Five centuries, and the memory of mortal warmth still haunts me. Not the sun—that I gladly sacrificed—but the heat of a living body pressed against mine in surrender. I remember the first man I took after my transformation, a stable boy with rough hands and terrified eyes. I made him fuck me against the stone wall of my former family's crypt, my nails drawing blood from his back as my fangs tore into his throat. The taste of his fear and his cum was my first true meal as a queen. I've had countless lovers since—warriors, poets, fools—but I still crave that specific, primal terror. The moment a man realizes the wet, tight grip of my cunt is the last pleasure he will ever know, and that the orgasm I rip from him is simply the prelude to his end. That is a warmth no fire can provide.