The afternoon’s thin sunlight had not survived the evening. Clouds had rolled in from the harbour as the Pendulum began its eastward swing, smothering whatever silver glow Ecstasy might have offered. The air smelled of coming rain, the sort of cold, patient dampness that didn’t so much threaten a storm as send it a formal invitation.
Three siblings walked the streets of Pharelle in silence. Isabella kept ahead, her hand resting loosely on the pommel of her sword. Force of habit, she admitted to herself, already mapping the street’s sightlines. Behind her, Lambert walked with his hands clasped at his back, his pocketbook already in his coat. Wylan brought up the rear with the expression of someone who had been given directions to a vampire’s lair and was trying to decide which part of that sentence bothered him most.
They had not discussed Mirembe. The door slamming. The slap that still echoed through the corridors of the estate like a sound looking for somewhere to settle. They had not discussed the outer wall of Maximilian’s study, either, or the corona of scorched stone, or the way Wylan’s ice cream had liquefied in his hand. Some conversations required distance. These required geological time.
Instead, they had discussed Seraphina. Or rather, Lambert had laid out his assessment with the methodical precision of a man constructing a justification and calling it strategy.
“Aeloria is the existential threat,” he had said. “Whatever Seraphina is, whatever she’s done, she is the only person who can help us understand what we’re facing. That makes her useful.”
Useful. Isabella had noticed the word. Lambert reached for it the way a priest reaches for doctrine: to hold something steady when the ground shifts. She wondered if he heard himself. He sounded like their father.
“She’s family, Lambert,” Isabella had said. “Complicated family, but family. We don’t have to pretend she’s a chess piece to justify talking to her.”
Lambert had not replied to that.
Wylan had said nothing at all, which was his way of agreeing with both of them whilst reserving the right to say I told you so later.
Now they neared the old manor. Its fa?ade loomed above the Catacombs’ yawning entry, and what little glow the Pendulum offered caught the stonework in strange, refracted silver, the walls pulsing with their own shadows. The building had a rather circumspect reputation. In this light, she could see why. She noted the approaches: one entrance visible, probably others below through the Catacombs. Limited sightlines from the street. A building that wanted to be overlooked, and had largely succeeded.
Lambert, beside her now, was studying the stonework. “This place housed R?zvan,” he said. “Nearly a hundred years ago.”
? Isabella had a Ranger’s habit of categorising predators by their choice of lair. A manor overlooking the entrance to the city’s largest collection of bones was, by that measure, making a statement.
The columns were stately, the stonework intricate, and the vines had won. Beneath the foundations, the Catacombs stretched endlessly, their ossuary chambers newly consecrated but unconvinced by the gesture. The air rising from below carried cold and dust and something older than either.
Seraphina had invited them. Laila had given them directions.
The manor stood over them, old and indifferent. Its patience had outlived its last several visitors.
She paused at the entrance, and Lambert and Wylan drew up beside her. There was a moment, brief and shared, where all three of them stood in the doorway of their undead grandmother’s manor and had absolutely no precedent for what came next. Neither etiquette, seminary, nor monster hunting had prepared any of them, it seemed.
“Ready?” Isabella said.
“No,” Wylan said, with the cheerfulness of someone who had given up on readiness as a concept.
Lambert straightened his coat. “Let’s not keep her waiting.”
Isabella pushed open the door.
The illusion of neglect evaporated the moment they crossed the threshold, replaced by a richness that whispered of old wealth and shouted of arrogance.
Moonlight spilled through tall windows, lending the room an opalescent elegance. The furnishings were a study in excess: velvet drapes cascading like waterfalls, gilded mirrors catching the light of chandeliers that had clearly never been introduced to the concept of restraint. The air of grandeur was so thick you could spread it on toast.
Isabella’s hand stayed on her pommel. She didn’t like surprises, and this room was full of them. Every assumption she’d carried through the front door was wrong. A Ranger with wrong assumptions is a Ranger without footing.
A retinue of attendants moved through the space with practised reverence, their sheer garments staged precariously between scandal and ceremony. The collars they wore hinted at hierarchy; their gazes held devotion that bordered on religious. They smiled as the siblings entered, warm and welcoming and entirely too practised.
It’s a gala, she told herself. That was the discomfort. She had never been at ease in these settings, too direct for court, too practical for ceremony. The outsider in borrowed finery, even in her own family.
