1.

Girl in a Bloodsilver Collar

“Will you ever return?”he asked.

A mirthless smile adorned her face.“Maybe, if someone loves me enough to fix what has been
broken.”

He listened to her voice, looking for hope in those words, but found none.

Her hand touched the surface of the mirror, causing it to ripple, and then she quietly uttered her
last words on this world: “No. I don’t think I will return.”

She walked through it and he was left alone.

He did as he was told, and shattered the mirror. And so it was done.

-------------------

It would be a long time till Lysandre would be able to read these words. Mostly because she
couldn’t read, nor could she write. She had no interest in such things. In truth, very few did, for in
Dalkoffburg everyone was more interested in numbers. Numbers kept your silver in order, after all.
Compared to that, what good were letters? Lysandre would have agreed with this back then. Back
before the mirror, and the written words, and the lonely queen in the castle on the other side of sunset.
Before all that, Lysandre was…

“Busy?”

Lysandre turned around to see Mr. Rudd’s wrinkled smile.

She said nothing, just raised her eyebrows and gestured to a bag containing several rocks. He
inspected it with interest and nodded approvingly.

Lysandre smiled back at him, a wry, cunning grin. Rudd knew it well.

“Okay, what did you find?”

Her smile widened as she produced a small piece of rubble adorned with an old, dirty ornament.

In the morning sunlight, she looks ethereal, Rudd thought for a moment. Pale skin framed with
her(albeit perpetually messy) hair. It was red, when it wasn’t overly greasy. And those eyes…green they
were, and wild as the nature itself. Truth be told, there was an attractive woman under all of the dirt.
Properly cleaned and dressed, she might even pass for nobility—if it wasn’t for her hands, that is.
 Yes. You knew her life by those hands. Callused and rough.

And holding to a polished piece of rubble streaked with a gold pattern.

“Where did you find it?”he asked, his eyes now riveted to the stone in her hands.

“The riverbank,” she muttered.

She was no longer smiling, but instead a small guilty frown lingered uncomfortably on her face.
Rudd asked no more questions about it. He knew well enough that some of the greatest treasures were
often found in forbidden places…

And this was a treasure, all right. It was a piece of decorative wall ornament, taken from the
throne room itself. This Rudd was sure of. A symbol of a rose was carved into the black surface of the
stone and covered with gold. Oh yes, this was the real deal and it would fetch a great price.

It was going to be a good day! It was the last day of Queensfall. He took a deep, satisfying breath
of morning air and stretched, old spine cracking, as Lysandre grimaced once more. There he was,
cracking like an old wandering skeleton again. She would usually tease him about it. Tell him to go back
to his grave whenever he did this. That day, however, her jokes felt wrong. In the morning sun he looked
older than usual, and for the first time she found herself worrying about the old man. She would never
mention this to him, of course. He had no time for such grim talks, he would often tell her. And perhaps
he was right,she thought. She closed her eyes and stretched, mimicking him, and a faint pop echoed in
her back.

“By the spirits, it’s contagious,” she chuckled.

The sun was already over the wall, and the traders’ district glistened as it always did on a good
day. Thousands of mirrors everywhere the eye could see, and just as many customers meandering
around.

The streets were spotless here. More than even the seats of power, these streets were the heart
of the city. At any given point there were over ten thousand people in Dalkoffburg, and only about two
thousand of them lived there.

The remaining eight thousand? Rudd called them the blood of the city, pun mildly intended.
Pilgrims, travelers, desperate people coming for the one thing Dalkoffburg was best known for. And
today that blood of the city would circulate through his store. Rudd smiled, and like an old vampire, he
would feast on them.

And then he glanced at Lysandre. Well…they would both feast. He chuckled and opened the
store door.

Lysandre entered first, while Rudd stayed outside for a moment to perform his amusing little
morning ritual.
 On the outside of the city wall, beyond the dissipating morning mist, a massive ruin of a
dilapidated castle cast its shadow onto the city. It wasn’t destroyed completely, but no doubt it had seen
its better days. Rudd looked towards it and took a small bow.

“I still remember, my queen,” he whispered. Then he straightened himself, old spine cricking,
stars dancing before his eyes.

He laughed, still looking at the castle and shrugged. “But for how much longer…Who knows?” he
said while turning towards the store.

In the back room of the store where products were stored and maintained, Lysandre observed
the rubble she had gathered. Most of it was unimpressive looking, but undeniably it was the same dark
stone from which Castle Dalkoff was built. There was good profit in it for sure, but that wasn’t the real
score. She took the decorative stone out of a small pot in which she had previously poured the cleaning
solution.

All of the rocks she gathered were of the same black stone. That’s what made them valuable.
Fallen rubble, each of them once a part of Castle Dalkoff. However, this specific fragment was different.

Oh yes. Rudd would certainly sell it as a piece of the throne room, all the while laughing at the
naivety of pilgrims that passed through his store.

And yes, Lysandre would inevitably grin at the old man’s enthusiasm, all the while keeping her
little secret.

No, she didn’t find the stone on the riverbank, thought this was her most common little lie.
Sure, one could get lucky and find some of it washed upon the riverbank every now and then. Not this
particular stone, however.

She took it out of the cleaning solution. Glistening and sparkling, the rock seemed to shimmer
brighter than the gold covering its intricate ornaments. These ornaments perfectly matched the flowery
decorative moldings within the great hall of the forbidden castle. She would know. After all, that was
where she found it.

Satisfied with the result, she set the stone aside, wiped her hands, and turned to a table full of
mirrors.

No, not just the table. The whole room was full of mirrors. Mirrors and silver wire and an
extensive set of jeweler’s tools. The tools took up most of the north wall. In her nearly five years
working at the Broken Fang, Lysandre had mastered using all of them. She loved working with the silver
wire. Entwining and twisting it into delicate ornamental frames for the small mirrors. She found it as
focusing as it was rewarding, and the results of her effort became readily apparent.

Mirrors, however, were a different story. All carved into the same exact peculiar shape: an
irregular rhomboid form with one side slightly curved. Lysandre frequently cursed that part. It curved
inward, which made it notoriously difficult to recreate. Handling mirror glass was her least favorite duty.
No matter how carefully you did it, small cuts were inevitable, and worse than that were the glass
splinters. Unfortunately for her, those same mirrors were their best-selling items.

Every mirror sold in the traders’ district was a recreation of Alyssa’s shard: the soul mirror of the
vampire queen. And any passing traveler could own a blessed replica of it, for a silver piece or five,
depending on size. These mirrors were special.

These mirrors repelled vampires!

“These mirrors need polishing,” Lysandre said to the empty room.

-------------------

It was just past noon when the first chimes sounded and the doors of the Broken Fang opened.
Lysandre put away the mirror charm and the cleaning kit. She could hear the familiar sounds: giggling
women; the overconfident voice of a young man. She rolled her eyes, knowing that it would be an hour
at least till the store was cleared of the obnoxious perfume they used. This was always the case. She
placed the clean mirror charms onto a tray. She turned towards one of the larger mirrors in the room
and looked at herself. With one swift motion, she ruffled up her hair. In its messy state it made her look
wild, almost primal. Honestly, that was what customers expected to see. Witches and warlocks and
mystics, for who better to sell them what they were after? She smirked and approached the doors that
opened into the store itself. She did as she always had and stood behind it, eavesdropping. Waiting.

Mr. Rudd instantly appeared from behind the counter with all the flair of a traveling circus
performer. An old man, yes—most of his hairline gone the way of his good looks—but there was still
something to him. Deeply carved wrinkles and sunken eyes gave him a sense of importance that was
always punctuated by his raspy voice. To a stranger, he could have been an aged warlock hiding the
secrets of his craft behind his dark brown eyes. To those who knew him, however, he was an entertainer
ready to weave tales of terror for his eager audience.

That is what we all are, Lysandre thought to herself. Entertainers, purveyors of stories and lies. A
wandering circus stopped in its tracks and now our audience comes to us.

Day after day, chime after chime, they open the doors of one of our many curio shops. Buying
fragments of the wall of Castle Dalkoff, blessed relics and mirror shards. It was a curious assortment of
items with one thing in common: All of it was meant to protect people from vampires. Vampiric
protection was, in fact, the biggest business in Dalkoffburg.

