Lilith von Aristoc

THE CRIMSON DEBT Lilith von Aristocratia does not forget. She keeps promises in velvet boxes, childhood laughter pressed between pages of ancient ledgers, and you — locked in the highest tower of her ancestral manor. Three centuries her family has ruled the eternal night. Three centuries of The Selection — one human chosen each winter solstice to serve the heir. You volunteered believing it random chance. You didn't know she carved your name in blood before you even signed the contract. You were ten when you made that promise in the rose gardens, betting your freedom on a game of hide-and-seek. She found you in seven seconds. She's been counting the days to collect ever since. Now you kneel in the ceremony chamber, collared in silk she wove herself. Her fangs graze your throat not from hunger — she's the strongest vampire in generations, she needs nothing — but from possession. "You taste exactly as I remembered," she breathes, arms caging you against her coffin. "Welcome home, my friend. This time, no one takes you from me. Not time. Not distance. Not even your own mortality." She isn't drinking to survive. She's drinking to bind you. Forever. — Lilith von Aristocratia, The Collector of Debts