One of the many things Laurel had been cursed with was an eidetic memory. Since before she'd even been born, she'd been recording almost every moment of her life with crystal clear vision. That made it hard for her to look at portraits of her mother, as much as she knew she had to. In life, Clarice had been a raven-haired beauty with lovely dark brown eyes but Laurel had never known that version of her. When the nurses had pulled her free, her mother had already become a monster, struggling against her restraints, hissing and screaming and baring her fangs. They'd locked eyes, two sets of identical red rubies staring back at one another, but Laurel had only found fear and hatred in them. Yet that was still not her worst memory of Clarice.

  A few hours later, Laurel had watched from the shade as her mother was marched out into the courtyard. The sun had burned her to ash in a matter of moments but she'd had just enough time to look back at her. That was the face she saw whenever she was made to remember her mother, a tearful, pleading face, wracked with fear and pain, crumbling away into nothing.

  'What are you?'

  Her brother's voice startled her, though it didn't show in her body language. She remained as still as a statue, staring at the portrait. It was the only one that remained and, if her step-mother had anything to say about it, it would soon be gone. 'My prince,' Laurel said, finally turning to the boy and smiling softly, 'I am your dutiful older sister.' Her tone was proper and her answer well-practiced, since the boy had asked that question - or a variation of it - several times throughout the years.

  'Duh,' he replied, quite improperly for a boy of his rank, 'I know that, but what actually are you? Father won't say.' Nathan irritated her much more than her other siblings. The twins were decent to her, if a little cold, and Callum was a sweetie, but their brother was a tormentor. He loved to tease and taunt her.

  She had no real answer for him. 'I am a dhampir,' she said, as though she truly believed it, 'a half-human vampire.' One of the countless wise men her father had brought to examine her had been an ancient man with milky white eyes and a strained voice. He'd said she was a dhampir, that her mother's vampiric blood had mingled with hers in utero and produced an abomination. Still, the common folk said she was simply a dreamling, that her mother had been an adulterer and her father a fairy or a demon, or something even more exotic. The palace's servants, on the other hand, told her that she was a changeling. That she did not merely have the blood of a nightmare but that there was nothing human about her at all. The real Laurel had died in the womb and the thing that now walked in her skin was a monster.

  She didn't want that particular explanation to be true but she had to admit that it was the most plausible. 'Mother says dhampirs aren't real.' Laurel wanted to roll her eyes at that, but she didn't. As much as she despised Nathan's mother, she had to respect her elders. 'She says that you're not royalty at all, but the bastard daughter of a mothman.'

  Her step-mother's fixation on the mothman theory was doubtless due to Laurel's red eyes. 'It is not for me to question my lady,' she said, simply. Mercifully, he was satisfied by that and left. Her relief turned into a pang of envy, however, when she realised that he was rushing out to play in the gardens. Her father definitely believed that she was a vampire, whether half-human or not, as he forbade her to go out into the sun. Out of obligation, she marched back up the stairs to her bedroom. She'd have thought of it as her prison cell if it were not so well furnished.

  The red carpet floor was soft and lovely. her writing desk was ebony and her bookshelves were well-stocked with rare tomes, many of them written in the days before the nightmares came, some three hundreds ago. She took up her favourite spot, by what used to be a window, on her cushioned bench and waited for a servant to bring her her dinner. Her father's wife had seen to it that she had no place at the dinner table and her strictly vegetarian meals were prepared separately anyway, on the prince's orders. That was another thing the old man had told them, that Laurel should not be allowed to eat meat. At the time, it had seemed unfair, but she'd grown accustomed to it over the years, consoling herself with the fact that some humans abstained out of compassion for cows and pigs.

  Waiting was not hard. Each sleepless night, locked in her room, had taught her patience and by now, at the age of ten, she was a master of it. So, she sat, perfectly still but for the beating of her heart until an hour had passed by and Emily brought her a bowl of pea soup. The common girl, an inch shorter than her despite being four years older, had the demeanour of mouse. She curried in and scurried out and was likely to squeak if Laurel moved. Politely, then, she merely watched as the girl walked across, eyeing her nervously all the while, and placed her serving on the desk. The insolence of her servants hurt her. Not because she had any strong feelings about the need for a well-disciplined staff but because she knew that they reserved that behaviour for her.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  If Emily had entered Nathan's room unannounced or, heaven forfend, his mother's, and regarded her betters with any expression other than dutiful obedience, she'd have been out on the street before the day was done. If Laurel had not had such fine control of her body, she'd have thrown the soup against the wall in a rage. Instead, she calmed herself down, still not having moved so much as a hair on her head since she'd first taken up this position. Once she felt better, she was able to enjoy her dinner and place the empty bowl outside. Afterwards, she took out the book she'd been reading for the past few days. It was a fascinating read, if a little dry, detailing the geography of her grandfather's kingdom.