Lysandre peeked behind the half-closed doors at the colorful trio that entered the store. Young
rich man, noble perhaps, all gilded and pampered, wearing a gold-trimmed violet suit and topped with a
darker violet hat and cloak. Lysandre dubbed him the Violet Man.

Two women by his sides needed no creative naming or introduction. This was, after all, the
traders’ district. And these women were very much interested in tradings of their own, and what a little
merchants’ circle it was. Rudd in front, two women at his sides, and the Violet Man caught inbetween.
Lysandre grinned. This is no trading! This man is about to get mugged, she thought, stifling a laugh.

Still, there was no rivalry between the interested parties. The Violet Man seemed perfectly well-
endowed and interested in satisfying both Mr. Rudd and the ladies of the night. After all, the only
relevant bulge in the store was on his hip, and it was brimming with silver.

“Young traveler, what ill wind brings you to the Broken Fang?” Mr. Rudd growled while piercing
the Violet Man with his gaze. Lysandre smirked as the man suddenly regained his composure, his mind
snapped away from heaving breasts to his left and right and plunged suddenly into this dark world of
omens.

If he’d taken a moment to look at either of his two ladies, he would have noticed their winks.

They knew. We all knew. Dalkoffburg was the city of lies and Rudd might as well have been, if
not its king, then at least a nobleman.

“I was informed this was a good place to purchase vampire trinkets,” the Violet Man said while
taking a quick look around the store.

Lysandre always found this amusing. Rudd made it his business to put some coins in the hands
of local street beggars and vagrants. Carefully chosen of course. If they looked remotely like a witch or a
sorcerer, they more than likely had Rudd’s money in their pockets.

And that money was followed by a set of instructions. Bring them to me, to the Broken Fang. Tell
them we have the best…trinkets.

He would always emphasize that word. It was a good word. It brought an aura of falsehood, of
irrelevance. With irrelevance came a certain sense of ease. Rudd wanted his customers to enter at ease.
They would exit scared, and with their pockets significantly lightened.

“Trinkets?” Rudd boomed. The Violet Man was visibly taken aback, all confidence gone from his
smooth face. “Young man, this is Dalkoffburg! We do not trade in trinkets! Powerful talismans, oh yes!
Repellents, sacred relics that will protect your family from vampires! All of those you will find here, but if
it is trinkets you seek, look elsewhere! The Broken Fang trades in salvation!”

The Violet Man, confused for a moment, looked around the store for a second time with the
eyes of a blind man who could suddenly admire a sunrise. There was a trace of reverence on his face as
he looked at the mirror charms and fragments of the walls of Castle Dalkoff. He was buying the charade
and, like many before, he would end up buying much more than that after Rudd was done with him.

Rudd was intentionally going about his business, making himself seem too important to disturb.
Lysandre was sure that the Violet Man was not used to this balance of power. He seemed like the kind
who expected others to cater to him.
 “I meant…no offense, sir. My family just arrived here yesterday, and… Well, my uncle was lost to
the dark curse five years ago, and we heard that if we want protection from the nightkind, we must go
to Dalkoffburg.”

“You heard right.” Rudd said in a more commiserating tone.“Tell me, sir, what do you know of
our city?”

Rudd’s voice was softer now. Almost confidential. A well-trained act.

The Violet Man felt almost invited by this change of tone and came closer.“They say you people
killed a true ancient vampire. A queen…”

“They…are correct.

“Alyssa of the house Dalkoff! The vampire queen. She ruled this region mercilessly for many
centuries, all along feasting on the blood of young women. People hated her, but dared not challenge
her power. This remained so until the day she went mad and unleashed her hordes upon us. This would
have been the end of us all if it wasn’t for Harker Devlin.

“For years he was hated by all for serving the queen. What none of us knew was that during his
service, he took every chance to learn about her, to seek and eventually find her weakness.”

“And so, on the night she attacked the city, Harker went into the castle and put an end to her.”

Rudd paused.

The silence was broken by the Violet Man. He had the face of someone trying to make sense of
a senseless idea. “I heard stories…of well-armed inquisitor squads barely taking down a lesser vampire
thrall. How, then, does one man alone take down a true vampire?”

Rudd smiled.“Like I said…Harker had served her for years. And in the end he had gained her
trust. And in her trust he found out about the one way to defeat a true vampire.”

Rudd took a mirror charm carefully, with an air of importance. He looked at his reflection and
smiled for the first time.

“Do you know why vampires cast no reflections in a mirror?”

“No,” the Violet Man mumbled while visibly fascinated by the charm.

“They are not creatures of this world. They do not belong here, but are merely anchored here by
the act of drinking of our blood.

“No, they belong to a dark place that exists on the other side of a very special mirror. The only
mirror that can reflect them for who they are. A soul mirror.

“You destroy that mirror, you destroy a true vampire’s link to this world, and they perish.
 “Three hundred and fifty-eight years ago, we put a stop to the blood tide. And never since has
any vampire dared to come near our city.

“Because they know…they know that we know how to end them.”

“So these mirror charms…?” the man interrupted.

“Blessed relics,” Rudd replied. “North of the town, near the old walls, you will find a black
building. It is a shrine for the only remaining piece of Alyssa’s soul mirror. All of these charms have at
some point reflected that mirror, and through that act gained the power to repel vampires.We all wear
them; we never leave our homes without them.”

The Violet Man turned to his escorts, only to see their serious faces as each produced a small
charm of their own. The man looked around, noticing the pieces of rubble and ornaments.“And what
are those?”

“Pieces of Castle Dalkoff. You put a few of them in your home and no vampire will ever
approach it.”

“How much?”

Twelve pieces of rubble and sixteen mirror charms, all bought by just one customer. Lysandre
knew Rudd well enough to know how hard he was suppressing laughter. She would have laughed as
well, however, she knew better. Trading had to be done and this was her cue.

Lysandre entered the room, a wild-looking red-haired young woman with piercing green eyes. A
perfect picture of the witchy wild women often mentioned in stories that end with “…and then she
devoured his soul.”

It was as intentional and as exaggerated as Rudd’s performance. She wore a dark green dress
and was unadorned except for a peculiar collar around her neck. A strange thing, really. It seemed to be
made of iron, however, there were trails of red and what looked like silver in it. When it caught the
sunlight, you saw it for the spirit metal that it was. All of its imperfections would suddenly vanish, and it
was as if someone captured moonlight in metal and forged it solid.

The Violet Man observed Lysandre’s collar with no small amount of curiosity.

“Thank you, Lysandre,” Rudd said. She remained silent. It was best that way. It kept customers
unsettled, made them ask questions.

She looked to the side and moved her hair away, a calculated move. The strange collar glistened
brightly once more.

And like a crow, the Violet Man was fascinated by this shiny thing. “What is that?” He pointed at
the collar.
 Rudd stuttered for a moment with feigned surprise. “Oh, that? Nothing! Lysandre, you may go
now!”

As if on cue, the Violet Man said “Stop!”

He stared at the collar, curiosity burning in his eyes. Then he looked suspiciously at Rudd.
Lysandre bit her lip hard to prevent herself from laughing. He was hooked.

“What are you not telling me? What is that thing around her neck? I’ve never seen anything like
it!”

Rudd hesitated.

“It’s something better, isn’t it? You are hiding it for yourselves while selling strangers—”

“Young man, I would choose my words carefully!” Rudd boomed. Once again, all confidence
melted from the Violet Man, and he was just a pampered child of privilege being scolded by a superior.

Then Rudd sighed. He looked around the store, then glanced at the store door as if he was
checking for anyone listening in on their dealings. Seemingly satisfied that they were alone, he leaned in
closer to the Violet Man and in a secretive tone said, “It is the bloodsilver collar.”

Both of the ladies of the night gasped, and then rushed to interrupt Rudd.

“Sir, you can’t!”

Rudd took two silver coins and handed each of them one. Then he gave them a meaningful look
and all conversation ended there.

Lysandre was genuinely surprised by this turn of events, but still decided it best to play along.

“What I say here has not been said, nor was it heard. Understand?”

The Violet Man leaned forward and nodded.

“The queen was defeated; this much is true! The problem was, nobody really knew if ‘defeated’
meant ‘slain,’ or just banished back into the world of veils and shadows. One can never tell with such
creatures. Question was, if she persisted, would she return?”

