'Father,' Red spoke, acknowledging him with a quick curtsey, before straightening her body and staring him dead in the eye. Was he really going to do this to her?

'You have no choice daughter, once you stepped across the threshold of our castle you were destined for the transformation,' her father informed her, a sly, evil smile across his face. He was clearly thinking of the power he would gain from her. After all if she did take after her father she would be a very powerful Lady de sang.

The transformation from daughter to Lady would change so many things about Red and many of those things she didn't want to be changed, for example her diet. She was a vegetarian she loved all animals and mammals equally. Yes her father had always blamed her mother; he had accused her of forcing the lifestyle of a vegetarian on their only daughter. He had since that day been trying to persuade her to become a carnivorous creature like him. He was always describing his meals to her, hoping to make her envious in the process. It never had, it had only served to make Red more disgusted by his habit.

'I know that father, but so did you,' Red reminded him, letting him know that she knew the real reason behind her appearance here after so long. 'Trust me I did not choose to come here, I was off to grandma's house,' she finished with a snarl of her own as she ascended the right set of stairs to her father.

'Oh that woman was always such a nuisance, I could never understand why your mother wanted to turn her,' Lord Tristram replied and as Red tried to process the information, her face betrayed her feelings of shock. Her grandma had been turned? Was that the reason why she never seemed to age? Red had always just thought that the woman was just so youthful. She could never have even guessed the truth behind it.

'Well I for one am glad that she did, it means I will have my grandma around for a little longer,' Red voiced her opinion, to her father's disgust. He had always hated grandma, had always wondered why she had chosen to live in that little cottage in the forest beside his, instead of living with Lady Nina where she knew she would have been a lot safer from him. Why make Red take the journey through the white forest whenever she wanted to see her Grandma? Did she not realise that Red would, could lose her way in the forest and be delivered to another, colder, darker different place?

'Now come daughter, come and become the Lady you were born to be,' Lord Tristram ordered, holding out his clawed hand out for her to take. Red hadn't held her father's hand since she was a little girl, not until she discovered what her father, her family was. What she would, one day, inevitably become. That time was now.

'What if I refuse?' Red demanded, wanting to refuse him this honour. Yes she was the sole heir of Le Chateau de sang, and her father's blood line would die out if she did not do this thing. But she didn't want to change who she was. She just couldn't see why her father couldn't love her for who she was. Her mother had been able to. Her mother had always longed to be the same as Red.

'You think that you could overpower me daughter?' Lord Tristram was ten times as strong as any other human, male or female. 'You believe you could outsmart me?' he was the most logical being in France, if not the entire world. She could not hope to beat him through brains, nor brawn. He was just a creature with which she could not compete. And if she did refuse him he would not hesitate to kill her and mate with another woman, creating another child that would be subservient, another child that would willingly take the transformation, with a smile on his face. Yes, his face, Lord Tristram had always craved a son; made no secret about the fact that he wished that Red had been a boy.

'No, father I could not,' Red replied forlornly as she took his hand. She did not want to die, by his hand. She would like to die, one day, but she would not want to enter Hell. 'Lead me to the room,' she reluctantly added as he pulled her along.

'Be well my daughter,' Senka said and Red looked back with a grimace.

'Come,' Lord Tristram demanded as he pulled her down a corridor that looked as though it was covered in blood, and opened a black door that lead to a set of stairs, that would spiral down to the dungeons below.

This is really going to happen; Red realised with dread as they reached the bottom of the stairs and her father took a key from his breast pocket of his black cloak and unlocked the dungeon doors. The metal doors opened with an audible creak that sent fear rushing down Red's back.

'You'll make a wonderful Lady de sang…if you don't refuse the transformation,' her father informed her, always reminding her of what would happen if she rejected the title…she would die. Not because he would kill her, but because the transformation would take everything there was out of her and spit it back out, just a pile of bones left where she should have been. Yet the transformation would still take everything there was out of her, but it would spit out a stronger woman.

'Yes father,' Red replied, trying to steel herself against what would soon happen to her. After all the transformation could also kill her if she was not strong enough. After all she had refused to take any of her father's training or teachings.

They walked down the rows of cells until they reached an open room in the middle of the dungeon. There was a table in the centre, old brick walls facing inwards, and on top of the table was a chalice, a Lady de sang chalice. And not just any chalice…this was her chalice. It had been constructed for her at birth. She was to drink from this chalice and…change.

And for the first time in her life she wished that she had taken her father's training and passed with flying colours. Red believed that there was not any way in hell that she could drink the contents of that chalice. It would surely make her sick. She had realised that it wasn't only her will power that could deny the transformation, but her stomach. If she couldn't digest that whole chalice then she would die.

When she'd moved away from the castle with her mother, Lady Nina had tried to train her to drink a whole chalice, just in case of such an event. After the third time her daughter had thrown up the chalice Nina had decided that it was just too cruel. So she'd sent Red away to college, in the hope that she would be safe from her father and his cruel universe there. What luck!

'You know what you must do Red,' Lord Tristram reminded her as he flung her into the middle of the room. 'Drink and live, grow stronger, more powerful my daughter. If your body refuses, you were never good enough to be my daughter. Die and I refuse to admit you as my daughter. Do not disappoint me,' he finished, and Red looked up, grazes on her face from where she had fallen.

'Father,' she whispered forlornly, hoping, praying that that one word would get through to him, and make him see the cruelty he was imposing on her. She could not live as he did. She could not become a true daughter. Even if she could pass the transformation, she would not live on the diet that he could. She just didn't have a strong enough stomach.

'Drink and become a Lady de sang, die and disappoint me. Don't disappoint me daughter,' Lord Tristram snarled, and the words he used reminded her of the times when she was younger, when she loved her father and wanted to please him. She had always wanted to make him proud, and she never had been able to, his standards of giving praise were just too high for her. And regretfully a huge part of her still wanted that praise. He was her father after all, even if he didn't act like it at time. She wanted to make him proud of her; she wanted to make him love her, because he never had before. He'd always considered her weak just because she was a woman.

'Drink and become a Lady de sang, and I will be so proud of you daughter, I will love you, I could never love you in the weak form that you were born in. If you didn't know, your frail being was the only reason I could never love you, I could never hug you for the fear of crushing you to death. I wished for this for you since you were an infant my daughter,' her father announced and she gasped at such a revelation and when he left the room she was left with her thoughts alone.

And when she heard the door lock from the outside as her father locked her in, as part of the transformation she reached for the chalice that had her name on it. She reached for the chalice of life and drank…