Tzanith and I both moved in a flash, but the vampires were faster. Two of them accosted us at the nearest exit, the corpse-skinned elf and the noblewoman with the sagging jaw. The elf blocked the exit while limp-jaw came up behind.

  I went back to back with the nymph. “Seems like the party’s over,” I quipped, a bead of sweat traveling down my temple. “How good are you in a fight?”

  “I am the daughter of Irn Bale and Irn Raya,” Tzanith said. “They hunted the wastes of this world before any mortal foot touched it. I shall not shame myself.”

  The vampire elf — I only thought of him as Sidhe due to his unnaturally angular features and pointed ears — stepped towards me as he drew a sword. He wore ancient chainmail armor, and the sword looked made of glacial ice. His eyes were pale, dead lights in a gaunt face. He said something in a serpentine language I didn’t recognize.

  “Antrissai,” Tzanith muttered at my back. “A Witch Elf. His weapon will freeze your blood. Do not let it graze you.”

  Her own vampire advanced slowly, floating so her broken, twisted feet hung several inches over the ballroom’s mosaic floor. The ghastly creature didn’t speak, only made haunted moans and reached out with crooked fingers.

  I couldn’t waste time here. I began to draw up power, intending to throw off my glamour by sheer force of will if I had to, but motion in the corner of my vision made me pause.

  One of the nobles who’d been kneeling was standing. It was an elaborately costumed woman in a layered gown of garish yellows and whites, with a towering headdress and veil that concealed her features. She moved with stiff motions, and even from a distance I heard the distinct clatter of wood on metal. The woman’s veil shifted, and beneath it I caught sight of a painted face, exaggerated eyelashes, the chin cut by two vertical lines.

  The marion’s mouth fell open in a silent scream as it lifted its voluminous sleeves to reveal two crossbows, both fitted with oversized magazines.

  Many things happened at once.

  Evangeline, still aloof atop her balcony, narrowed her crimson eyes as soon as the figure in the yellow gown stood. The Witch Elf bared its fangs at me and started to lunge. Someone else in the crowd noticed what I had and began to shout a warning.

  The marion fired its repeater crossbows with heavy clack-clack-clack sounds, bolts flying in a hail as its upper body spun on a rotating joint, twisting the material of its gown with the motion. The puppet — the assassin — became a whirlwind of death.

  People died. The vampire attacking me was hurled back as they took no less than four bolts, each wound immediately bursting into silver fire. The bolts were tipped with Banesilver. Several human nobles, mostly those who’d reflexively stood up at the marion’s appearance, caught bolts and dropped like puppets with cut strings themselves. Evangeline’s guards had moved forward, but they were forced back by the torrent of undead-slaying darts.

  Almost as suddenly as it had started, the repeaters ran out of ammo. The marion didn’t seem to realize, as I could still hear the clack-clack sound of their trigger mechanisms being worked. There came a different noise, the impact of metal against the floor, and from beneath the marion’s skirts small iron spheres began to roll out, like a child had dropped a cupful of marbles onto the ground.

  I heard a distinct sizzling sound. Lit fuses burning down fast.

  I turned, grabbed Tzanith, and threw us both behind a column in the same instant the bombs detonated. The explosion was tremendous — I’d experienced this kind of weapon back at the Fulgurkeep, but that had been a single explosive fired from a cannon.

  This was different. The walls of the castle trembled. Stone cracked, chandeliers broke and fell, crushing people where they landed. There must have been screams, cries of terror and agony, but the explosion left my ears ringing and it was all eerily muted.

  I’d fallen over Tzanith, but as I got my bearings I managed to get up on a knee and help her. Something, a piece of shrapnel or broken stone, had caught her on the cheek. The wound bled violet blood. She lifted a hand to it, and I watched her glamour start to peel away, like a thin film melting back.

  The elf blinked at the blood on her fingertips. There were tears in her eyes.

  She’s never seen her own blood before, I realized. Maybe never felt real pain before.

  “Come on.” I helped her stand. Dust rained down from the ceiling, and the center of the ballroom was a scene out of war; broken bodies and blood, fallen chandeliers and splintered bits of debris all in a chaotic heap.

  I glanced up and saw Evangeline clutching onto her balcony. She looked unharmed, but her features were a mask of rage.