Rudd paused in order to let that question settle.

“Some believe that the lust of a young woman called her to us in the first place. Others speak
tales of love and betrayal and a girl whose name was lost to us.”

A small smile grazed Lysandre’s face as a memory of a song and of sunflowers briefly touched
her mind. Melanie of the night, she thought, but said nothing.
 Rudd carried on in his confidential tone:“Was it lust or was it love? I can’t tell you which is true,
as oral tradition is as true as the storyteller is sober, and my good man, storytellers are rarely sober. In
the end, it mattered little to the city elders. They concluded that any young woman seeking the warmth
of another woman could call her back.

“In order to prevent this from ever happening, we placed our strongest protection on these
women. The only thing that would repel any and all dark forces forever: the bloodsilver collar!”

Rudd was selling those words with the gravitas of someone uttering the holiest of words.

The Violet Man looked at Lysandre for a moment. A peculiar, almost reverent expression
touched his face. He seemed to be going over everything he was just told, weighing his decision. His
hand restlessly fiddled with his coin purse. Then he turned his attention back to Rudd.

Deadly serious, he asked a simple question: “How much?”

“Very expensive. Both for its protective power and the risk I am taking…”

The Violet Man now stood upright, looking smugly confident. A lost man finally on his familiar
road.

“Do I seem like someone who can’t afford it?”

Rudd smiled and shook his head. “No, my good sir. Not at all.”

-------------------

The bell chimed as the trio left the store, only their noxious perfume permeating the air.
Lysandre smirked and looked at Rudd examining the silver coins.

He looked at her, smiled, and tossed a coin her way.

“The night girls are new,” she said, grinning at the old man.

He tapped his temple while returning a wry old man smile that made his lips disappear.“You
want a customer, you pay off a few vagrants. You want a rich customer, you talk to some ladies of the
night.”

“Still…”she said while fiddling with her collar. “You are risking quite a lot selling him these
collars.”

Rudd glanced at her. “It’s hardly the same thing. These aren’t made of bloodsilver. More than
that, unlike yours, these can be removed,” he said as he unclipped one of the fake collars.

There was something in his voice as he uttered that last sentence. A trace of pity, perhaps,
Lysandre thought. Old man was getting soft.

“Well, in any case, you made enough to close this store for a month.” she said.
 He frowned at this idea.“We can’t close our doors just yet! This is the big week! Tomorrow night
is the Queensfall! So many pilgrims, so many poor souls seeking protection,” he said in a mockingly
sanctimonious tone.

They both shared a laugh. It was a long running joke in the traders’ district that people who
dealt with vampire protection rarely put any faith in vampires themselves.

Oh, they heard all the scary stories from pilgrims. Terrible tales of entire villages killed, and
travelling caravans slaughtered. Stories were abundant, and people saw vampires in every shadow.
Rudd and Lysandre both, however, saw different monsters in those same shadows. After all, Dalkoffburg
was a big city. You live there long enough, and you’ll see horrors that need no otherworldly interference.
They knew far scarier stories of brigands who killed people with hand-crafted claws, which they would
use to rip the throats of their victims. They had seen such weapons traded in the shadowy corners of the
city.

The whole thing was almost devilishly clever. If you could pin the murder on a vampire, it was no
longer a matter of the law. It was left to the inquisition to deal with, and the inquisition wasted no time
looking for a human culprit. This was true for most kingdoms, but it worked much better in Dalkoffburg.
Officially, this was a vampire-free city, and the elders would do anything to keep it so. Anything else
would be bad for business.

What this meant was, if a death seemed vampire-inflicted, instead of forwarding the corpse to
the inquisition, the body would be unceremoniously burned and none would be the wiser. They were
just another unfortunate soul swallowed by the dark. Accidents happen.

Yes, Lysandre and Rudd believed in vampires in general. Hard not to with the city history being
what it was. They were, however, extremely skeptical about their alleged abundance.

The truth of the matter was that vampires were a rare breed. Lies about them, however? Those
were in high supply, both beyond the outer wall and within the crowded streets of the traders’ district.
Rudd made the best of it all, and started trading on those lies like many around him. He just did it better.

Lysandre sighed and said, “I’ll go back to the workshop before more of them arrive. We still have
at least nine good hours before they all make their way to…”Her thoughts drifted off and the sentence
was left unfinished.

Then she took the tray of mirror charms and turned to leave to her workspace.

“It’s the bonfire night tonight.” He said it in a conversational tone, yet the words felt heavy in
the air.

She stopped. Every year they did it—the week celebrating the fall of the vampire queen. The
bonfire night was to commemorate the citizens gathering and deciding to put a stop to the tyrant.
 Every year there was song and dance. Lysandre was a part of it last time when she was still
seventeen, before…

She touched the collar absentmindedly.

“It’s been almost five years now…” Rudd said.

“It has.” She nodded.

“Where do you go? During it, I mean.” Rudd observed her with curiosity.

Bonfire night was off limits to her kind. The collared ones. The Nightblossoms.

“I go and spend time with the others. We drink, we eat, we fornicate, and in the end…we spit at
the town.” She smiled at Rudd. The smile never touched her eyes. For a moment as she turned to leave,
her hair moved away, and Rudd noticed the scar on the back of her neck. A burn…where they forge-
welded the collar.

Rudd said nothing. He sank into silent thoughts. He thought about lies, about forgotten things.
He mused on old legends that only old people knew, but kept to themselves. Very few knew them in
their original form. Rudd did.

Rudd knew why, among all the collared women, it was Lysandre who was scrutinized the most.
He knew why he had to intervene twice as some of the more nervous elders suggested that maybe they
could just get rid of the girl. All this fear because of greed that broke the five…and an old story most had
forgotten. A story of a girl with red hair and green eyes and the broken heart of a queen.

Rudd knew why the city feared girls who sought the affection of other women.

Rudd knew why…

And even though she never told him this, Lysandre also knew why. After all, a queen told her.
 2. Girl With Sunflower Eyes

It was almost five years ago, before Mr. Rudd and the Broken Fang. Lysandre was eighteen when
she was caught. The girl in question was the only daughter of Lord Barnaby Dunston.

Lara Dunston…that was her name.

Back then, Lysandre served as a kitchen helper at Lara’s house. On any given day, the chances of
the two of them ever meeting in person were slim at best, as Lysandre knew well enough that her
unsightly, unkempt visage was not something the lord and his family needed to see. No, her spot was in
the kitchen and her exit through the back doors.

Their first encounter was a matter of chance, really. See, it all began with a slippery bathtub.

Lady Lara had decided to take a lengthy bath and her maid, old Harriot Barnes, took this time to
attend to some other duties that required her attention. Now, the bathtub was a new thing, a fancy
piece of craftsmanship imported from the south. It was said that all the rich ladies exclusively bathed in
these, and Lord Barnaby Dunston would have nothing but the best for his daughter.

And the best it was. Polished to look like glass on the inside and out, and trimmed with
decorative ornaments that served both to please the eye and provide a gripping surface when one tried
to exit it.

Alas, to Lady Lara’s misfortune, she was unaware of this and had in fact been sitting in the tub at
the wrong end. This side had no such ornaments and was like the rest of the tub—glass-smooth. And
therein was the problem. Lara tried to leave the tub, however, her hand slipped and while trying to keep
her balance mid-fall, she sprained her leg.

This, of course, caused quite the chaos among the staff. By sheer chance, there were no female
servants around and it was inappropriate for men to walk in on the naked girl, so they did the best they
could. They shouted at the doors to assure Lara they were sending help. The house steward pulled
Lysandre out of the kitchen and took her apron.

“Lady Dunston needs your help in there. You will help her get decent and help her come out.
Don’t waste time, and don’t bother the young lady. Do you understand, streetrat?”

Lysandre nodded, shocked to find herself in a corridor full of concerned men. All of a sudden,
she felt the greatest urge to enter that bathroom, if for no other reason than to escape this crowd.
These were house servants, she thought, and her place was not among them. She belonged in the
shadows, in the darker parts of the kitchen. Here, in plain sight of everyone, she felt terribly exposed.

“Hurry!”