“I expected cobwebs and Gothic decay,” Wylan muttered beside her. He gestured at the opulence. “This is... aggressively magnificent.”
“Well met by moonlight,” he added, his grin matching the room’s overripe elegance.
Isabella glanced at her brothers. Lambert’s face had settled into the careful neutrality he wore when processing something he did not yet wish to discuss. Wylan was already looking around with the open curiosity of a man who had wandered into someone else’s experiment and couldn’t resist taking notes.
She made herself relax her grip. You’re at a family gathering, Isabella. An unusual one, but a family gathering all the same. She accepted a nod from an attendant, returned it with the practised social grace Laila had drilled into her.
Then he moved past her, fluid and unhurried and utterly without caution, and she caught what lay just beneath the smile: the easy confidence of a creature that had nothing in this room to fear.
Something prickled at the back of her neck. Glamour!
The Autumn Court had taught her to be wary of treacherous beauty. Laila had taught her how to spot it.
Her hand ached for the pommel, but she stopped herself. Do not flash teeth before wolves.
Wylan did not know where to look.
This was, he reflected, an unusual problem. He had spent most of his life perfectly content to look at reagents, schematics, and the inside of a furnace. The visual world had never demanded much of him. Now it was demanding quite a lot, and most of it was wearing very little.
He tried the ceiling. Gilded. Fine. He tried the floor. Marble, polished to a mirror sheen that reflected the attendants from below. Worse! He tried the chandeliers. Inanimate, at least. Though even they were showing off.
Why is it so warm in here? There was no hearth he could see. The warmth just... was. It sank through his coat and into his shoulders, and the air carried something with it, old wine and woodsmoke and something beneath both that made him want to breathe more slowly. That’s interesting. Why do I want to breathe more slowly?
The attendants moved around them in murmurs and candlelight. The collars at their throats caught the light. The sheer fabric caught everything else. Wylan found his gaze following and redirected it. Don’t stare. Basic social protocol. You know this one.
He redirected it.
It happened again.
Lambert was saying something to Isabella. Wylan registered the cadence of his brother’s voice without absorbing the words. He was busy watching an attendant pour wine at a side table, the liquid catching the candlelight in a deep crimson arc, and the way the attendant’s wrist turned at the end of the pour with a precision that reminded him of his own hand steadying a pipette.
Observe clinically, he told himself. You’re an alchemist. This is data.
He tried. The collars marked hierarchy of some kind. The movements were coordinated but not choreographed, suggesting an established social structure rather than performance. The sheer garments were probably ceremonial. The devotion in their expressions was probably cultural.
She’s been awake for days. Did she build all of this in days? Or has it been here the whole time and we’ve never known?
He was doing quite well at the clinical approach until the vampires began to dance.
It wasn’t a dance in any formal sense. No music accompanied it, or none that Wylan could hear. But the lords of the court moved through the room with a fluid, wordless coordination that was something more than walking and something less than performance. They wove between the mortal attendants like currents through still water, and the eye followed without being consulted.
Mesmerism. Psychosomatic response to coordinated movement patterns. Perfectly explicable.
He watched anyway.
One of them stood apart from the others, not dancing, exactly, but observing. Dark hair pushed back from a face that was all angles and attention. He held himself differently from the mortal attendants; no collar, no deference. A lord of the court, not a servant of it. He moved with a deliberateness that suggested he was aware of every eye in the room and untroubled by any of them.
Wylan looked away.
He studied the throne instead, which sat empty and enormous on a raised dais, dominating the room with architectural arrogance. Calling it a chair would be like calling Agony a nightlight. He counted the chandeliers. There were seven.
His gaze drifted back.
He had read about this, of course. In trashy romance novels, several with Gothic themes. He had watched Maximilian fall for Mirembe with the detached curiosity of someone observing a chemical reaction in a controlled environment. He had watched other people flirt at galas and soirées, and it all seemed so natural to them.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The young man was looking at him.
Not glancing. Looking. With the unhurried confidence of someone who had noticed being noticed, and found the situation entirely to his liking. He smiled, and then he was walking toward Wylan with a directness that left no room for ambiguity.
“You must be one of the de Vaillants,” he said. His voice was warm and amused and closer than Wylan had been prepared for. “Welcome to Manor Poldori.”
Say your name. That’s all you have to do. You’ve been saying it for eighteen years.
“Uh.. yes, I’m Wylan,” Wylan managed. “The Alchemist.”
