Prologue

Solange

Saturday night

I was a voice inside my own head.

I wasn’t even sure how it had happened. I’d been hearing that strange whisper for weeks. At first I assumed it was my own subconscious. Or it was because I was losing my temper, since it seemed to happen the most when I was upset or annoyed, especially with Mom or Madame Veronique. But at some point I’d stopped recognizing the whispering voice as my own.

And by then it was too late. Frustration, bloodlust, and the need to find Nicholas after he went missing made me push too hard. It made me agree to Constantine’s plan that I become queen instead of my mother, even though I never wanted to be queen. I’d watched my hands reach for the crown, plucking it from her bewildered grasp. I wasn’t sure who was in control, but when the silver circlet touched my head, I definitely knew who wasn’t in control anymore.

Me.

And again, I was too late.

Everything went red, then white. I fell through space. There was no up or down, no gravity, nothing to cling to. I clutched and grasped and found a jagged handhold here, a brittle foothold there, but it wasn’t enough. I was clinging to a cliff that might as well have been made of glass. Everything was too bright. Vertigo tilted through me, and I jerked back into my body, but only for a brief moment.

Just long enough to see Lucy being dragged through the trees, to see Nicholas covered in blood, to see him bite Lucy on my command.

I struggled, but that voice came again, slamming me back to the glass cliff where I couldn’t hold on for a moment longer.

I fell for a long time.

Chapter 1

Lucy

Saturday night

The Drake farmhouse was like the chimpanzee enclosure at the zoo when feeding time was late.

You know, if all the chimpanzees were undead.

And insane.

“Um, hello?” I said, though I was pretty sure even sensitive vampire hearing wouldn’t be able to pick out my voice from the chaos. “Solange and Nicholas are in trouble.”

As expected, no one heard me. They didn’t even notice Kieran standing right beside me.

The kitchen was crammed with dark-haired, fiercely scowling Drakes. Liam was drinking brandy, and beside him, Helena looked hollow with fury. Aunt Hyacinth had finally lifted the veil off her hat, and her scarred cheeks were pale. Uncle Geoffrey was searching through notebooks, and the brothers crowded onto the available ladder-back chairs. My cousin Christabel, newly turned, stood flattened against the wall, wide-eyed. Just a month ago she’d been human and unaware that vampires even existed. Then she’d been kidnapped and killed and turned into one—and the Drakes in this kind of a mood were still scarier than all of that had been. They were untamed, like thunder and lightning in a glass jar. You just knew, sooner or later, the jar would shatter into pieces.

Right now, exploding Drakes were actually low on my list of priorities. Not a good sign. But not exactly surprising, since I’d just been dragged into the woods by my best friend who, while wearing a crown, had ordered my boyfriend to drink my blood. Never mind that he’d been missing and we had no idea what had happened to him.

“Are they always like this?” Christabel stared at me. She was nearest to the door and was the first to notice me.

I swallowed. “No, this is something different.”

“What the hell happened back there?”

“You tell me.”

“Solange put on the crown,” Christabel said. “And then everyone around her flew back into the air. Like . . . magic.”

“Crap.”

“Lucy?” Christabel asked.

“Yeah?”

“Could you not stand so close?”

I slid her a glance. “I haven’t seen you in weeks, not since you got all fangy, and you still won’t hang out with me?”

She flinched. “I can smell the blood under your skin.”

“So?”

“So, it smells good.” Her eyes widened farther, until I was actually worried they might fall right out of her head and plop on the ground. “And it’s freaking me out!”

I edged away as she struggled not to throw up on her own shoes. Poor Christabel. She was so unprepared for the whole vampire thing.

“Hey!” I called out to the others.

“We can’t burn the forest to the ground,” Liam told Helena, his jaw clenching. “We’d never get close enough.”

“A couple of fire arrows ought to keep the damned Chandramaa busy,” she maintained. The Chandramaa were the secret guard who patrolled the encampment where the rare Blood Moon was being held. They basically killed any vampire who showed the slightest aggression. I assumed the only reason Helena wasn’t a pile of ashes was because they were pledged to serve the queen.

But she wasn’t the queen anymore. Solange was.

“We’ll call that Plan B,” Liam said.

“Mom’s right,” Quinn insisted. “We go in fast and hard now, before they have a chance to regroup.”

“It’s tactically sound,” Sebastian agreed quietly.

“Except that we have to split our focus,” Liam pointed out, draining his glass. “Nicholas is still missing. Besides which, Solange gave the order,” he added bleakly. “She’s not a prisoner.”

“But that’s not Solange,” I said. They still hadn’t noticed me, or even Kieran beside me, and he was a vampire hunter for crying out loud. The guards outside knew we were here since they’d let us pass, but Quinn, who was smoldering not three feet away, hadn’t seen me yet.