  We moved to the side passage nearest us, but the limp-jawed vampire got in our way again, She screeched and clawed at me with dagger-like nails, a blow I barely avoided by flinching back.

  Spitting something that sounded like a curse in elfcant, Tzanith threw out a hand even as her glamour peeled back from silvered fingers. A light bloomed from her palm, blue as clean moonshine and brighter still. She thrust that light directly into the vampiress’s face, and where it touched, the creature’s flesh blackened and peeled back from her skull.

  She flew away like a startled wraith, clutching her face and wailing in agony. This time Tzanith pulled me along. The ringing in my ears began to fade, letting me hear the screams of shock and cries of pain behind us.

  “We need to find the others,” I said. Where in all the hells was Penric? I’d ordered him to guard Tzanith, and it wasn’t like the archer to disobey.

  Had Emma and Hendry gotten out? If they planned to take a boat over the lake, and any of the vampires caught them before they cast off…

  At the end of the next hallway, my instincts warned me of danger and I turned just in time to see a dark shape blurring down the passage. It was the antrissai, his glacial sword shimmering with cold as he flicked it out to one side, his red eyes intent on us.

  “Tzanith, I need light!”

  She didn’t question it, just thrust her hand out and caused the blue luminescence she’d summoned before to appear again. I stepped between her and the oncoming vampire, hunching low so the faerie-light was at my back.

  Which left the space directly beneath me in near solid shadow. My fingers curled into claws, I thrust my arm into my own shadow and let it sink to the elbow. The horrible cold of that non-place ate into my blood, ripping up my shoulder and threatening my heart.

  It was a welcome pain. The disorientation from the explosion, the fear for my allies, the nagging doubt I felt always and the damn itch in my scars — it all blew away in liquid cold as my hands gripped a weapon, the one thing in all the world I could be certain of.

  Before I pulled it out, my gaze locked on the sword the onrushing vampire wielded. My eyes narrowed, and some intuition in my calming mind, perhaps also that warrior’s pride I’d never managed to let go of, caused a shift in that darkness into which I reached.

  It was instinct. No… desire. The vampire leapt, revealing long fangs as it snarled, its scarlet eyes wide with feral bloodlust. It lashed out with its mist-encrusted sword, a powerful blow meant to separate my head from my neck, just another foolish mortal made victim to this immortal hunter’s skill.

  Instead, steel struck against faerie iron, and in a cascade of shadowy miasma and sparks the vampire was thrown back. It landed in a crouch, one hand pressed to the floor and its blade held up in a guard. Its eyes widened as it saw me.

  Flickers of pale fire and miasmic shadow rippled across my limbs and devoured the glamour. When I stood to my full height, I was clad in black chainmail and pauldrons of dark gray steel, the pelt on my shoulders turned into the fiendish hide of a hellhound once again. The lordly form of Finn Nu giving way to the scarred, golden-eyed visage of the Headsman.

  “Caim… you’re an artist.”

  I lifted the executioner’s sword. It had the same weight and balance as the one Urddha had given me back in Osheim, the same one I’d shattered in a fit of pique after the battle against Hell’s missionaries.

  It wasn’t the same weapon though; its hilt was more ornate, the blade the same blackened steel as the axe, the grip fashioned from the dark wood of a Malison Oak.

  How was this possible? But the answer came near soon as the question. Caim was a Sidhe smith, and he worked with phantasm and abstraction as much as with metal. My weapon had been reforged with shards from both Faen Orgis and the sword Eanor and Urddha had chosen for me. It still remembered being both.

  Strangely, the emblem of a stag’s skull crowned in branch-like antlers had been worked into the join between guard and blade. Back in Karles, my personal emblem had been a ram’s head, and after being knighted by Markham I’d taken an executioner’s tree. It resembled both, somehow, a grim emblem suited to what I’d become.

  The Witch Elf hissed at me. “Foolish mortal! I have practiced the sword since before your wretched species knew how to make them!”

  “Really?” I asked as I took a guard. “Then this is going to be embarrassing for you.”

  The passage filled with the sound of stomping boots and clattering metal. Evangeline’s guard had caught up to surround us, perhaps half a dozen. Tzanith was tense at my back, her lambent hands splayed out to her sides.

  Their eyes all shone with a bloody light. Each one was a supernatural predator, stronger than human, faster, harder to stop. And yet…

  I had a blade in my hands.

