Chapter 9
“… trust your instincts – and distrust anyone who makes you the slightest bit wary… even among your closest ‘friends.’”

“… Vladescus are strong willed – but a Dragomir princess never cowers…”

“I will always be a part of you, Antanasia…”

I closed the black, leather-bound notebook and sank down onto my bed, not even sure how I’d gotten back across the room, because I’d been so absorbed in reading my birth mother’s cramped but careful script. It seemed as though she’d tried to fill every single inch of the tiny booklet – small enough to be carried in a pocket, or maybe hidden in a fugitive child’s blankets – with all of her collected wisdom. Everything that she’d obviously thought I would need to know to be a ruler of not one, but two, clans. And to be a wife.

I stroked the cover with my fingertips, tracing the pebbled leather, overwhelmed by how much she must have loved me to have left me such a legacy.

Lucius had given me the manual for becoming a vampire; Mihaela Dragomir had bestowed upon me the guide to surviving as one.

I closed my eyes for a moment, bowing my head in a gesture of gratitude and respect and love for her, too.

Thank you, Mihaela, for protecting me, even as it was clear that you saw your own destruction looming…

Although I’d only skimmed the book, knowing that I would read everything more carefully – come to live by her words in the months and years to follow – I’d seen how her messages had become more clipped and concise and her handwriting more jagged as the pages ran out, as if she’d known that the time for recording her thoughts was running low, too…

Shivering, suddenly realizing that the room had grown colder while I’d stood reading, I slipped between my blankets and tucked the little volume under my pillow, like maybe I could absorb her wisdom in my sleep. I also wanted to keep the notebook right with me. Even my nightstand seemed too far away for something so valuable – at least to me.

Resting my head on my soft, down pillow, I closed my eyes, already feeling warmer, not just from the blankets, but because it felt like I had a new ally in this still unfamiliar world that I was joining. Someone wise, who had already experienced the things that I faced, and who could help me.

I understood, too, why my adoptive mom had felt so strongly that she was handing me over to start a new life, with new counsel, because Mihaela’s words would no doubt serve as my primary guidance from now on. But I knew that I would always need Mom, too, and that I would also turn to her for as long as I could.

Although the gift, and the evening, were bittersweet, I started to smile, remembering a specific passage that I’d noted as I’d paged quickly along.

“… hope that you come to love him…”

I knew that Mihaela referred, of course, to Lucius – whom I would marry the very next day.Whom I did love, with such intensity that it was almost frightening, and yet wonderful – amazing – too.

Lucius… How could I have ever not wanted YOU?

I started trying to picture our wedding, but maybe because I still wasn’t sure where it would be held, I had trouble imagining it, and like often happened since the evening when Lucius had proposed to me, I found myself remembering that, reliving the whole thing in my mind. And although I’d been sure that I wouldn’t sleep for one second on the night before we got married, before long I was drifting into my favorite dream, which always started with Lucius taking my hand and leading me down a secret path that only a handful of vampires – and two very special humans – even knew existed.

“Come with me, Antanasia,” he invites, fingers strong and cool around my hand. “It’s time that I show you a place that is not just special, but sacred…”

Continue to Chapter 10...