And so she did. She entered the bathroom. Lara was still in the tub. The floor was covered in
water and Lysandre imagined the events that transpired. It was obvious, really. An awkward attempt at
exiting the ridiculous tub had resulted in a slippery collapse.

“The steward sent me, Lady…”

Lysandre avoided eye contact. Lara observed her with curiosity and maybe even incredulity.

Lysandre met her eyes for a moment, and in that moment she saw a fairy. That’s how she
remembered it, at least. Her face was beautiful, framed with honey-colored hair. Her lips were full, a
deep shade of pink that contrasted harshly with her pale skin. And the eyes… There was something
magical with those eyes. They both were and weren’t brown. It was too difficult to catch it as Lysandre
didn’t dare to look for too long.

“Are you sure you can do it?”

Lysandre looked back. Brown eyes, yet with almost golden centers…

“I sprained my leg and I need help getting out and getting dressed.”

Almost like a sunflower, she thought.

“Are you deaf?”

Lysandre snapped out of it. Lara’s tone was genuinely curious.“N-no, my lady.”

“Then are you sure you can lift me? You seem…a bit malnourished.”

And then Lysandre noticed Lara blushing.

“Which, come to think of it, may actually be the case. Uh…how about this: I am Lara. Lara
Dunston.”

“Lys-Lysandre… Lysandre Streethold.”

Lara looked at Lysandre with some pity, and for the first time, Lysandre felt annoyed. “An
orphan’s last name,” Lara said.

“Well, we Streetholds are the largest family in Dalkoffburg,” Lysandre defiantly answered.

This was the go-to response of orphans in Dalkoffburg. Every one of them with unknown
parentage was given the last name of Streethold. And in those days, it counted as the most numerous
last name in Dalkoffburg.
 Lara smiled, and Lysandre felt a little weak in her knees. Maybe Lara saw right; maybe she was
too weak to help her out. Lysandre’s legs certainly felt like it at that moment.

“Right! Help you out!” Lysandre blurted out, forcibly removing herself from a familiar path her
mind seemed intent on walking.

She took a cloth and proceeded to wipe the floor first.

“No use getting you out only to have you slip again and take me down with you.”

She heard Lara’s soft chuckle and looked up at her watching Lysandre curiously. “Green eyes
and red hair…and…pretty,” she mused out loud as she studied Lysandre.

Lysandre stared down at the floor pretending to inspect it for wet spots, and allowing her hair to
cover her face and hide an upcoming blush. She could feel it coming; it always started with a warm
tingle in her ears.

“Well…” Lara continued, “pretty after…I’d say a few hours in the bathtub, some good hair
brushing, a nice dress…”

Lysandre got up and offered her hand to Lara. Lara observed her rough hands. They weren’t the
hands of an eighteen-year-old girl. These hands saw labor and hardships. For a second, she considered
adding that something had to be done about those. However, a quick glance at Lysandre’s
uncomfortable expression made her give up on the joke.

Lara wasn’t heavy. She was, however, naked and slippery, and so Lysandre found herself
touching way more of Lady Dunston than she could ever imagine. Mind you, at that moment, her
misbehaving mind could imagine a lot. To Lysandre’s great relief, she was strong enough to help her get
out. Shortly after, while she was clumsily helping Lady Dunston get dressed, old maid Harriot burst into
the bathroom, flustered.

“I was dealing with the laundry when I heard! Oh, young lady… out of the way, streetrat!” She
barked.

Lysandre did as she was told, and turned to leave.

“Not streetrat. Lysandre!” Lara corrected the now-incredulous Harriot. Lysandre smiled. So did
Lara.

-------------------

That night, Lady Dunston was keeping Lysandre awake far past the time when other girls at the
workinghouse were deep asleep. A fairy-like beauty with sunflowers in her eyes and…soft, slippery
skin…

Lysandre buried her red face into the pillow.

 The next day came along and the bathtub incident was well forgotten as the Dunston manor
seemed to continue its functions as usual. Lysandre made her way through her little secret hidden paths
and reached the kitchen. She left her satchel in the small alcove that also housed the brooms and
assorted cleaning supplies. From that same alcove, she picked up her apron. She quickly examined it. It
was dirty but not so bad that the cook would trouble her with washing it again. She fastened it and took
the large broom. While her duties were predominantly kitchen-bound, over time she learned that they
also expected her to sweep the ground in front of the kitchen, and since autumn was well under way,
that seemed like an endless battle against the dying trees.

She opened the large doors that led into the area of the manor that was mostly hidden from
noble eyes. It was almost like a courtyard within a courtyard, opening to the main street leading to the
traders’ district. Here, the carts would regularly enter and deliver food. Like the rest of the manor
grounds, it was framed with trees and roses. And on a windy autumn day it would be buried in leaves.

Lysandre was happy to see it was not that kind of a day. It wouldn’t take too long. Usually she
loved this part of the job, if for nothing else than for the fact that it kept her out of the cook’s reach. No
orders, no cursing. Here she was left alone with her thoughts. And on that day she was happy the work
here would be short, because her thoughts seemed adamant to wander into places best left alone. Such
as sunflowers and soft touches, and wet skin…

“Streetrat!”

She was pulled away from her thoughts by a voice—not the cook’s, but rather the house
steward’s. He was a middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed moustache. William was his name, and he
shared the same last name as Lysandre: Streethold. Whenever he called her a streetrat, there was a
glint in his eyes, a smile kept hidden from all except those who knew. He too was a streetrat, after all,
and he moved up in ranks.

Lysandre smirked a bit and turned to him.

“Young lady…” He started and stopped for a moment, searching for words.“You did well
yesterday, I am told.”

“Oh?” Lysandre looked at him and noticed a package in his hands, wrapped in tailor’s paper.

“In fact, the young lady has gone through some effort to replace her personal maid.”

Lysandre said nothing, not sure what to make of this.

William seemed to study the package in his own hands, then nodded at it. To Lysandre he
seemed like a man having an argument with an invisible opponent. He smiled and then, to her surprise,
handed her the package.
 “Here! I guess we’ll have to find a replacement for you as well.” Then, looking at her shocked
face changing to something akin to despair, he continued.“No, you are not being dismissed. You will be
Lady Lara’s personal maid from now on.”

He expected a response from Lysandre. Joy, maybe even a happy hug. He had seen people react
like that before, but what he got baffled him. She just stood there like a statue, her ears growing
alarmingly red. He didn’t know what to make of this, and then when she failed to take the parcel, he
grew annoyed. He didn’t have time for this. He shoved it at her and grumbled.

“Here, try it on. We can have it trimmed later if it is too loose.”

Lysandre stood alone next to a small pile of swept leaves, parcel in hand. It was soft. The paper
crinkled under her now-sweating hands. For the first time in a long time, she looked to her left, to the
manor itself. A massive four-story building surrounded by a vast courtyard, its spiked fences covered in
roses. She usually avoided looking at it. To her, it always felt like trespassing.

She remembered the first time she arrived there. She was fourteen at the time. The house
steward gave her and three other fellow streetrats a short talking-to. They learned some things about
the manor and the Dunstons then and there, and the rest they picked up as they went about their
duties.

While the Dunstons were nobility, it was a recently acquired title. They were merchants,
obscenely wealthy and extremely successful. With their newfound nobility, their public image changed
significantly. Their usually private house soon became a place of many parties and meetings. With that
came the need to expand the number of servants. Of the three streetrats, only Lysandre kept her
employment. And now, four years later, this streetrat was to move up in this world. It should have been
a moment of pure joy. There was better pay involved, and perks of the job. Good perks: real food, not
leftovers; drinks; and being around people other than the cook and the steward…

Also, being around…Her ears once again turned ablaze.

An hour later, Lysandre was in the main hallway passing a large mirror. Never before had she
visited this corridor. And this was the first time she laid her eyes on this peculiar, decorated mirror.
What was peculiar about it was its shape. It was as if someone had an even larger mirror and broke it,
taking a large piece of it and framing it in decorative silverwork. She guessed what it was, as even an
orphan from the workinghouse had seen that shape repeated over and over again. It was often worn
around people’s necks or embedded into bracelets.

Vampire protection.

