VOWS, BLOOD, AND MISTLETOE

Lyra's POV

The needle slides into my arm, and I don't even flinch anymore.

"Third time this month, Lyra." Mr. Garrison, the blood bank manager, doesn't look up from his clipboard. His greasy hair reflects the fluorescent lights as he watches my blood fill the plastic bag. "You know the rules. Two donations maximum."

I know the rules. I also know that Stella's medicine costs three hundred dollars, and our landlord wants two months' rent by Friday, and the electricity bill came stamped with a final notice in angry red letters.

"Please," I whisper. "I need the money."

He finally looks at me, and his smile makes my skin crawl. "You're looking thin, sweetheart. Pale. The vampires prefer their blood from healthy donors." He leans closer, and I smell coffee and cigarettes on his breath. "But I suppose they won't know the difference once it's in a bag, will they?"

My hands curl into fists on the donation chair's armrests. I want to punch that smile off his face. I want to tell him exactly what I think of men who profit off desperate people. But I need the two hundred dollars he'll hand me when this is done.

So I sit still and let him take my blood like I'm nothing more than a juice box with legs.

Twenty minutes later, I'm walking through the snow with cash in my pocket and dizziness in my head. The Hollow—that's what they call our neighborhood—lives up to its name tonight. Empty buildings with boarded windows line both sides of the street. Faded posters peel off brick walls: "REGISTER AS A DONOR TODAY! EARN GOOD MONEY!"

Good money. What a joke.

I pass Old Marcus sitting against a building, his coat wrapped tight against the cold. Bite scars cover every inch of his exposed arms—dozens of them, layered like tree rings. He used to be a registered donor like me. Then the vampires decided his blood tasted "stale," and now he has nothing.

"Spare some change, miss?" he calls out.

I stop. I should keep walking. I need every dollar. But I reach into my pocket and pull out a five-dollar bill.

"God bless you," Marcus says, his fingers shaking as he takes it.

God. I wonder if God even looks at neighborhoods like this anymore.

Further down the street, a sleek black car rolls slowly past—too fancy, too clean for this part of town. Through the tinted windows, I catch a glimpse of pale skin and red eyes. A vampire, hunting for unregistered donors. The kind of people who've gotten so desperate they'll sell their blood illegally for half the price.

A mother yanks her daughter off the sidewalk, pressing them both against a wall until the car passes.

This is my world. This is what it means to be human in Nocturne Heights.

By the time I reach our apartment building, my legs feel like rubber. Three flights of stairs shouldn't be this hard, but I haven't eaten much today. Or yesterday. Stella needs to eat. I can skip meals.

I unlock our door, and warmth hits me—not real warmth from a heater we can't afford to run, but the warmth of Stella's smile.

"You're home!" My thirteen-year-old sister looks up from her math homework, her face glowing in candlelight. We couldn't pay the electricity bill, so candles it is. She doesn't complain. She never complains.

"How was your day, sunshine?" I drop my bag and try to hide how exhausted I am.

"Good! Mrs. Chen gave me an A on my essay about historical vampire-human relations." Stella's eyes sparkle with pride. "She said I could be a teacher someday if I keep working hard."

My heart cracks a little. Stella still believes in futures and dreams and possibilities. I used to believe in those things too, back when Mom was alive and I was in college studying to be a nurse.

That was three years ago. A lifetime ago.

"I'm so proud of you." I ruffle her hair, and she swats my hand away, laughing. "Let me make us some dinner."

Dinner is canned soup heated on our camping stove and stale bread I got half-price at the corner store. We eat sitting on our threadbare couch, Stella chattering about her classes while I mentally calculate how to stretch two hundred dollars across rent, medicine, and food.

It's not enough. It's never enough.

After Stella goes to bed, I sit in the dark and stare at the medical bills piled on our tiny kitchen table. Stella has a rare blood disorder—ironic, really, in a world where blood is currency. Her medication keeps her alive, but it costs a fortune.

I think about Mom. How she worked at the Blackwater estate as a housekeeper. How they said she died in an accident, but I saw the bite marks on her neck. How the vampires paid us just enough money to cover funeral costs and nothing more.

I think about how much I hate this city, this life, this endless cycle of selling pieces of myself just to survive.

I'm so tired.

My eyes drift closed, and I'm nearly asleep when something slides under our door.

A white envelope.

My heart stops.

I know what white envelopes mean. Every donor knows. With shaking hands, I pick it up. The paper is expensive, thick and smooth. The seal stamped on the back shows a crimson spire piercing a crescent moon—the symbol of vampire nobility.

No. No, no, no.

I tear it open, and the words blur in front of my eyes:

You are summoned to the Winter Solstice Celebration at the Crimson Spire. December 21st, 8 PM. Attendance is mandatory. Payment: $1,200.

My breath catches. Twelve hundred dollars. That's four months of Stella's medicine. That's rent and electricity and food and maybe, finally, a chance to catch up.

But donors who go to the Crimson Spire sometimes don't come back.

And the ones who do come back are never the same.

My hands shake so hard the paper crinkles.

Three days. I have three days to decide if I'm willing to walk into a vampire's palace and pray I walk back out.

For Stella, I think, staring at her sleeping form in the other

room.

For Stella, I'd walk into hell itself.