  The antrissai snarled and lunged at me, twisting through the air in a spinning slash that carried his whole body into the motion and lifted his feet from the ground. The vicious power of that attack, and the disorienting speed of it, had probably killed many.

  It also took his feet off the ground. He gave up his control and committed fully to the maneuver. Keeping myself planted, I judged the timing and stepped forward rather than trying to dodge, delivering a single wide slash with all my strength behind it. The flat-tipped claymos sheered through the elf’s sword, shattering it like a brittle icicle, and carried through into the wielder.

  When the antrissai passed me, they did so in two halves and a rain of black shards of ice. Instead of blood, they let out a caustic purple vapor that seemed to plead in many small voices.

  I turned to the House Ark guards. They stared in unmasked shock at the dead vampire as its remnants started to melt away into mist and gray sludge. I wondered if that was the first time those freshly turned warriors understood that immortal was not invincible.

  Afraid or not, they were Evangeline’s veterans, and possessed the strength of the undead besides. They did not balk, only brought up their halberds and swords without hesitation.

  “Tzanith—”

  But she’d already anticipated my need. The elf fluttered her dragonfly wings and rose up into the air with a deep humming sound.

  “Cover your eyes!” She hissed.

  I did, throwing an arm over my face just as the faerie’s entire body blazed with light. It was blinding, a silver-blue nova. The afterimage of that flash embedded itself into my eyelids even as I turned away from it.

  It struck the undead much harder. They let out wails of agony as the immortal light of the Sidhe, echo of that which shines in distant stars, in the sun itself, struck them.

  They burned. Their eyes melted in their sockets. Their skin blistered and stuck to their armor like hot wax. The sound and reek of sizzling flesh assaulted my senses.

  But it did not kill them, not that easily. Even as the light started to abate, I uncovered my eyes and lunged forward into the palace guard. Faen Orgis, in its claymos form, swung through them like a reaper’s scythe. Once, twice, four times in quick succession. Even plate armor was little obstacle to the dwarf-made blade, for it sheered through steel and stony vampire skin with equal ease.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Even maiming injuries would do little more than annoy the living dead, so I poured aura into my strikes, making sure they felt the touch of soul fire. That hurt them, shaved their rotting ghosts from them, and left them still.

  One of them, less injured than the rest, got their sword up and managed to parry me. Strength of the dead they may have, but mass and force will still have their due, and my sword was made to kill war chimera. My blow knocked him off balance, nearly taking the sword from his hand.

  Seeing an opening, I let my offhand slip from my weapon’s grip and drove my open palm into the vampire’s visorless helm, grabbing him by the head and slamming him into the ground. I poured aureflame down my arm and let it surge into the creature. His screams were muffled by my hand, and I could feel his bubbling flesh against my bare skin, but I did not let go until his struggles ceased.

  When I stood, the guard’s features weren’t recognizable as anything human. I turned, glaring through the smoke haze that’d filled the hallway to look for anything still moving.

  The threat did not come from the blood-streaked, smoking floor, but from above. I didn’t see it coming, only moved on instinct, leaping back the moment the vampire fell. It’d been clinging to the ceiling like a spider, and dropped with sword aimed point down to skewer me skull to lung.

  It landed close enough for its white cape to brush me, hissed in anger, and lashed out from near point blank range. The sword clipped my right pauldron, sent a flash of pain through the shoulder. His blade was shorter, and he was faster than me — at this range, without my momentum, the tables were turned.

  These were deadly enemies, each one capable of killing me in an instant, and they were not old or arrogant enough to be lured like that antrissai — the very reason I’d taken such brutal advantage of Tzanith’s distraction.

  Burnt, injured, feral with rage, the vampire lunged at my throat with bared fangs and sword aimed for my sternum. My sword, large and unwieldy, became more of a hindrance at that range.

  A slim, bewinged shape slammed into the vampire from behind, nearly pushing the sword right through its target. But the Ark guard was dragged back as Tzanith clung to him, her slender arms wrapped around his neck. He slashed at her, missed, his face a demonic rictus of fangs and crimson eyes as he struggled.

  In a moment of macabre irony, Tzanith buried her face into the vampire’s neck and savaged him. Her arms and legs were wrapped around him in a vice, her dragonfly wings beating so fast they blurred, filled the corridor with wind.