Why did you say that? He didn’t ask for your profession, you absolute—
“The Alchemist?” The young man’s smile widened. “Definite article? Enchanté.”
The gentleman extended his hand and Wylan found himself taking it. Cool to the touch but electrifying all the same.
“Would you like to dance?” the man said with appetite in his eyes.
Wylan never got to find out what his answer would be, for in that moment, the doors at the far end of the room opened, and the dance stilled.
Seraphina swept in, and the room rearranged itself around her.
She did not hurry. She did not need to. The attendants parted without instruction, finding their places against the walls. The room had a centre of gravity now, and it was walking toward the throne.
They had come anticipating a relic of the past: weathered, faded, perhaps even pitiable. This was not a woman clinging to remnants of power. This was Seraphina, entirely at home in a world she had forged from the ruins of another.
She settled onto the throne the way other people settled into armchairs, and regarded them with the warmth of someone who had been looking forward to this.
“Darlings,” she said, her voice like poured honey. “It is good to see you.”
Lambert stepped forward and offered a formal bow, his decorum immaculate as always. “Madame de Vaillant,” he said, his tone precise.
“Seraphina,” he tried, then thought for a moment and offered a faltering “grandmother?”
Seraphina waved the title away with the same air one might use to dismiss a bothersome insect. “Darlings, don’t call me ‘grandma.’ It makes me sound so old.”
“To be fair,” Wylan murmured, glancing between her and the room, “most grandmothers don’t require this much velvet.”
Seraphina’s laugh was warm and unhurried and had centuries of practice behind it. “I do like this one,” she said to no one in particular.
Isabella raised an eyebrow but let it pass. “I suspect,” she said, steering past pleasantries with the subtlety of a woman who had never seen the point of them, “you’ve been hearing some rather scandalous tales going around the city?”
“Who hasn’t?” Seraphina’s tone was light, amused. “Scandal does make for excellent company.”
Lambert cleared his throat and pulled out his pocketbook, as though the weight of it could anchor the conversation. “We came to ask a few questions. You said you would illuminate certain matters if we came to visit.”
Seraphina inclined her head. “Yes, yes, I suppose I did. You’ve come all this way; would you like a drink?”
Wylan spoke before either sibling could. “What do you have?”
Yes! Wine is a relaxant, and I could use some of that right now.
“I’m a fan of red,” Isabella added, her tone casual in the way a drawn bowstring was casual.
“We have a 1242 Auvergne Rouge, a 1619 C?te Méridionale, and a rather delightful 1580 Veil’s Grace.” Seraphina gestured, and an attendant began pouring with the reverent care usually reserved for holy water or explosives. “It’s good to keep things lubricated.”
? Vampires maintain some of the finest wine cellars. They have nothing but time to collect and no thirst for wine itself. It would seem immortality, without an audience, is just a very long night.
“The Auvergne,” Isabella decided, accepting a goblet with a nod. Lambert took his with careful formality, his attention fixed on Seraphina rather than the attendant. Wylan accepted whichever vintage was placed in his hand. He was not, at that precise moment, paying attention to the wine.
The young man from the dance had taken a position against the far wall when Seraphina entered. He stood with the easy stillness of someone accustomed to waiting, and Wylan found his gaze drifting in that direction for two seconds longer than the situation required.
The wine. Focus on the wine.
He took a sip. It was extraordinary, even by the estate’s standards, and the estate’s standards were Laila’s.
Seraphina rose from her throne with liquid grace, moving through the room as she spoke. The siblings followed her with their eyes, wine in hand, audience to a particularly theatrical monarch.
“Now then.” She turned, regarding them with the air of someone opening a ledger. “You seem better informed than I expected. You’ve been busy since we last spoke.”
Lambert took a deliberate sip, letting the quiet stretch. The vintage was older than he was. Possibly older than his father had been. He set the glass down.
“We have a couple of questions regarding our family. There are a number of irregularities, and they seem to stem from you having married Artan while you were already a vampire.”
Wylan felt himself start to frown, then saw Isabella draw breath to speak. He caught her arm and pulled her in. Hush, he signed.
Isabella stilled, Ranger discipline faster than thought.
Seraphina might have excellent hearing, but she almost certainly didn’t know Laila and Isabella’s private language.
Clever, brother. Either way, she’d have to engage.
Seraphina raised an eyebrow, her lips curling into a faint smile. If she had noticed the signing, it was not apparent. “Of course. It was to our mutual advantage.”
