Page 138 of Fractured Fate

“Now, to my point.” Headmistress Velastra tapped a manicured nail on the arm of her chair. “The media’s display of rabid monsters likely relates to sanguis manie—blood mania. This condition occurs when a Vasirian goes for an extended period without blood. The time varies for each of us, and the younger we are, the shorter the timeframe is. While we need normal food and drinks like you do, we also require blood, or our body shuts down.”

“Shuts down?” She frowned. “Like dying?”

Headmistress Velastra nodded. “That is the end result. We experience several stages before that happens. Tremors, anger, weakness, fatigue… We eventually begin a descent into madness, where we hallucinate and become nothing more than rabid beasts searching for blood. The final stage if we don’t get enough blood to stop the madness before it overtakes our brain is death.”

Charlotte sat back in her seat. The illness sounded terrible. When Aiden lived with her, he seemed fine. She wondered where he fed because there weren’t blood bags anywhere in her apartment—not that she could see at least. Wouldn’t blood bags need proper storage?

“Now, we need to discuss why you’re here tonight.”

Her chest tightened.

The casual conversation lulled her into a false sense of security, allowing her to push aside all the unpleasantness of the night to learn something new about a species she had never heard of before. It aligned with her interests. She loved the obscure and unexplained.

“We believed Blaire was the only human capable of bearing a Korrena mark until the Oracle’s prophecy came to fruition. But now that you’ve—”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I need to ask… What is a Korrena? I heard it mentioned before they brought me here.” Her face screwed up. “Oh, and prophecy? What Oracle? I haven’t heard about that.”

As much as she wanted to ask where Aiden was, and mention he was the one who used the terminology, something told her not to. Dominic said he did something punishable by death. Was he on the run? Was he okay? Her stomach soured as fear for him threatened to take over.

Headmistress Velastra closed her eyes for a moment and then nodded. “I apologize. When I explained everything to Blaire, I threw her to the wolves by thrusting the information at her all at once and left her with a packet of paperwork I composed before her arrival.” She sighed in a way that sounded defeated. It didn’t suit the put-together woman. “Admittedly, that wasn’t the best way to approach the situation, but I was new to it. In this case, I’ve had no time to prepare, so I will do my best to answer your questions. If I go too fast, please interject. No apologies expected.”

Blaire knew all this? Why did she know? Before Charlotte could follow that line of thinking, the headmistress spoke again.

“First, the Oracle is the oldest living Vasirian. She is four hundred years old.”

“Holy crap.” Charlotte blinked repeatedly. “Are you guys immortal like they say vampires are?”

A soft chuckle that seemed out-of-place coming from the reserved woman before her filled the air. “No, that would be a myth humans perpetuated. We live for a very long time. Hundreds of years. Our physical aging slows to allow for such longevity. The students here range from their late teens to their mid-twenties, and it is during this period that the aging process initially decelerates. When we’re in our seventies, we appear as young as someone in their early to mid-thirties, and our aging slows further, allowing us to resemble a forty-year-old human at one hundred.” She paused. “As an example of it in action, I’m seventy-five.”

Charlotte’s mouth gaped. The headmistress didn’t look a day over thirty-five, so seventy-five surprised her.

“Again, the aging process slows until we cease aging upon reaching the age of one hundred and fifty years old, appearing no older than sixty.”

“That’s convenient.”

“What is?”

“Well, if you look like a sixty-year-old human, then you’re near retirement again, right?” At the headmistress’ nod, she added, “Well, you can avoid questions then. I mean, unless you go out in public in ten or twenty years.”

“We have our ways of handling that.”

Charlotte’s lips twisted to the side. She wanted to ask what those ways were, but she already felt overloaded with information, and she knew the headmistress was far from done. Her eyes went big as something dawned on her.

“Oh my god, wait a minute. You said something earlier!”

“Yes?”

“The students here. Are they Vasirian too?”

The soft chuckle slipped again. “That’s correct.”

“So that means…”

The headmistress crossed her legs, waiting Charlotte out, allowing her to come to her own conclusions.

“It’s not just Aiden. The others are Vasirian too. Holy crap! Is Blaire a Vasirian? How can they come out in the sun? Come to think of it, how did Noah do it?”

“Myths, Charlotte. Sun can’t harm us. And yes, your friends—with the exception of Blaire—are Vasirian.”