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PROLOGUE

V ISIBLE THROUGH THE CANDLELIT WINDOW OF U XLAY U NIVERSITY, A campus as ancient as the creatures it housed, the dean and her vampire sat in private conversation.

They studied a piece of parchment that detailed the town’s layout, and particularly the drop of blood fading near the cathedral. This map was one of the dean’s most favorite treasures, handed down her family bloodline before all such tools were destroyed. She never could forgive such a loss.

Before the blood disappeared into the yellowed page, it blossomed into three letters, spelling the word “mot.” Death.

“Silia Adane is dead,” the dean said, exactly an hour after they’d first sat down.

Her vampire steepled his fingers and responded in Aarac. For a dead language, it possessed an unnatural amount of life, dancing on the tongue like a stirred snake.

“Then it is true. The will of inheritance is in effect.”

The dean pushed her chair back and went to the window. Night pressed onward from the forest, wrapping long fingers around the Arat Towers and their mourning spire statues. Golden light poured from the open-mouthed lion statues perched on the stone walls. Each animal came awake to illuminate the entrance halls and corridors.

“There are two more Adanes left,” she said.

“You would break your promise to her? I thought she was your dear friend.”

The dean’s thick brows knitted. Her vampire liked his honesty with an equal measure of cruelty. Even when she was younger, she disliked this most about him.

Of course she did not wish to break her promise. For weeks, Silia’s blood had run thin on the map. A rare disease even Uxlay couldn’t cure had infected her. The dean had urged Silia to call her two nieces from wherever they hid and entrust one of the girls with the family’s legacy before it was too late. But stubbornness was the plague of all the Adanes.

Silia Adane had sought freedom at incredible cost, selfish even if it was not for herself. As such, fourteen years ago, after the death of her sister and her brother-in-law, Silia had disappeared in the middle of the night with her young twin nieces. The dean had forgiven this betrayal of responsibility for one reason only—grief.

Grief had a way of removing duty by its roots. It was why the dean had chosen it as the first enemy to master. Why she was here, planning the next set of events, instead of by her late friend’s side. There was no faltering now. It was this very mastery that made her run a campus that kept peace among nature’s natural enemies. And peace would not last if the Adanes’ will came into effect.

The dean chose not to tell her vampire she regretted the promise. At the time, it had sounded justified. What did it matter if the girls were never to be contacted? The dean had been certain Silia would settle with her lover and birth a child and the great House Adane’s bloodline would continue. How wrong she’d been. Death was pursuing House Adane with great intensity, and she had no choice but to bring new life into it.

She studied the growing darkness. “We’ll retrieve the girl from Green Heights in a week.”

“What of the other one?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know where she is. It’s said she ran away from their foster home the day she turned eighteen.”

She glanced at him. To see if he was aware of this. It used to unsettle her how little their facial muscles moved, how their coal eyes cut into a stare and never blinked.

“Perhaps one is enough.” Her vampire remained impassive. “Their presence will cause some unpleasantness.”

The dean faced the window. “As all estranged things do.”

“True.” He considered. “I would enjoy having them in my class. Their mother was one of my brightest students.”

The tale of the girls’ parents was legend, but legend had a way of bearing tragedy.

“Do you wish me to collect her?” he asked.

“No, I will go.”

In the window’s reflection, a line marred his mahogany skin.

“You never leave Uxlay.”

“I’m afraid it’s necessary.”

“Why?”

The dean regained her seat, calm as she delivered the next piece of news. “Because Kidan Adane was detained for murder as of twenty-four hours ago.”

Pinpricks of light shone in her vampire’s black eyes. “Whose life did she take?”

“I don’t know yet. It’s quite odd, but Kidan Adane believes her sister did not run away. Instead, she’s convinced a vampire took June Adane. That they brought her here, to the university, against her will.”

Brows lowered, she studied him again. He wasn’t frowning. She marveled at how he’d settled into his old skin, handsome and stony as the day she met him. Her, nineteen. Him, five centuries old. She rubbed her wrinkled hand. Time was a frightening thing.

“I would know if June Adane was here,” he simply said.

“I thought so too. Surely if such a crime had taken place, you would have dealt with it in the appropriate manner.”

“Of course.” He showed no sign of offense at her inquiry. She valued this about him. He rarely took things personally. Nor did he ever lie. But these were strange times, and loyalty was the first casualty of change.

“How do you know all this?” he asked. “Surely having the girls followed and watched goes against the promise.”

Satisfied he’d passed her questioning, the dean gestured to the pile of letters sitting next to a carving of an animal—a small impala with two magnificent horns.

“Kidan Adane writes quite a lot, always begging Uxlay to return her sister. I have tried to find June, but the girl has disappeared. Unfortunately for Kidan, her aunt Silia made Uxlay the birthplace of all her nightmares.”

He moved with the quickness of a shadow caught in light, careful not to touch the glass impala figurine before collecting the letters. The action made the dean’s lips curve slightly. Superstition caused most dranaics to avoid the beautiful antelope, in the same way it convinced students that rubbing a lion statue delivered strength. As the vampire read, his brow furrowed, a crease forming.

“You never responded?” he asked curiously.

“I kept my word.”

He had stood by her side for nearly forty years and still did not understand her promises, nor how she moved the earth to keep them. Skirting around her vows had made their life very difficult.

“What is different now?” he asked.

She studied one of the letters. Kidan’s words slipping into anger and plea in tandem, the sun and moon of a horrible loss.

“Mot sewi yelkal,” she responded in Aarac.

Death frees us from our previous selves.

In a very rare moment, her vampire’s lips lifted at one corner. It never failed to amuse him when his students quoted his lessons back to him. Especially when they lived long enough to understand their true meanings.