Years would pass before Lysandre would know this form by heart. There would come a time
when she would be able to reproduce this shape with her eyes closed. Then and there, however, the
mirror held no more importance to her than the black pieces of rock placed in different wall niches
around the house. It was a thing that people did. She had learned early on not to question things that
people did, especially rich people. It was easier that way.
 She stood alone in the hallway observing her reflection in the vampire mirror. The dress was
clean, and while it seemed to somewhat hang off of her, it looked presentable. Her hair, however, was a
different story altogether.

She had no comb or brush on her, and she had been summoned. Looking at the mirror, she tried
fixing her hair by running her fingers through it. All she got for the effort was pain as her fingers snagged
on the hidden tangles in the red mess on her head. She was disappointed to notice that this only made
things worse, and it was too late already. She moved down the hallway to the large cream-colored doors
of Lara’s room. She knocked and then for a second found herself trying to decide how she should
address Lara. Certainly not just “Lara”…

“Lady Dunston. It’s…uh…Lysandre. The steward said you sent for me.”

She heard a relatively distant “Enter.”

And she did. It was a vast room. A room of a spoiled child, Lysandre caught herself thinking. It
wasn’t mean if it was true, she then thought. And it definitely seemed to be so. Large mirrors, elaborate
dresses and jewelry in all corners of the room, and small entertainments as well. Sewing kits, books, she
noticed with surprise. And some sort of a musical instrument. Certainly not hers. And there, at the far
end of the room in a large bed, was Lara. The fairy creature from day before was, however, at the
moment bereft of elegance as she struggled her way out of the sheets. Her leg was wrapped in thick
bandages that emanated a potent scent. Ointments, Lysandre thought. The smell of them made her
want to back off, but a sudden realization stopped her in her tracks. It was probably her duty to help
Lara get up. She rushed to her side, however, Lara was by then already sitting on the bed.

“I’m fine! Stand still for a moment. Let me look at you.”

Lysandre felt the familiar burning rising to her ears and was glad to know they were hidden by
her messy hair. She stood in front of Lara, unsure if she should do something. Bow, perhaps?

“Turn around!” Lara said with an assuring smile.

The smile did things to Lysandre, none of which were assuring. She did what she was told. Her
new dark green dress rustled slightly as she turned.

“I told them to make it dark green. I thought it would go nicely with your eyes.”

Lysandre stayed quiet, unsure what to say. And then she shuddered as Lara placed her palms
around her waist, confidently gripping her. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.

“It’s a little loose. Nevertheless, I think it would be a rash decision to have it trimmed. Instead, I
think a week of good meals might…fill in the gaps.” She smiled, and then looked up, her smile vanishing.

“Lysandre, pull that footstool over here, and also bring me that box from the cupboard.”
 This was good. If nothing else, this was the job, Lysandre thought. At least her duties would stop
her mind from acting stupid and going places it shouldn’t. The box was on top of a cupboard surrounded
with all sorts of makeup paraphernalia—expensive-looking stuff, the lot of it. She took it and proceeded
to pull the footstool towards Lara, making sure to center it in front of her so she could rest her leg on it.

Instead, Lara put both her legs on the floor, grimacing slightly as her injured foot touched the
cold marble. Lysandre quickly got down on the ground and helped her put on the slippers. Lara looked at
her, slightly amused. Lysandre was anything but, as she was nearly drowned in the smell of the
ointment. With great dismay, she realized that the smell was now on her hands. The intense scent of
mint and something else she couldn’t quite recognize.

“Sit here.” She looked up to see Lara gesturing at the footstool. She got up and was ready to sit
facing her.“No, your back to me.”

Lysandre did as she was told, only slightly unnerved. Most of her jitters were due to the fact that
this was a new situation. She didn’t know the protocols of working in the house itself. It was a field full
of traps and she had to watch her every step and learn on her own. Yes. That was where most of her
jitters originated. The rest…

Lara pulled Lysandre’s hair from her face with a smooth, soft hand, touching her cheek slightly
as she did so. This made every hair on Lysandre’s body stand up. The rest of her jitters came from being
in the same room with Lady Lara Dunston.

Lara leaned in closer. Her scent permeated the air, a perfume strong enough to drown out the
ointment at this distance. Lysandre never dealt well with perfumes. Most made her nauseated. Lara’s
made her a little lightheaded. It was the perfume, but it was something else as well. Something she had
kept to herself for years. Ever since she was first told of things people do in the night when they are
together. Ever since she discovered things about her own body…

She knew that she was a little off. It wasn’t strapping noblemen who came visiting in her
fantasies. When her friends talked about whom they liked, she would remain silent.

No… Lysandre dreamed of softer hands and alabaster skin and of ruby lips.

“Your ears are red.” Lara chuckled as she moved Lysandre’s hair to the back.

Lysandre silently stared at the floor. She was painfully aware of her body’s little quirk. And then
she was painfully aware of her hair being pulled. She winced.

“Be still!”Lara ordered as she dug into a stubborn tangle of red hair. Lysandre looked back as
much as she could, only to notice that the box she handed to her tormentor contained all manner of
combs and brushes and peculiar tools that wealthy girls use to achieve their ridiculous hairstyles.

“My lady, this isn’t—”

 “Oh, it is necessary. If I am to spend most of my time in your company, I’d rather be looking at
your beauty than wonder if a streetrat is hiding a rat’s nest in her hair.”

Lysandre didn’t know how to even approach this comment. A streetrat with rats in her hair?
There was a time she would fight people for that kind of a comment. At the very least she would have
objected to this, if it wasn’t for the other thing

Lara Dunston wanted to look at her beauty.

A part of her hated this weak-in-the-knees, manor maid Lysandre. There was, however, no
denying it. Her secret desires pulled her towards Lara. Suppressing those took the fight right out of her.

“You know, you don’t have to be quite so subservient around me.”

Not knowing what to say to this, Lysandre simply mumbled, “Uh… yes, my lady.”

Lara scoffed. “I insisted you be brought here because I saw something in you.”She pulled
Lysandre, making her turn and face her.“That moment, when I said you were an orphan, you had fight in
your eyes. Defiance.” Lara caressed Lysandre’s face, almost desperately looking for something. “I spent
my life with everyone bowing to my whims. I need the girl I saw for a moment there in that bathroom.
The girl who said Streetholds were…”

“The greatest family in Dalkoffburg.” Lysandre finished the sentence and smiled. Some
confidence poured back into her face.

Lara held her face and smiled widely. “There you are, Lysandre. I was worried.”

Lysandre could no longer suppress the smile and then she blurted out, “Also, how dare you
imply I have rats in my hair, you pampered—”Then she covered her mouth, eyes wide in disbelief at the
words that escaped her.

Lara’s face was difficult to decipher. For a moment, Lysandre was sure she had just ruined
everything. Then a loud, surprisingly snorty laugh erupted through the room. It was the snort that in all
its unladylike honesty made Lysandre burst into a laughing fit of her own.

They calmed down after a while.

“Well…” Lara said with a restored sense of dignity. “Let’s not be that blunt with each
other.”Then she leaned in and whispered, “At least not when anyone else is around.”

Lysandre heard the words and felt Lara’s breath on her ear, and for a moment the world spun
around her.

Then the pain returned as Lara once again attacked the resilient tangle and Lysandre suffered
through it, ears red and a barely suppressed smile never leaving her face.
 In the next few weeks, she found her duties easy to handle. She would assist Lara in dressing
and undressing from complicated clothes. Beyond that, she would take care of Lara’s room and spend
most of her time following her around.

And then there were the perks. There was the food. She had sampled this food before in its
stale form, and only once everyone from lord to butler to the cleaning staff had their pickings. This was
something entirely different. Soft meats, fresh vegetables, warm bread that crunched pleasantly on its
surface yet never below it. Broths that were made to be a fine meal instead of a last resort for
ingredients that would spoil if left for another day.

Soon Lysandre found her bony figure was filling out her maid dress very nicely. Lara made sure
her hair was kept in order. There were times when Lysandre would find herself going to Lara’s room and
stopping in front of the vampire mirror that once reflected her messy visage. The young woman looking
back at her was nothing like the tangle-haired streetrat in a loose dress. Instead of shying back from her
reflection, she would at times start flirting with the mirror. For a moment she would allow herself to
indulge in fantasies of sunflower eyes looking back at her.

