Elizabeth's eyes were dark, almost black in the dim emergency lighting, and in them reflected the red sparks that now flickered in Anna's pupils.
Then her lips twitched.
At first it was barely noticeable,the corner of her mouth jerked, as if she wanted to smile but had forgotten how it was done. The smile never came.
Instead, a faint, almost invisible tremor appeared. Not fear, not anger, but something much rarer for her: confusion.
She slowly raised her hand. The movement was smooth, habitually graceful, yet her fingers trembled slightly when she touched her own cheek, as if checking whether her skin was still there. As if she needed to make sure she herself still existed in this new order.
She let out a heavy sigh.
Her breathing became uneven, short, shallow gasps that she immediately tried to steady, but couldn't. Her chest rose and fell too quickly for someone who had controlled every impulse for centuries.
Elizabeth took half a step back, almost imperceptible, but that single step betrayed her more than any scream ever could.
She looked at Anna not with hatred, not with contempt, but with something far more painful, the feeling that the foundation she had stood on for decades had just cracked beneath her feet.
"This… is impossible," she whispered at last. Her voice was quiet, almost soundless, yet it carried a crack, the first real crack in her long life.
She shifted her gaze to Kane,the man on his knees, hollowed out and humiliated. Her lips trembled again.
"She… took his branch," she said, and in those words there was no accusation, only a statement she herself still couldn't accept.
"Just… took it."
Anna turned her head.
Their eyes met.
Elizabeth felt it physically, as though someone had run a cold steel thread down her spine.
She swallowed involuntarily.
"I didn't take it," Anna replied softly, yet every word was audible throughout the hall.
"I saved them from inevitable destruction."
Elizabeth shook her head, the motion sharp, almost convulsive.
"You couldn't have…" she began, but her voice broke.
She took another step back, now clearly visible.
Her hand rose to her throat, an instinctive gesture she hadn't made in centuries. Her fingers touched the skin, as if checking whether her pulse was still there, whether life itself was still there.
"You rewrote the bloodline onto yourself," she whispered.
"You… I don't want to serve you…"
For the first time that evening, a real tremor appeared in her voice, not fear of death, but fear that death might prove more merciful than the new reality.
She looked at Gérard, searching for any support, any hint that he would intervene, that he would declare this a mistake, an illusion, a temporary glitch.
But Gérard remained silent.
And that silence was worse than any verdict.
Elizabeth slowly lowered her hand.
Her shoulders dropped just slightly. She was too old, too strong to break in a single evening.
She took a deep breath, the first real breath in the last few minutes.
"Do you understand what this means?" she asked Anna. The icy certainty was gone from her voice, replaced by tired, almost human curiosity.
"You have just become… their sire. If you are killed, we all die."
Anna looked at her.
"I know," she answered.
Elizabeth was silent for a few more seconds.
Then her lips twitched again, this time into a bitter, almost imperceptible smile.
"Then… this is a very strange decision…"
She turned away slowly, with dignity, and took a step back, dissolving into the crowd that was no longer looking at Kane or Gérard.
They were looking at her.
Elizabeth quietly slipped into the shadows, unwilling to speak with Anna any further.
The silence that followed the storm of Luft was different.
It was not stunned, not confused.
It was structural,as if something imperceptible had shifted in the very foundation of the clan, and every vampire in the hall felt it at the same time, like a light jolt under the ribs. The air grew heavier, denser, as though reality itself was rearranging around a new axis.
Kane still knelt in the middle of the ruined stage. His shoulders trembled, his breathing was ragged and uneven. He no longer tried to stand.
His hands rested on his knees, palms up, fingers twitching slightly, as if he couldn't believe they still belonged to him. The heavy, oppressive aura that had always surrounded him was gone. Now only emptiness emanated from him, cold and scorched.
Anna stood over him.
She was not triumphant. She was not smiling. She simply stood there, calm, carrying a new, almost tangible weight in her posture. In her presence one felt not mere power, but gravity. As if the entire hall was involuntarily leaning toward her, even those who didn't yet understand why.
Roy watched from the half-shadow at the edge of the stage.
He did not move. Only his eyes worked. The balance of power had not simply been disturbed. It had been shattered. Kane's branch was already shifting to Anna. The younger vampires unconsciously began to match their breathing to her rhythm.
Even some of the elders, who had maintained neutrality for decades, now turned their heads toward her, almost imperceptibly.
Roy slowly shifted his gaze to Gérard.
The man stood motionless, like a carved statue of old marble. But his eyes were alive.
He studied Anna attentively, almost greedily, not as a daughter, not as a piece in a game, but as a real, new center of power.
He saw how she held them all on a tight leash.