12 Sunlight

"What you did was very dangerous!" Ophelia scolded Eve the moment she walked inside the woman's study. "Didn't I tell you never to wander outside of the room?"

"I did not," Eve calmly said. The rules only said that she could not wander outside of the room. It never said anything about opening the door and immediately closing it after seeing a vampire.

"You—"

In fact, the reason why she did not receive any punishment aside from cleaning the room on her own was that she never really broke any rules that were included in their long list of rules.

"If you're set on dying, don't implicate the other women who came here hoping to be victorious in the courtship."

"Trinity just died," Eve said. "I saw a vampire draining her outside of the room." The woman that she saw that night was none other than Trinity.

"That was unfortunate. However, she was claimed by a vampire during the banquet. She was that vampire's property. Neither the Prince nor the laws of the vampires can hold him responsible for Trinity's accidental passing."

"Accidental passing…" Eve snorted.

"Are you that determined to end your life?" Ophelia asked. "The rules are absolute. Since another vampire has taken a fancy—"

"Is there anything else?" Eve rudely cut her off. She really had no patience for something like this. "I have a room to clean."

Ophelia was visibly shocked by the way Eve was behaving. She stared at her wide-eyed without saying a single word.

"A vampire's bride must be elegant. Poise and—"

"The one who will win the Courtship will become the vampire's bride." Eve cut her off. What poise? What elegance? Those were something that the vampires wanted to see! Seeing a woman struggling to maintain their composure would boost their ego!

Again, Ophelia was silenced by her words. For a moment, they stared at each other. Both of them knew that Eve's words were accurate. The one who would win the Courtship would become the vampire's bride.

"You may go now."

Eve rose from her seat. Then she turned towards the door.

"Please do not wander around," Ophelia said. "The reason why you survived was that the vampire was a noble and they were not allowed inside the room."

Eve turned towards her before she nodded and left the room.

"What did she say?" Willow and the others were quick to surround her when she arrived in the room.

"I was tasked to clean the room for a week," Eve said. That implied that she would need to remain here while they conduct their classes on rules and related subjects.

To be honest, she would prefer to stay in this room for a week than join them.

She was not in the mood to be in the presence of other vampires.

Moreover, she had yet to assess her current body.

If she wanted to live in this place, she needed to become stronger. That meant that she would need to learn sorcery. This body was quite weak, but that was considered normal to humans. What she currently needed was time— time to work on herself.

A week was not that long, but it would suffice.

She could let this body learn more spells to safeguard herself without adverse physical reactions like fainting or vomiting blood.

"What about Trinity?" one of the women asked.

Right now, there were only a total of seven women in the room. There were originally nine, but two women were already taken.

It had not even been a week since this had started, and two of them have already disappeared.

This was the reality of the Night Courtship.

"She was taken out this morning," Eve said. "The Mistress said it was unfortunate."

Another silence enveloped the room. However, it was soon interrupted when the maids arrived to prepare the women for today's lessons.

Since Eve was tasked to clean the room, she would not be joining any lessons and thus, no maids came to help her. After a few minutes, all of them except Eve left the room. Then another maid appeared to hand her the cleaning supplies that she would need.

Seeing this, Eve sighed.

She wished to leave the room, but it might take a few more weeks.

Night Courtship would last for a hundred days. The first few weeks were considered the boring weeks where each woman would learn all about the vampires.

There will be a lot of tests until they reach the 30th day where the women would be subjected to physical training. They would learn how to fight to 'protect' a vampire. Since there was a possibility that they would become a vampire in the future, they would be learning various things like their weak spots, killing a spawn, and many others.

Eve had read everything about this in one of the books in Lucius's library in the past.

She thought it was very interesting.

Now that she had somehow become a part of it, all she could feel was resentment for the vampires who did this to them.

"It was unwise of you to do that."

Eve flinched. She immediately turned. Her eyes widened when she saw Prince Maximilian standing by the door.

Almost immediately, she raised the mop in her hand.

"You—"

"Is there a need to pretend?" He lifted an eyebrow. "We both know something like that could not hurt me. How about utilizing that little fireball you used to threaten me when we first met?"

He was making fun of her.

"Why— Why are you here? A vampire—" There were windows in this room, and while sunlight does not exactly kill a vampire, it should make them very uncomfortable. However, the man standing before her was not showing any signs of discomfort.

Eve felt her heart sink.

He could speak inside her head and now he was standing in front of her in a room full of sunlight.

She still had doubts in the hall but now she was convinced that this man is more powerful than any other vampire she has encountered.

He was stronger than Duke Lucius.