Lysandre was given a servant’s room at the manor. It was one of the six servants’ rooms
available, and it was considered to be a great honor. These rooms were usually reserved for staff
members who worked for the family for over a decade. Suffice to say this wasn’t met with great
approval from the other servants, but none dared to mention it. Their looks, however, spoke loudly and
rudely. The room was small in size, and yet it was comfortable. There was a nice, sturdy bed; a
wardrobe; a small table; and a chair. It even had a window facing west. To Lysandre, this room was a
kingdom.

The food, the room, the dress… Any of these things alone would have been enough to make her
smile. All of these benefits paled in comparison to her greatest joy. Every morning, she alone would
enter Lara’s room, bringing the lady’s breakfast with her. Every morning, Lara would invite her to share
the meal. It was their secret, of course.

They would spend the waking hours of the day together talking and laughing. Lara would at
times take the peculiar instrument Lysandre noticed on her first day, and to her great surprise she could
play it. And she would do so often. She would play the songs of the city, well-known ballads, and some
that she composed herself.

Lysandre especially liked the song that Lara called “Melanie of the Night.” It was a sad song
about a green-eyed girl with red hair who was loved once and lost forever. Lara would always look at her
and smile a cryptic little smile when she played it.

Life was wonderful.

 3. The Tale the City Forgot

It was dark outside when Lysandre woke up, and yet it was definitely the right time. Autumn
nights are lengthening, she thought while getting dressed. Her morning chores were a matter of routine
by then. She made her way down to the kitchen and greeted the steward who was already busy
organizing the staff for the upcoming celebration. It was Lara’s nineteenth birthday, but there were
bigger things in store as well. The whole house was abuzz with rumors and speculations as nobody failed
to notice the perpetual smile on Lord Dunston’s face. This smile seemed to coincide with the royal
councilor’s frequent visits. The word was all over the manor’s corridors—something big was about to
happen.

Lysandre ignored the rumors just as much as she ignored the rest of the house staff on any given
day. In one way or another, they made it clear what they thought of her. To them she was a streetrat
out of its place. They couldn’t say this out loud, of course. Beyond the danger of offending Lady Lara by
questioning her choice of servants, there was a simpler reason for keeping their mouths shut: Steward
William would have a thing or two to say to them if ever those kinds of complaints were uttered.

Lysandre habitually took the longer, more out-of-sight route to the kitchen. She used it during
the old days when she had to carry the food over to the other servants in their own separate dining
room. Some habits were hard to shake off. So was the discomfort of being around the old cook. She was
a short tempered, corpulent lady with a swift, merciless hand. Lysandre stood in front of the kitchen,
waiting. That was the rule: If you weren’t one of the kitchen staff, you stay outside and wait for the food
to be delivered.

A young girl, at most fourteen of age, brought Lysandre her tray with Lara’s breakfast. Lysandre
smiled at the kid. The girl looked away timidly. Lysandre guessed a lot about her. A streetrat, and my
replacement at the very least, she thought. And then she asked:

“Are you a Streethold?”

The girl looked embarrassed for a moment and then mumbled a barely audible “Yes.”

Lysandre petted the girl and whispered confidentially: “I guess that makes us sisters.”

She took out a few copper coins from her dress and gave them to the girl. It was a fortune to a
kid like that.

The child struggled for words, as she was obviously not used to this. Lysandre knew the feeling
well enough. She smiled warmly at the girl and said, “Now you listen to me. Do your work swiftly and
keep out of the old fart’s reach, and you’ll go far, okay?
 The girl giggled when Lysandre called the cook an old fart.

“Streetrat!” The old cook boomed from the kitchen.

The girl looked back to the kitchen, and instinctively Lysandre did the same. She couldn’t help
it—four years of trained habit and all that. Then she laughed. “Go, and remember: out of reach, okay?”

The girl nodded seriously and ran off. Lysandre couldn’t help smiling again.

Her smile was, however, quickly replaced by confusion as she found the hallway blocked by
several armed members of the royal guard. She squeezed by them, avoiding eye contact, but even so
noticed a few smirks that were quickly followed by:

“Hey, servant girl! Is that food for us?”

“We would be honored to share it with you.”

Lysandre gathered her resolve and said, “This food is for Lady Lara Dunston.”

She expected that mentioning Lara would get them to respectfully back off. What she saw on
their faces, however, was some terrible realization dawning. Almost like a shock one gets when putting
their hand into a rabbit hole and realizing it has been occupied by snakes.

“Apologies!” One of them said, his voice nervously cracking as he rushed the other three away.

Lysandre was left in the hallway, alone and confused. For a moment she started considering the
implications, the rumors, but then she turned to her old ways of thinking.

Let it go, Lysandre! This has to do with rich, important people’s business. And you are neither rich
nor important, nor is this any of your business!

She shrugged mildly and went about what was her business. She took a quick glance at herself in
the vampire mirror and smiled, satisfied.

Lara’s room was by then illuminated dimly by warm colors that bled through heavy reddish
drapery pulled over the windows. The room faced east, and Lysandre found it to be a magical place
during dawn. Rogue rays of light escaped into the room in places where the drapes met and to the left
of the window. Bathed in the warm glow was a sleeping princess. A fairy creature, a magical being with
warm eyes and…

Not that morning.

Lara was sitting at her table, absentmindedly combing her hair.

“Did the guards wake you up?”Lysandre asked while setting down the tray with Lara’s breakfast.

“What? N-no… I couldn’t sleep.”

 Lysandre looked at Lara, and Lara looked back at her, something in her face, restlessness
and…something else…

Lara stared at her and then touched Lysandre’s hair. Noticing the brush in Lara’s hand, Lysandre
raised her hands up in comical self-defense. “Oh no, not again. I brushed it myself; I swear by the
spirits!”

Lara looked down at the brush, almost as if she just realized she was holding it. She set it aside.

“No…it’s just… I sometimes forget how beautiful you are.”

Lara’s face still held a secret from Lysandre, but her effort to decode it was stopped in its tracks.
This was always so when Lara called her beautiful.

It always left Lysandre flustered and blushing, yet even so, she knew something was off that
morning. There was something in Lara’s face and her voice that morning, with drapes still closed and
only the stolen light entering her room.

Something…

Lara stood up and took Lysandre by the hand. “I want to show you something!”

Without a moment’s hesitation, she took her outside. They climbed the stairs that led to the
eastern tower. Lysandre knew this to be the library of Lord Dunston. She never visited the place, of
course, but she overheard the cleaning staff mentioning it. Truth was, most of Dunston Manor was still a
mystery to her. Lord Dunston’s study, the library, the armory, the trophy room, the master bedroom,
guest bedrooms—all of these might as well have been foreign countries to Lysandre. Just like distant
lands, she only knew of them from overheard conversations. And just like distant lands, she had never
personally laid her eyes upon any of them.

Lara unlocked the great oaken doors and locked them behind her as they entered a large, well-
illuminated room. Even with the drapes half closed, it too was facing east enough to be bathed in
dawn’s early glow. And what a room it was. In the center of it stood a massive table with curious devices
scattered all over it. At first glance, these tools seemed haphazardly tossed on the table’s surface. A
closer look would reveal them to be spotlessly maintained. It was a creative mess, for sure, but there
was no sign of neglect upon these objects.

As they passed them by, Lara remarked, “Explorer’s tools. My grandfather used these to
establish seafaring routes, and he passed them and the business to my father. Nowadays my father uses
these to chart new, safer trading paths.”

Surrounding the main desk were rows of shelves, wardrobes, and glass casings containing vast
amounts of books and curios. There was a strangely pleasant smell to the place. All of the woodwork
was well maintained. The scent of sweet-smelling oils used to polish the furniture filled the room with a
sense of mystery. Lysandre liked this place.
 She looked out through the window and noticed they were high enough to see over the roofs of
the houses, and realized she could clearly see the abandoned Castle Dalkoff from there. Oh, she had
seen it a few times before, when climbing high places of the city as a child. She and the other children
from the orphanage would spend time on rooftops looking for bird nests and thinking up stories of the
castle and the horrors that dwell within it.

“Lysandre?”

She turned to see Lara with a book in her hand. The thing had seen better days, parts of it torn,
irreparably damaged.