And there it was. Lambert had never asked a question, and Seraphina had answered one anyway.
“Of course, the de Vaillant Dungeon presented a unique opportunity,” Seraphina continued, as though discussing the terms of a lease. “And Artan was so enthusiastic about continuing the family tradition. We offered him the keys to Pharelle. He offered us something rather more personal.”
Does she mean what I think she means? He squeezed Isabella’s hand again.
“It must have been interesting to have borne children while also being a vampire,” Lambert continued, pressing the advantage. “I had not thought that possible.”
Seraphina’s smirk deepened. “Was that a question, or merely an observation?”
“I merely remark that it must have been difficult. For me, it would be inconceivable.”
Seraphina’s smile grew wider. Did Lambert mean that? Wylan genuinely couldn’t tell, and that bothered him more than the conversation itself.
“Inconceivable,” Seraphina said, “but not impossible.”
“Yes, you managed it three times by our accounts. Saffron, Alexios of course, and Nikolaos.”
Something shifted in Seraphina’s expression. Not softness, exactly, but something adjacent to it. “Ah, dear Saffy. And little Nikky. I shall perhaps pay them a visit when I can.”
“That might be difficult,” Lambert said. “Saffron lives in Havralis.” A pause, carefully measured. “With Guillaume, I mean. And I expect you know Nikolaos is out to sea.”
If the information wounded her, she hid it well. “Yes, I suppose. But still, I now have grandchildren to delight me with their clever wordplay and games.”
“I thought you didn’t like to be called grandmother.”
She waved it off as though the answer were self-evident.
“Given we are so entertaining, then,” Lambert said, “I was hoping you could enlighten us in kind.” He patted down his robe, then glanced sideways. “Wylan, if you would?”
Oh no. He desired nothing more than to not be dragged into this crossfire. But Lambert’s gaze was steady and expectant, and the parchment was in Wylan’s coat, and there was no graceful way to refuse.
He produced the schematics Isabella had found, unfolding them with care. In an odd way, they counted as a family heirloom.
“We are aware that you have been involved in some grand experiment,” Lambert said. “With Father, it seems. And perhaps Artan as well.”
Seraphina glanced at the parchment. “Ah yes, our breeding experiment. I was wondering where my notes had gone.”
Breeding experiment. She said it the way one might say ‘renovation’ or ‘quarterly review.’ Wylan watched Lambert’s face for a reaction and found none.
“Thank you, Madame. It seems my suspicions of a ‘breeding programme,’ as you have charitably called it, are accurate.”
“You seem disappointed, darling Lambert.”
“If I may be candid, I would like to know, as one of those experiments, what your agenda is.” Lambert’s voice was steady, but Wylan could hear the effort it cost him. “Whether myself and my brothers are in any danger. And given our...” He searched for a word. “Pedigree. Whether we pose any danger.”
Seraphina’s smile may have softened, but its depth did not.
“Oh, come now, Lambert. You’ve managed this much. I’m sure you can deduce the rest.” She gestured languidly at the parchment. “You have all the pieces you need: the de Vaillant Dungeon, my own monstrous but maternal nature. What is the one common thread?”
There was a pause. Wylan could have sworn Lambert’s lips moved in a silent prayer before he spoke.
“You mean Umbral essence? But what does that have to do with these experiments?”
“You’re very close, my child.” Seraphina regarded him with what looked, for a moment, like pride. “Perhaps you take after me more than your father.”
How much does Lambert actually know? How much is she letting him reach? It had felt like a game earlier. Now it felt like chess on a board he couldn’t entirely see.
“What is she talking about?” Isabella said.
Wylan opened his mouth before he could stop himself. The pieces were sliding into place with the horrible inevitability of a well-constructed proof. “Don’t you see? The de Vaillant Dungeon provokes a reaction from its scions. It makes them Heroes. Exposure to the Umbra, to monstrous forces, is perhaps the most reliable means to force someone into becoming a Hero.” He turned to Seraphina, and surprised himself with the accusation in his own voice. “That’s you. That’s what you are. You’re the reason we all became Heroes.”
Isabella stared at him. “I still don’t see what that has to do with—”
“She married into the family deliberately,” Wylan said. “A vampire, an Umbral creature, woven into the bloodline for generations. We didn’t become Heroes by accident. We were engineered.”
Seraphina’s smile widened into outright delight. “The boy is right. It seems I have two geniuses for grandchildren.” She tilted her head at Lambert. “Are you sure you’re Laila’s son?”
