The Silver Cross: My Angel, My Monster

I spent ten years waiting for a ghost. He was my Angel—the one who rescued me from the trash, taught me to speak, and whispered that I was precious. But on my fifteenth birthday, he vanished into thin air, leaving me with a heart frozen in time and a silver cross that felt like a leaden weight around my neck. I thought the hardest part was living without him. I was wrong. On my twentieth birthday, the Monster arrived. He didn't come with wings; he came with fangs and eyes the color of fresh martyrs' blood. In one night of crimson snow, he tore the life from my veins and replaced it with a hunger that defies God. He turned me into the very thing my Angel fought to protect me from. But as the Monster drags me into the dark aristocracy of Veridian City, he whispers a truth that shatters my soul: “Your Angel didn't leave you, Aurora. He imprisoned you.” Now, I am caught in a lethal game between the savior who loved me with a lie and the predator who broke me to set me free. One holds the key to my past; the other holds the leash to my future. In a world of eternal night, who do you trust when your Angel wears a mask of thorns, and your Monster is the only one telling the truth?