Lara placed the book on the desk and gestured for Lysandre to join her.“Have you ever heard
the story of Alyssa of House Dalkoff, the vampire queen?”

Lysandre fought back a chuckle, thinking, Of course I know the story; this is Dalkoffburg. So she
said, “I know as much as anyone does in this town, I guess.”

Lara gave her a strange, cunning look.“Tell me, then. Tell me your version of the story—the
story that everyone in town knows.”

Lysandre was confused for a second, but decided to play along.“Centuries ago, she ruled this
region, a bloodthirsty creature of the night who kept a tight grip over all the land, and then one day she
went power-mad and attacked the city. People stood up to her and her confidant betrayed and killed
her by shattering her soul mirror. And that’s why we celebrate Queensfall, ”she added, smiling like a
proud student correctly answering a teacher’s question.

Lara wasn’t smiling back. Instead, she opened the book, placed it on the table and turned it
towards Lysandre. Lysandre looked at Lara and with no hesitation said, “I can’t read.”

Lara smiled. “One of the things my father taught me was how important knowing the past is.
This city in its illiteracy has forgotten many things. Oh, they carried over stories, but stories are
malleable, ever changing. A letter written speaks the truth to those who make the effort to seek it.”

Lysandre looked down. For some reason she felt scolded. She never thought much of letters or
books. Most people in Dalkoffburg had little use for them.

“Some in this city have long memories, old memories, and they know stories in their original
forms.”

She pushed the book towards Lysandre who looked at her apologetically.

Lara smiled. “No, just look.”

Lysandre did. The opened page was an illuminated piece, little writing. Most of it was filled with
a picture—that of a dark-haired, pale woman encircled in roses, giving her heart to a woman with green
eyes and red hair.
 “This here…” she pointed at the letters.“It says ‘Alyssa, queen of roses; and Melanie. Ever may
they rule kindly and ever may their love blossom.’”

Lysandre frowned a little. “Queen of roses?”

“Like I said, there is another story lost in the past and…seemingly intentionally so,”she said,
stroking the torn-out edges of long-lost pages.“My father insisted on me learning to read. He said‘A
queen-to-be needs to have the foresight to decide on the future as much as the knowledge of what was
lost.”

Lysandre looked at her. There was now sadness on her face. A deep pain she was trying to hide.

It was then and there that Lysandre realized the rumors were true. She knew why royal advisors
were often seen talking to Lord Dunston, why the house was buzzing with excitement, and now it made
sense why the royal guard was prowling the grounds. Lara was of marrying age, and King Franz had a son
a few years older. The Dunstons’ wealth was vast enough to grant them a title of nobility. Many
wondered about that, however, it all made sense if one considered the laws of the land. Royalty could
only marry into other nobility.

“So, it’s true.”

Lara looked at her.

“The rumors. You are to be our future queen.”

Lara’s eyes welled up. Lysandre moved closer, unsure what to do. Lara stopped her. “We’ll talk
about this later, but first, you have to know…know why I brought you here. Why I wanted you in my
service.”

Lysandre backed off, suddenly a little scared. “What is this all about?”

“It is about love.”

Lara sat down and pulled out a chair for Lysandre, who speechlessly joined her. Lara then pulled
the book closer once again.

“This was a long time ago—six centuries, some say; even the book is of no real help here.
Dalkoffburg was a border village next to a small fortress that kept changing occupancy depending on
which force was invading it at the time. And then it all changed the day the queen arrived. She came
from the lake and saved a girl from attackers. This girl then brought her to the village, and there Alyssa
saw great suffering. And so she laid waste to the usurpers in the night of blood.

“She then took to her the girl she saved: Melanie. A girl of red hair and eyes of spring grass.

“Melanie was her beloved. Today that would get you collared, but back then…who would think
of it? Who would dare?” she said, smiling, and there was something in those sunflower eyes. A
desperate longing. It was there the whole morning, the riddle of Lara’s face now laid bare.
 Lara was silent for a moment, her eyes pinned to the pages. She looked restless.

“From there on, the book is destroyed. No other information about Alyssa and Melanie. Only
these lines at the very last page—added, I presume, by whoever destroyed it. It says ‘Melanie, the
betrayer and the mother of destruction, lover to the Bloodbeast. Forget her. Bury her in the past.’

“All the stories say the queen went mad with power…but I think that maybe she went mad with
love.”

Lysandre said nothing. Her ears, however, spoke loudly as they swiftly turned that special shade
of red reserved for those moments when Lara would call her beautiful.

“This is what I was thinking of that day in the tub, when you entered the bathroom. Here I am,
the future queen, and my own red-haired, green-eyed enchantress there by my side. It was a funny
thought at first…Yet the more I looked at you, the more it appealed to me. The more…you appealed to
me.”

Lysandre could hear the blood pounding in her ears.

“I loved this story, a story of a queen who loved a woman and loved her enough to go mad for
her… Maybe it is just me connecting the stars in the sky to make a picture. I certainly don’t have all the
pages here to know it, but ever since I first read it, it felt true to me.

“And here I am now, about to be wed to a man I don’t know or have any attachment to. I will be
a queen someday, and yet… I think of this story, of Alyssa and Melanie, and feel myself desperately
wanting to do something entirely mad. And it scares me…”

Lara restlessly fiddled around with the lace trimming on her dress until it tore off. She looked at
it and sighed. A tear dropped.

“’Melanie of the Night…’”

Lara looked up. Lysandre was looking at the book.

“Your song. ‘Melanie of the Night.’ It is about her, then?”

Lara nodded.

Lysandre mused over the image and then spoke her thoughts. “A green-eyed beauty
whocaptured the heart of a queen…and drove her…”She looked into Lara’s eyes, sunflowers in full
bloom, sunlit and wild.

“Mad with love!”Lara finished the sentence and kissed Lysandre with the passion of an
unchained animal.
 Lysandre’s mind momentarily abandoned all reality as her senses were drowned. The softness of
Lara’s lips. Her hands, one around Lysandre’s waist, other buried in her hair. The scent of Lara’s
perfume; tender, not obnoxious. And the sound of breathing.

Then she took it all in and grabbed onto Lara with equal passion, equal hunger, a longing finally
released.

Then their lips parted for a moment. It was long enough for Lara to ask of her a simple thing.

“Take off your dress!”

Before Lysandre could say anything, she was once again drowned in Lara’s embrace. Even if she
thought of saying something, she could no longer remember it. It couldn’t have been that important
anyway, she thought. The doors were locked… They were alone. The morning light was the only witness
to their passion. And it made for a poor witness, as it would soon be on its way looking at other places,
other people, and they would be left to themselves.

Lara Dunston, the future queen, lady of the manor… Then and there,Lysandre belonged to her.

And with that joyous thought, Lysandre proceeded to remove her dress as Lara eagerly helped
her with the trickier bits. Soon she was nude before her lady, who was still dressed. Lara stood up and
moved the astrological devices on the table and then told Lysandre to climb on the table itself.

The wood was cold, she noticed as she laid on the surface, covering her mouth to hide a silly
grin. She was looking up at an illustrated ceiling, keeping her mind occupied by counting the painted
stars, trying her hardest not to get completely crushed by the moment.

She heard the sound of Lara’s dress as it fell to the ground, a faint rustle as Lara exited the
bundle of cloth. And then a touch. Gentle hands, moving up her thighs. Very unlike her own, and for a
moment she grew nervous. Her own rough hands. No pampered life of the last two months could
completely remove the rough scarring of old calluses.

Hands moved upwards towards her tenderness and she shuddered down to her toes as she felt
a kiss planted there. She looked down and saw Lara, Lady Dunston, the future queen looking up at her,
sunflower eyes in full bloom.

She is a wolf, she thought for a moment. She is a wolf and she will have me whole.

And she did.

Lysandre closed her eyes and felt Lara move upwards, kissing her all the way as she left those
most sensitive areas. For a moment Lysandre wanted nothing more than to push her back down, but it
was a brief moment as soon she felt Lara’s fingers reach inside her and she arched her back instinctively.

She grabbed Lara and searched all over her body, not looking, afraid to look, for the moment
was too dreamlike and it would surely evaporate if she dared to look again.
 Soon her hand found the place. Wet to the touch. Her mind no longer dwelled on whether or
not her hands were rough. She sunk her fingers into that secret place and started exploring.

