For Valentine’s Day, we release a tragic short story of forbidden love and consequences. When a Ventrue Hound is called to carry out his duty and strike the one he loves, the choice between duty and desire becomes impossible.

We hope your Valentine’s Day goes better…

Enjoy the Crimson Valentine!

Crimson Valentine

The scent of roses still clung to my fingertips. Her scent. A bittersweet mockery of love turned to ash. Just hours past, her pale skin blooming with stolen life beneath my touch, my fangs her twisted chalice. Elena, my beguiling songbird, a prodigy of pleasure painted in vibrant sin. A Toreador, and that in itself was a crime she could not conceal from the eyes of our Camarilla brethren. Her kind were notorious for their flagrant disregard, intoxicated with passion they deemed art. Our world of darkness tolerated no such indulgences.

When the whispers filtered back to the Prince, of her excesses, of mortals swooning amidst her unearthly beauty, my own heart thrashed like a caged beast. Love twisted into duty, its claws cutting deep. I was Hound to the Sheriff, and such titles are bought in blood among our kind. I was duty-bound to be her executioner, her final melody a weeping note upon my soul.

They found her amidst a crumbling amphitheatre. No mortal eyes would be witnesses; this was an affair of Kindred law. She turned, and even in that gray pre-dawn, her gaze was a starburst. Not a tremor of fear, only a sad smile, a silent plea I would forever deny. In my hands was not a lover, but a sinner. The Camarilla could not abide those that breached the Masquerade.

It ended quickly, too quickly. In that final dawn, she seemed to radiate light, an ephemeral being facing an iron verdict. With her ashes still clinging to my hands, I write this in the condemned scrawl of the traitorous. For you see, Prince or no Prince, no law dictates where my affections fall. And as the first fingers of sun creep over Athens, I shall not retreat from its fiery judgment. This night, this dawn, Elena and I become one by an even older covenant of love and sacrifice. Perhaps, if even dust holds echoes, we shall find each other in the hereafter, free of a world that would force the hand of the lover to strike the loved.