  With wings humming and a violent wrenching motion, Tzanith took the vampire to the ground. I lost sight of him underneath the elf, and she still had her face buried in his neck. I heard a sucking, cracking sound.

  I stepped forward to help, but by then the Ark soldier had gone still. Tzanith remained kneeling over him a moment, her wings beating with less force now. Again I heard that odd noise. A clicking.

  The elf stood, unsteady on her feet, and when I reached out to try and help her she flinched back from me.

  “Don’t look!” She hissed.

  “It’s alright,” I said, knowing I should be gentle here. A hunch told me this was her first time killing someone.

  “Please.” Her voice was pained. “Just let me get my masque back on.”

  Her masque? I didn’t understand. Hadn’t it already been lost?

  Her hands were covering her face. On a hunch, I tightened my grip on her shoulder. Not to hurt, simply to compel her to turn. “Let me see. It’s alright.”

  She hesitated a moment, then turned to face me. I tried to hide my reaction, but all my limbs went tense.

  The face that looked back at me wasn’t human. It resembled one, in some ways, with the same delicate features as Tzanith, a near human roundness to the skull. However, around her mouth now grew a pair of enormous mandibles, like a beetle or wasp, and her eyes had become compound, huge and black with many reflective segments that showed my own face back at me manifold. She had long antennae as well, feathered things that waved like some kind of undersea plant, and her brilliant black hair now grew down to the center of her brow, like the furry mane of a moth.

  The mandibles parted around a still human mouth as Tzanith started to speak, then averted her gaze. “I did not want you to see this.”

  “This is what you really look like?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer, which was answer enough. Her compound eyes had no lids or ducts that might have shown tears, but there was pain there. When I glanced down at the body of the soldier, I realized she’d bitten his head clean off at the neck. Gnawed it off with those mandibles.

  In the depths of the Warden’s Keep, something cried out. It was an animal noise, a hunting noise, something that’d caught its prey's scent. We needed to go.

  I squeezed Tzanith’s shoulder. “That was the first time you’ve killed?”

  She nodded, looking miserable. “I disliked it,” she said in a small voice. “I do not enjoy being a warrior.”

  “I need you with me,” I told her. “I can’t do this alone.”

  Tzanith shivered, passed her hands over her face as though rubbing away sleep, and the insectoid features melted away, replaced by elfin beauty. “I am with you, Headsman.”

  I nodded. “Then let’s go.”

  We moved together toward the distant sounds of inhuman shouts. Somewhere, deep in the palace, the vampires had caught their quarries scent and were closing in on them. Though it had lasted bare minutes, my skirmish had cost us precious time.

  We came out onto one of the bridges that connected different sections of the castle. This one gapped the divide between the lavish face of the palace, with its ballroom and galleries, and a taller, thinner spire that stretched up into the night sky. The Corpse Moon rose high now, looming larger than I’d ever seen it, a bloated eye that seemed to dim the stars themselves.

  With a shiver, I realized that it bore an uncanny resemblance to Laertes’s milky eyes.

  “Some of the dead might be able to fly,” Tzanith told me as a stray wind lapped at the bridge. “We are exposed out here.”

  I recalled Evangeline’s flying coach, with its fiendish chimera. “We’re exposed everywhere. This entire castle is a death trap.”

  How did I find Olliard and the others before the enemy did? I could not navigate the castle with the same speed or precision as a hemophage.

  Almost as though sensing my hesitation, Tzanith stepped forward. She seemed to have regained her composure. “I will seek them out and guide you.”

  “How?” I asked. “Do you have some spell for it?”

  She glanced back at me, and her one golden eye glinted. She seemed to have regained her composure. “No. My eyes are simply much better than your mortal ones. And these wings are not just for show.”

  I blinked at her, surprised, as Tzanith took another step forward to clear space between us. Her dragonfly wings began to beat fast again, once more humming with speed as they had before. The wind they generated was strong enough that I had to take a step back.

  “I will fly around the castle!” The elf had to raise her voice to a near shout to be heard over her own humming wings. “If I catch sight of any of them, I will find you and point the way!”

  “Just be—”

  She crouched low, then leapt into the air, zipping off like she were some pixie out of a fairy tale. I suppose she was, at that. She glowed with a blue light, so she seemed a comet as she tore off into the maze of steepled rooftops and turrets.

