There was no other choice. I couldn’t fly to Ravenscry on wings.

Instead, I watched out the window as Eryan guided the carriage out of the town and back onto the road that led into the heart of the Rift. Last night I hadn’t been able to see our surroundings as the sun set.

Now I saw that we were in the mountains. They rose around us, the towering, thickly-forested heights stealing my breath.

I knew from maps that the Rift itself was the land between the mountains: a long, wide valley cleaving between the ranges from north to south. It was the first line of defense against Foria, and as such, the most dangerous hold in Veladar.

As the next hour passed and we entered the wide, shallow bowl of the valley itself, with the road leading almost straight north, the view was obscured. Mist first appeared as creeping fingers around the bases of trees, and then became curtains, the pines reduced to tall shadows.

An hour later, the sound of the horses’ hooves were muffled. The view outside the window was a wall of roiling, ghostly white. It reminded me of mother-of-pearl, almost luminescent.

I gave up on watching the unbroken wall of fog, not a single sight of Bane to be had, and opened my journal. Ellena was staring out the window, and Olwyn was making notations of her own on a densely-worded sheet of paper.

The capped pen rested in my hand. The paper was too lovely to destroy. I might actually cry again if we hit a bump in the road and my first line was smeared or uneven, and then Olwyn might follow through on her threat of poppy.

Yesterday, I’d had my list of achievements composed. I’d been planning to write them on a scrap of the rough, gritty paper the Sisters had access to.

Now my mind was blank.

This journal would be the first chronicle of my thoughts made with ink, and I didn’t want to begin it like… like I was auditioning to be considered valuable as a human being.

I thought it over, occasionally looking out the window for a glimpse of our guardian. If he was out there, it was impossible to see him.

Finally, I forced myself to uncap the pen and applied it to the pristine page, almost cringing at the desecration.

My name is Cirrien, but I would like it if you called me Cirri. I am twenty-five years old. 

There were no bumps in the road; my writing was flawless, a single line stretching across the ivory expanse.

You seem to already know that I love books. Did you read my mind?

The pen itself had to have cost almost as much as the journal, if not more. The Library of the Sisterhood used charcoal sticks. Only the Eldest Sister had access to a more elegant writing utensil, a Serissan glass quill. No one dared touch it.

I have so many questions for you, but as you are not here, I will ask them later. 

For now, I will tell you about myself. 

I speak only one language, but I read in six. Those of us left at the Sisterhood’s mercy are fortunate enough to receive an education until the age of eighteen. I suppose I could’ve found my way elsewhere, but their Library is so grand that I couldn’t bear to leave. The Sisters were kind enough to allow me to continue my studies. 

This was not entirely true. Until yesterday, I had owed them another twenty-five years of servitude in exchange for said education, as well as the cost of feeding and clothing me. Kindness did not factor into it; most of their serving staff were aspiring scholars. Those of us who owed them worked in shifts, splitting our time between labor and studies.

I am now fluent in Veladari, Forian, Serissan, and Low-Country Nord. I’ve also learned to decipher the early Nord wyrd-runes, and have begun my studies in the High Tongue of the Red Epoch, though there are very few documents remaining from that era in the Sisters’ library. Much of the language remains a mystery.

I paused, and when the pause went on for too long, I recapped the pen.

There was a strong possibility I had just insulted my husband, but I couldn’t stand the idea of ripping the page out.

Of course there were almost no documents from the Red Epoch. That was when the humans had risen up against Empress Liliach and burned her keeps, along with as many of her kind as possible, before driving the remaining vampires belowground. The High Tongue, once reserved only for the most powerful ranks of vampires and their bloodwitches, had been lost to the world.

With that in mind, I closed the journal.

The rest of the journey was mind-numbing. The urge to unwrap the book and pick up where I’d left off clawed at me, but I couldn’t abide the thought of reading in this tiny space with Olwyn and Ellena.

Not when I might find Bane superimposed over the beautiful vampire knight in my head. That shouldn’t have happened, and yet, now that I’d entertained the notion… I found that it wouldn’t quite leave, but not in a welcome or pleasurable way.

I pictured him once more, those fangs tearing at my skin, and shuddered.

By the third hour, Ellena had fallen asleep, curled up on the bench where Bane had sat the previous day. Olwyn had moved on to a list that was making her mutter to herself under her breath.

In hour five, I thought I saw a shadow outside the window and sat up straight, wanting to thank Bane for the gift. It was a pine tree, close to the road, claw marks scored across its trunk—higher than any wolf or cougar would be able to reach from the ground.

In hour six, I gave up and slept.

The next thing I knew, a hand was firmly gripping my shoulder.

“Wake up, Cirrien. We’re home.”

Olwyn released me as I stretched, and the sight outside my window was astonishing: the carriage was traveling upwards over a paved path.

We emerged on higher ground, above the sea of mist; the mountains were visible once more. But my eyes went first to the castle looming before me, the keep of Ravenscry.

It was a fortress, built from dark stone. A fairy tale castle in the middle of the forest, but the fairy tale it’d emerged from was a dark one, a tale of claws and bones and blood.

It was a castle built by vampire hands in the days of the Red Epoch. Each of the four keeps—Ravenscry, Wolfspaw, Stagpoint, and Owlhorn—had been made by vampires, captured by rebel humans, and had once more been given into the hands of their original masters. Their art was evident in the pointed arch windows and doorways, the flying buttresses, the ornate embellishments, both delicate yet brutal, inlaid in every surface.

The gates had opened to allow us through to the interior bailey. Eryan halted the carriage, and Wyn unbarred the door with unabashed relief.

She was home… and I was walking into a world outside my purview.

I emerged just after her, stepping onto scrubbed paving stones and clutching my precious books to my chest—and from the high walls, a figure dropped and landed gracefully before me.

The vampire straightened, fangs flashing white against poreless, light brown skin. She wore her dark hair in a tight braid, and bright blue eyes flashed like a cat’s. Her armor was leather, reinforced with dull and pitted iron plating.

“Welcome to Ravenscry, my lady.” The vampire swept a deep bow, no easy feat considering that she bristled with weapons. Her voice was warm, deeply accented with the cheerful, drawn-out vowels of a native easterner. “And as for you, my love… welcome home.”

She grabbed Olwyn, moving faster than my eye could catch, and tipped her back for a deep kiss.

Olwyn was flushed when the vampire released her. She gestured to the woman, one hand around her waist. “Cirrien, this is Commander Visca, the head of Lord Bane’s legions and my wife. She is responsible for your protection; so long as she is in residence, her orders take precedence above all others, save Lord Bane’s.”