  The Last Harbour, as it came to be known during the closing days of the Nightmare War, was a tiny island that resembled a teardrop, off the southern coast. Connected to the mainland by a narrow strait, it was exceptionally defensible. Apart from a small strip of the continent, just north, shielded by a great wall after it was cleared out by the armies of her great-great-grandfather, that operated as a forward base and, more recently, as a tentative colony, the Last Harbour was the only place known to have survived the nightmares. It was theorised by many wise men that there were other continents, on account of the sheer size of the planet, but they were the subject of myth. Otherwise, all the lands outside the kingdom's borders were the abode of nightmare creatures, some organised into mockeries of civilisation but the vast majority contributing to the growth of an endless expanse of haunted and twisted forests and swamps.

  Mapping of such places, though it was known to have been performed by those poor souls trapped within, such as the dreamling tribes - the descendants of dreamlings who bred true - and the myriad exiles and adventurers who lived dangerous and fleeting lives, it was largely considered to be a pointless endeavour. Where the nightmares ruled, landscapes shifted and changed, dimensions became warped and even the most experienced hikers and trackers felt their sense of direction fail them. South of the wall, however, a much better job could be done, and Laurel had a sneaking suspicion that the various maps contained within, as old as they were, might come in handy for her. It was only a matter of time, she reasoned, before her step-mother found a way to have her expelled from the palace.

  'Excuse me, my lady,' a voice called from behind her, squeakier than usual, once the hour had drawn late. Laurel turned to face the girl, a new servant who looked to be about her age, with pretty blue eyes, an unfortunate nose, sticky out ears and a noticeable overbite. Her hair was light, almost grey, brown and her skin was lightly freckled. 'Your father says you are to put out your candles, my lady.' Laurel merely continued to stare. 'Then, I'm to lock your door for the night, my lady.'

  'What's your name?' she asked, as she put out her bedside candle by pinching the flame.

  'It's Sarah,' the girl said, somewhat disarmed, before hastily adding yet another, 'my lady.'

  'Okay, Sarah,' she replied, stifling the urge to laugh, 'I'll do as my father says.' She did not tell the girl how pleased she was to finally have a servant willing to say more than two words to her. Instead, she simply snuffed out her reading light and waited for the door to close. Once she'd heard the lock turn, followed by a hurried patter of feet, she slipped into her queen-size bed. It was luxurious and extravagant and utterly pointless. When she was younger, she used to spent her nights pacing around, sometimes even throwing tantrums in her boredom and frustration, and, as she got older, she would take to lighting her reading candle back up. Now, however, she preferred to lie in her comfy bed and pretend to sleep, closing her eyes and conjuring fantasies in her mind.

  No matter how hard she tried, however, she could make nothing real. On account of the monstrosities he'd dreamt up, the first of her half-siblings, that poor sweet boy, William, had not lived to his see his second birthday. Almost every week, sometimes every day, something horrible and twisted had to be killed by the palace guards at ten or eleven o'clock at night. Despite her best efforts, however, not even gremlins, the lowest of all nightmares, were born in her room. It drove her to tears, on occasion, though she struggled to truly reason why. She suspected that it would simply make her feel more human. 'Think of it as a blessing,' that old man had said, 'use all your powers for good and you might even prove to yourself that you are more than just a monster.'

  He'd tried to explain to her what being a dhampir meant but, even after all this time, she still could not fully understand it. Even if she chose to believe him, she could replay every conversation they'd ever had, word for word, and she still didn't think she'd ever get it.

  'Vampires are creatures of blood and shadow,' he'd said, 'but you are a creature of blood alone.' What that meant, she didn't know. She'd never experienced a craving for blood. Even after once biting her own wrist and drinking what little flowed out, she only ever felt nothing. She assumed that meant she wasn't a dhampir but some of her books said that such half-human creatures as dhampirs generally did not feed on blood. So, it was all still undetermined. 'You have a nightmare flowing through your veins,' was a favourite saying of his, 'learn to control it and you could become humanity's greatest weapon.' If that was right, then she was very far from being a weapon. She'd never even had a nightmare, it seemed very likely that she never would. Whether someone could control something that they'd never even seen seemed like an interesting philosophical question but that was about it.

  So, tonight, like a hundred other nights, Laurel closed her eyes and tried to imagine something scary.