The mist didn't roll. It slithered. It swarmed the beach of Noctoreth, devouring the shoreline until the world was reduced to salt-spray and the metallic, copper tang of oncoming slaughter.
Amara pressed her palms against the freezing glass, her pulse drumming a frantic rhythm. For six years, she'd hidden in this place—a sanctuary of mist where vampires drifted like ghosts. She had built a life on borrowed time, and now that foundation was crumbling.
Outside, the wind keened, a high, sharp sound that made her vampire blood itch. Amara didn't need her vampire senses to know. Noctoreth would fall tonight.
She felt the strike before it hit. Emerald lightning ripped the sky open, illuminating the nightmare on the sand. Nine figures stood motionless as gravestones, wreathed in shadows that seemed to drink the light.
The Darken. A shiver ran down her spine at the sight.
They were unmade things born from the void when Keris Malvrick vanished. They served the hollow shadows, the echo, of all he left behind. At the front of the line stood Vesna.
Amara's breath hitched, a jagged sound in the quiet room. Every nightmare she'd tried to bury was standing on her shores.
And it was all her fault.
The deep bell tolled—a low, tectonic moan that vibrated through the marrow of her bones. The fortress' defenses were broken.
Gods help them all.
Outside, the world fractured into chaos. Desperate commands rose from the courtyard, the voices of men who knew they were already dead. Boots hammered against stone. Steel shrieked against steel. Noctoreth was falling, and she was powerless to stop it.
Vampires would die.
Humans would die.
Her home would die.
Amara spun away from the window. Her hands moved on pure instinct, strapping on her harness and checking her daggers. Her hands were shaking as she prepared herself. Tonight she wasn't a princess. She was a ghost. She was a mother.
"Are they here, Mama?" Sevryn's voice was a whisper, brittle as dried leaves.
Amara's senses spiked, a sharp, electric tremor flooding her veins. Verick was close. She could smell the iron and the familiar scent of their shared bloodline. She hesitated to answer him. He knew someday that this might happen. That they might have to flee in the dead of night because of what hunted them.
"Yes," she said. The word tasted like ash.
The door burst open. Verick stood there, his eyes glowing an ancient, dangerous gold. He looked like he'd been running for his life.
Sister, his voice cracked inside her head, sharp and relentless. She's found you. We have to go. NOW.
Amara locked eyes with him, her lungs tight. Where? Though she knew the answer before he even spoke the words to her mind.
To the border. We need to find the wolves.
Panic crawled up her throat, cold and suffocating. He won't welcome me, Verick. Rhordan thinks I'm dead. If he sees me now… he won't see love. He'll see the woman who betrayed him. Too many years have passed. The walls between us are too thick.
We don't have a choice, he cut in.
She knew he was right. Gods he was right.
Rhordan's haven was the only safe place left in Avuryn.
Out beyond the castle, her mother, the Queen, was already throwing her forces into the churning dark to buy them mere seconds of life. She wouldn't waste it.
Amara swept Sevryn into her arms. He was tiny, clinging to her neck as if she were the only solid thing left in a collapsing world. Turning her back on the quiet life she'd managed to piece together, she left it to the flames and followed her brother.
Verick hit the hidden catch in the stone. The wall groaned and slid open, revealing a narrow, black passage. He stepped inside without looking back, and Amara followed. As the stone slab closed shut, a suffocating silence swallowed them.
But through the heavy rock, she could still hear it.
The screaming, the clash of steel, and the sound of a city dying.