  “—Careful,” I finished to myself.

  Somewhere, another night creature let out a howl. Was I already too late? This felt like the Fulgurkeep all over again, my allies scattered while numberless enemies closed in.

  “She’s a keeper, isn’t she?” A dry voice said from behind me. “Would you consider loaning her to me? My wife is quite enamored.”

  I turned to see a tall, well dressed man with perfect hair and onyx eyes standing in the middle of the bridge. Though there was constant wind over the stones, none of it seemed to disturb him.

  “You,” I said in a low, emotionless voice.

  Loveless Marcion, the Duke of Kell, gave me a wan smile. “Me. Forgive me for saying so, but your other form was much easier to speak to. In this guise you look quite… Grim.”

  My black armor rattled as I turned to face him and swept my fell sword out to the side. A ripple of pale golden fire traveled along the shadowy steel. Marcion’s lightless eyes tracked it.

  “Oh, there’s no need for that.” The vampire held up a hand. “I have no intention of brawling with you.”

  His wife, Selene, wasn’t with him. Was she hiding somewhere, perhaps behind one of the supporting arches or even beneath the bridge, spidering her way into a position to ambush me?

  “I am alone,” Marcion said, not missing my searching gaze either.

  I looked him directly in the eye, but he didn’t flinch. He was either telling the truth, or he had an uncommonly strong will. “Forgive me for not trusting the word of a vampire.”

  The Duke snorted. “You Urnic knights! Vampire this, demon that. You’re so busy worrying about whether breathing the same air as me will corrupt you that you stop heeding all good sense. Well, I don’t actually tend to breathe, but you catch my meaning.”

  In answer, I took a single clanking step towards him and started to lift my sword. Marcion froze, then simply stepped to the side.

  And vanished. I froze, staring at the spot. He hadn’t blurred with speed, and there hadn’t been any obvious sign of Art. He’d simply shifted to one side, and it was like he stepped behind an invisible window. Just gone.

  “You seem quite dangerous.”

  I spun and saw the vampire walking along the side of the wall, his sure steps navigating the thin parapets separating us from a hundred foot drop down to the lake. He spoke as he walked. “Quite dangerous indeed, but I’ve faced True Knights many times. You will not be the first paladin I have killed, boy. I do not wish to kill you, so perhaps you might try listening?”

  What trick had he just pulled? Was he simply that fast? Or was it like Catrin’s ability to slip between worlds? Either way, if my timing was good I could counter it.

  But I also sensed that the Duke was smarter than that Witch Elf from earlier. Despite his lackadaisical act, he gave me the a similar sense as Laertes. Dangerous, and more cunning than he seemed. Even if I could kill him, he could probably keep me occupied on this bridge long enough for my companions to be slaughtered. Perhaps that was his intent, to be a distraction.

  He didn’t kneel to Evangeline in the ballroom earlier. I relaxed, though I kept my sword ready. “Fine. Talk.”

  Marcion gave me a mocking bow. “You are the physiker’s ally?”

  “What physiker?” I asked.

  Marcion rolled his eyes. “Please, don’t be droll. I know Olliard is in the castle, and that he intends to sink the entire thing into the lake.” He placed a hand to his chest. “I know, because I am the one who provided the device he is using to do it. I sold it to Amelia Hare’s faction, and she in turn gave it to Olliard.”

  That tripped me up. I stared at the vampire, trying to work out what kind of game this was. He didn’t seem to be lying.

  If true, then it put a different light on Amelia’s actions — she’d come here knowing Olliard’s plan, and been willing to help distract Evangeline until the critical moment. To sacrifice her own life to depose the usurper, along with the lives of every one of her peers in attendance.

  “And why would you do that?” I asked.

  Marcion didn’t answer at once. He spread his hands out, almost as though embracing the wind, and tilted his head up to the night sky. His nostrils flared as he took a deep, satisfied breath.

  “I have lived — in a manner of speaking — for five centuries.” The Duke of Kell opened his eyes and looked directly at me, meeting my gaze without difficulty. His obsidian irises were darker than the night between the stars. They reminded me of the depthless waters of the Sea of Ends, which I’d glimpsed once and never forgotten. “I have not regretted my choice to shed my mortality once. It is not common for us. We are often made into this against our will, but I chose it.”

