said quietly. "The rebels stabbed me fourteen times. But someone saved me. Someone who knew what I really was."
"What you were?" I asked, confused.
She turned to me, and her smile was knowing. "I was Sanguine-blessed, Aria. Just like you. That's why I could heal from wounds that should have killed me. That's why I fell in love with a human healer three hundred years ago. And that's why the vampire court wanted me dead."
Sebastian made a choking sound. "You knew? All this time, you knew about Aria's bloodline?"
"The First Curse told me the moment you two arrived," Celeste admitted. "She's been keeping me prisoner here for centuries, waiting for the right moment to use me. When she sensed your bond, she knew that moment had come."
I felt sick. "Use you how?"
Before Celeste could answer, the First Curse's voice echoed through the starlight walls: "Oh, this is the fun part. Celeste, dear, why don't you tell them about the real reason Sanguine bonds were outlawed?"
Celeste's face went hard. "Because someone discovered that Sanguine healers could do more than share life force with vampires. We could transfer it."
"Transfer it?" Sebastian repeated.
"Take immortality from a vampire and give it to a human," Celeste said. "Or take humanity from a person and give it to a vampire. We could literally switch their natures if we wanted to."
My stomach dropped. "That's what the First Curse wants to do. Switch all vampires and humans."
"But she can't do it alone," Celeste continued. "She needs a Sanguine healer's power to fuel the transformation. And since I've been imprisoned here for three centuries, my power has been building up, trapped with nowhere to go."
"She's going to use you," I whispered.
"She's going to use both of us," Celeste corrected. "Your fresh bond with Sebastian makes you powerful, Aria. Combined with my stored power, we could transform thousands of people at once. Maybe everyone in both worlds."
Sebastian pulled me behind him protectively. "Then we won't let her use you. Either of you."
Celeste's expression turned pitying. "Sebastian, little brother, you still don't understand. I'm not a prisoner anymore. I'm her partner."
The temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees.
"What?" Sebastian breathed.
"I spent three hundred years locked in this place, watching our world tear itself apart," Celeste said, and now her voice was cold. "I watched the vampire court execute every Sanguine healer they could find. I watched them turn the Winter Feast into a murder ritual. I watched them make YOU into a monster, forcing you to kill innocent people for eight centuries."
Tears were running down her face, but her eyes were hard as ice.
"So yes, when the First Curse offered me a deal—help her reset everything, and we could start over with a better world—I took it. Because our current world deserves to burn."
Sebastian looked like she'd stabbed him all over again. "You can't mean that."
"Can't I?" Celeste's power suddenly filled the room, golden and terrible. "You were supposed to die that night with the rest of our family. But you survived, and look what it cost you. Eight hundred years of darkness. Eight hundred years of being forced to murder people. Don't you want it to end?"
"Not like this!" Sebastian shouted. "Not by destroying both worlds!"
"Why not?" Celeste shot back. "What's worth saving? The vampire nobles who made you a killer? The human villages who send their daughters to die? Tell me, Sebastian—what part of this world is worth keeping?"
I stepped forward before I could stop myself. "The parts that are trying to change. People like Elena and Kieran and Roslyn. People who want things to be better."
Celeste looked at me, and for a second, something soft flickered in her eyes. "You really believe that, don't you? You think love can fix everything."
"It fixed Sebastian's curse," I said.
"For how long?" she asked quietly. "You're still mortal, Aria. Even with your bond, you'll age and die while Sebastian lives on. And when you're gone, he'll be alone again. Broken again. Is that really better?"
The question hit me like a slap because I'd been trying not to think about it.
The First Curse materialized beside Celeste, smiling. "Six days left to convince me. But now you know the truth—I'm not your enemy. Your own sister is."
She snapped her fingers, and suddenly I couldn't move. Sebastian couldn't either. We were frozen, helpless.
Celeste walked up to us, tears still streaming down her face. She touched Sebastian's cheek gently, lovingly. "I'm sorry, little brother. But I'm going to save you, even if you hate me for it."
Then she turned to me, and her expression was almost pitying. "The First Curse needs your power, Aria. And in six days, she's going to take it—whether you're willing or not."
She pressed her hand to my forehead, and pain exploded through my skull.
Images flooded my mind: Celeste's memories of the night she almost died, of being saved by the First Curse, of watching Sebastian become a monster for centuries, of making her terrible choice.
And at the very end, one more memory—the face of the human healer Celeste had loved three hundred years ago.
He looked exactly like Sebastian.
The pieces clicked together in my mind just as everything went black.
"Like you were," I said, taking his hand. "For eight hundred years."
Through our bond, I felt his agreement. And beneath it, a terrible realization.
"Aria," he whispered. "If we can't convince her... if she transforms everyone..."
"Then you'll become human and I'll become a vampire," I finished. "And our bond might not survive the change."
We stared at each other in horror. We'd just sacrificed everything to be together—and in six days, we might lose each other anyway.
A knock sounded on the crystallized door.
"One more thing," the First Curse's voice called through. "I should mention—there's someone else here. Another prisoner from the old times. I thought you might want to meet them, since they knew the truth about what happened three centuries ago."
The door opened.
Standing there was a vampire I recognized from ancient portraits in the palace—a woman with Sebastian's eyes.
Sebastian's breath caught. "Celeste?"
"Hello, little brother," his long\-dead twin sister said. "We need to talk about the real reason Sanguine bonds were outlawed. And why I'm not actually dead."