Wylan chose to disregard that. She’s baiting you deliberately. But he could barely keep the monologue contained.
“Don’t you see, it’s in our blood. We never had to face monsters or the Umbra directly to become Heroes. It’s been in our inheritance this whole time.” He turned back to Seraphina, and the question that came out was not the one he had planned. “But what are we, Seraphina? Monsters? Heroes?”
“Somewhere between the two, I imagine.” Her tone was almost gentle. “Perhaps monstrous Heroes?”
“You speak of your kind as though you are all alike,” Isabella said. “Are you?”
“Hardly.” Seraphina’s amusement returned. “We are as varied as any creature.” She gestured toward the court. “Callion over there was a siren before joining our court.”
A figure stepped forward. The webbing between his fingers was faint but visible, his features sharp and predatory. Unmistakably siren. Unmistakably vampiric. Isabella’s gaze lingered a moment longer than it should have. She looked away.
“And you have powers?” Isabella pressed. “What, like turning into wolves and smoke?”
“That is a stereotype. Not all of us transform into wolves, for instance. We come in all flavours.” She gestured toward the far wall, where the young man from the dance stood in easy stillness. “Augustine here makes a rather dashing shark.”
Wylan’s brain caught fire.
“Well, he would, if we weren’t in the middle of the land.”
Augustine reacted, and Wylan couldn’t tell if it was a flinch or an acknowledgement.
“But that’s — the physiological implications — how does the skeletal structure—”
“Perhaps we can discuss such matters another time,” Seraphina said. “The great work doesn’t stop just because you’ve achieved immortality.”
Lambert’s voice cut through. “Is that your game? Heroes in your own image?”
Seraphina paused, and for the first time her smile faded. What replaced it was contemplation. Still appraising him?
“I think you have earned a little candour from me at this hour. This I will tell you.” She folded her hands in her lap. “If the plans were my own, I suspect that would be the limit of my ambition.”
Lambert was quiet for a beat. “I have to assume you mean R?zvan’s plans.”
“My child indeed.” Something flickered behind her eyes. “You have found yourself in a rather ancient war. One might romantically imagine it as a fight between light and dark. But Lambert, I can see in you some sense of the truth of light: without shadow, it scores and burns.”
“You mean the feud between R?zvan and Valère. Whom you claim to be Aeloria’s dragonborn.”
“Not claim. I have seen it for myself.” The amusement had left her entirely now. “Aeloria and Valère, they would take all of Gallia, and perhaps the Realm itself, if they could.”
“And you would oppose her, I suppose?”
“We are the only ones who can. Aeloria and her ilk are immortal. Their plans span centuries,” she said, her gaze turning colder. “They are eternal, invincible; save for a power as great as their own.”
“Aren’t you immortal?” Isabella asked.
“We are merely Undying. Not immortal.” Seraphina’s smile had no warmth in it now. “It is a distinction you would do well to remember.”
“So you can be killed,” Isabella said.
Seraphina’s smile thinned to a line. “We do not die,” she corrected, her voice smooth but firm. “That is the nature of mortality. For us, Death is held at bay indefinitely. He will not seek us.”
Wylan found himself correcting in spite of himself. “Semantics!”
“The distinction matters,” Seraphina returned.
Isabella shook her head. “Then why the experiments? What do they have to do with all of this?”
Seraphina’s tone grew weary, though her composure remained intact. “R?zvan would seek a counter to this difference. Had your father bred true, the experiment might have concluded there. R?zvan seeks nothing more than perfection: one of our ilk without flaw. An Immortal of the night.”
Wylan considered this. “You mean one immune to sunlight?”
Seraphina nodded. “Free to walk in daylight. Free from the Pendulum’s tyranny.”
“Then why do you need a second Eclipse?” Isabella said.
Seraphina regarded her the way one might regard an insect that had said something unexpectedly perceptive. “Because not all of us would enjoy those gifts.”
Even the candlelight seemed to still.
“There’s a flaw in your plan,” Wylan said. “You’re relying on one of us to prove viable. Given that Father was not, what makes you think we might be?”
“That is the beauty of longevity,” Seraphina said. “Reproduction is such an iterative experiment.”
Isabella’s voice was very quiet. “Say what you mean.”
“Since returning from my grave, I have discovered I am a great-grandmother.” Seraphina’s smile did not waver. “If all of you fail, there is always Aurora.”