  The coldness of the vampire’s presence made my skin crawl. Whatever passed for his aura felt like dead flesh brushing my skin, like the scent of carrion made into a feeling.

  I shivered. “Why?”

  Marcion looked once again at the dead moon. “Because Selene would have been lonely had I gone, and I am a softer heart than I care to admit… and because I am a selfish, sinful hedonist. I also detest conformity. I live as I please, and I take pride in my uniqueness, in my unique monstrousness. Sometimes, I fancy that there is no being in all Creation like to myself, and this thought pleases me.”

  He waved his hand back towards the central palace. “If Evangeline has her way, she will create an empire of night creatures. They will rule over the living like dark lords, and we will see a mirror to the Cambion rise again. I will become yet another in the legions of darkness, and that sounds… so very boring.”

  I sneered. “So you’re just doing this for vanity?”

  Loveless Marcion nodded, fully sincere. “Of course! All my decisions are for my own pleasure. And Selene’s. I rarely taste regret, or doubt. You should try it, black knight. You may find the taste to your liking.”

  Where was Tzanith? I scanned the rooftops for her, but saw no sign of the blue streak that marked her flight. I couldn’t waste time here much longer, and if she’d run into trouble…

  “Doctor Olliard is in the central bastion,” Marcion said, pointing to the looming structure on the far side of the bridge. “The element he uses for his vendetta against the night is Faustus’s Folly — it is a concentrate of infernal brimstone mixed with other volatile substances, which takes the form of a yellow crystal, no larger than this.” He brought his forefinger and thumb together, leaving a space no wider than a coin between them. “It is very fragile, and responds to sudden changes in temperature violently. All he must do is detonate one, and each piece of brimstone he has placed throughout the castle will respond in turn. The resulting conflagration will be… Well, let’s just say I do not exaggerate by calling it epic.”

  Hellfire, I realized. Infernal alchemy, used right here in the heartland of Urn.

  “Why would you tell me all of this?” I asked him. “Don’t you want him to succeed?”

  “When I believed he was one mortal man against a host of my kind, yes.” Marcion made a beckoning gesture with his elegant fingers. “But now you are here. I saw you fight before — you are strong, my scarred friend, and you have powerful allies. That pixie, and others if I am not mistaken. You are capable of ending this in a far more interesting way than some dull explosion, and besides…”

  He gave me that empty smile again. “I only wish to kill this dream of empire, not see every actor disposed of. There are very interesting characters here! I want to see how it all plays out.”

  I shook my head. “Are you Magi?”

  “Labels are dull. But if you must know, I am an alchemist. I have bargained with devils and matched wizards, but I am no wielder of Art. That would require a soul, and I discarded mine long ago.”

  Behind the foreign noble, a fragment of starlight detached itself from the night sky. Tzanith was returning.

  “It seems our audience has run its course,” Marcion told me. “Farewell, black knight. I do wish you an exciting evening.”

  “Wait!”

  I moved forward to stop him, but the vampire only stepped back off the bridge, his foot passing onto empty air. Instead of falling, he winked out of existence again — gone like a bad dream, just like Laertes.

  “Damn it,” I cursed even as Tzanith alighted on the bridge.

  “The others are in there,” she said and pointed to the central bastion. “There has been fighting, but I think the doctor is holding them off.”

  “Lisette and that puppeteer are with him.” I was already moving, stomping my way across the bridge while Tzanith fluttered along behind me. “They won’t go down easy.”

  “You look angry,” the elf noted. “What happened while I was away?”

  “Just more monsters playing games with people’s lives. I’m starting to get used to it.”

  “…Yes. Of course.”

  I took a deep breath, calming my nerves and refocusing. “Olliard is going to destroy the whole palace. We’re going to stop him.”

  Tzanith nodded. “To save your companions?”

  “Because it will kill hundreds of innocent people. Maybe thousands, if the destruction gets out into the city. He’s using Orkaelin alchemy, and hellfire is half sentient — it will want to spread.”

  Olliard had to know that. What was the doctor thinking? Was he really that intent on killing night creatures? The man I remembered was not that ruthless.

  Whatever his intentions or reasons, I wasn’t going to let him go through with it. Evangeline would die — by my hand. This wouldn’t be a repeat of Caelfall. The moon glared down as Tzanith and I forged ahead, advancing into the dark heart of the Vampire Queen’s fortress.