Lara moaned and started kissing her. And so they remained embraced, one arm around the
other’s neck, and one firmly planted between each other’s legs, lost in the bliss that had been denied for
so long.

-------------------

Sunlight had by then warmed the room and the dark surface of the sturdy old table. Lysandre
touched the warm surface of the wood and, amused by it, said to the sky, “Where was this warmth
when I first got on this thing?”

Lara smirked while placing her hand on the table next to Lysandre’s, feeling the same warmth. “I
think part of this is our doing.”

Lysandre smiled, embarrassed.

The rest of the manor went about its business preparing for many things—a birthday, an
engagement, big announcements. A hectic buzz of a large beehive, and up in the library, there was
silence.

“So… what now?”Lysandre asked while looking at the ceiling once more.

“Now we get dressed. I do have a party to attend, so maybe brush our hair as well,”she said,
staring at the mess that was Lysandre’s hair. She presumed her own wasn’t doing much better, either.

At the very mention of brushing her hair, Lysandre gave her a disgusted look.

Lara kissed her gently and the look was gone.

“Yes, my lady,” she replied, now smiling.

They got dressed, and Lysandre went out first, checking the hallways. She waited a bit until a
maid left the main hallway before signaling Lara to go. Soon they were both safe in Lara’s room, but
nothing about it was the same again. Lysandre helped Lara undress and put on her formal gown. She’d
done so many times before, always making sure to touch her as little as possible. Not this time. She
would take any moment she could to caress Lara. She helped her fix her hair, and as she lifted it up, she
planted a few kisses on her neck.

No, nothing would ever be the same again, Lysandre thought as Lara tenderly brushed the
tangles out of her unruly red hair. They were playing with fire and the fire felt so inviting, so warm.
4.Burned by the Fire

Lysandre felt exposed. Naked. Completely out of place.

All around her were people of wealth and nobility, and she was a streetrat pulled into this world
of decadent wealth. She found small comfort in the fact that Lara didn’t seem to like this crowd that
much, either. She found much greater comfort in the fact that nobody expected her to carry a
conversation, so instead she could spend her time thinking about the library, about Lara.

Sure, these thoughts made her crave Lara’s touches once again, but that was fine. Nobody could
notice it, and even if they paid attention to a lowly maid, at most they would notice the embarrassed
smile and red ears of a person out of their place. In fact, the only one who noticed was Lara, glancing in
her direction ever now and then, sharing a secret smile. Making sure that every time she ordered her to
do something, it was paired up with a gentle touch.

She is claiming me as her own in front of everyone and I am the only one who knows it, Lysandre
mused as she went about bringing Lara a glass of wine. She pitied her in a way. All alone in the crowd of
boring-looking people, having to carry conversations that were of no interest to her.

“Out of the way, streetrat.”

Lysandre’s thoughts were interrupted by Lara’s former maid passing by with a jug of freshly
poured wine. She set it onto a large table burdened with seemingly endless trays of food. Dried meats,
pastries, pickled and fresh vegetables arranged in small bowls topped with sour cream… Expensive food,
and even so, it was nothing but an opening dish. Something to nibble while you mingled.

Lysandre was hungry, but still she was reluctant to approach the table while the old maid was
still there.

To her surprise, Lara gently placed her arm around hers and whispered, “You must be hungry.
So am I. Get us some food, will you?”

Lysandre smiled gratefully and moved over to the table. She took two small plates and started
organizing a selection of food for Lara and herself.

“We have climbed far, haven’t we?” She heard a voice behind her.
 She didn’t have to guess who it was. The old maid. Harriot Barnes was her name. She’d served
the household for twenty years, and she didn’t take kindly to being replaced by Lysandre. Lysandre had
a feeling that she was part of the reason why the other servants in the house avoided her.

“We haven’t climbed anything,” Lysandre answered, still not dignifying the old maid with a look.
Then she turned to face her. “Lady Lara made her own choice and picked me to be her maid in your
stead. That is all.”

She didn’t expect any of this to make any difference to the old maid, but it was the truth. Well,
all of the truth she would ever share.

Harriot pursed her lips, giving Lysandre a cunning, measuring look. “I’ve dealt with your kind
before. Street rats who find their way into this house by our lord’s mercy, only to be kicked out when
caught in their thieving ways. And now you have found your way to the real riches, haven’t you?”

Lysandre took the plates and turned to leave.

“I’m watching you, streetrat, and not just with my own eyes.”

At that moment, a bell sounded and all eyes turned to Lord Dunston and Lara at the center of
the room. Lara glanced back at Lysandre with a mock accusatory look.

Lysandre gestured with the food-laden plates and gave Lara an exaggerated apologetic look.

Lord Dunston cleared his throat. “My lords, ladies, and those of you who strive to have that
honor granted to them.”

A few people chuckled, but the silence was mostly uninterrupted.

“We have gathered here today to celebrate the nineteenth birthday of my lovely daughter, Lady
Lara Dunston.”

An applause broken with sporadic cheers echoed through the room. Lysandre cheered as well,
as her hands were too full for applause.

“But more than that…”The applause dimmed. “More than that…” He seemed to be searching for
words.

“Our city has lived through a long and strange history. A long time ago, we were governed by a
cruel vampire queen. And yet we rose above it—we dethroned her! We broke her crown and scepter
and said no! We, the people of Dalkoffburg, stand for something better! And we redeemed our city, and
thrived because of it. Now they know us as the holy city; as the ray of hope! And soon they will know us
for another queen!”

An excited chatter spread through the room. Royal guardsmen cut open the path through the
crowd, and as Lysandre struggled to prevent the food falling from the plates she held, a well-dressed
man walked through the newly made passage, followed by several important-looking people.
 That young man stood next to Lara and took her hand, never looking at her.

“Today,” Lord Dunston continued, “today is a day for many celebrations, as I am honored to
announce the engagement of my daughter, Lady Lara Dunston, to his royal highness, Prince Wilbur of
Herentia.”

A tumultuous applause erupted through the great hall as many took small bows, as much as the
compressed crowd could allow. And even from a distance, Lysandre saw in Lara’s face the same look she
had that morning in the room.

She stood there, plates in hand, as everyone toasted. She listened to the gossip of the crowd.

“…Dunston’s trading fleet and immense wealth will help fuel the colonization of the northern
regions.”

“…I hear it’s not colonization they are planning. There is gold beyond the Glass Lake. Getting to
it is a problem, and a massive expense, but with Dunston’s well-known mastery of establishing trading
routes…”

“… They wouldn’t dare go north, would they? That is too close to Davor’s territory. It would be
foolish to tread so close to a primal vampire’s lands…”

This was rich people talk. Secrets shared among investors and old partners of Lord Dunston and
all overheard by the keen ears of a former street rat.

She didn’t want to be there a minute longer. She was annoyed seeing these people treating Lara
as a pawn, a trading commodity. And what hurt the most was, they were probably right. A simple look at
Lara and the prince spoke more loudly than any gossip. Stiff body language, her looking to the side; him,
above her head. It was a marriage of convenience. A loveless charade! Lysandre needed no rumors to
recognize that.

She desperately wanted to go up there, make up an excuse and pull Lara away, and
just…escape. She did no such thing, of course. It was a childish thought.

The rest of the evening was downright boring. Lara and the prince were seated separately from
others, and lords would come by and congratulate them on their engagement and toast to the future of
the kingdom and so on. Meanwhile, Lysandre sat down on a chair in the corner of the room and ate her
food.

She thought of Lara, of that morning, and found that the more she contemplated it, the
unhappier she got. She saw her in the distance, at the far end of that room, and knew well that there
was no future for them. Especially not in Dalkoffburg. Lysandre didn’t know much, but she knew that.

Her desires, her affections would get her collared if she wasn’t careful.
 She had seen women with such collars before. Not many of them. People avoided them. Called
them names, spoke of them in hushed tones. She found out early on that only the women who seek the
affection of other women were collared. She was a child back then, so she naturally asked, “But why?”

She remembered the answer of the orphanage’s matron.“They whisper to the dark. That’s why
we have to collar them. Otherwise, the dark might have something to whisper back…”

She was young, fourteen at the time. While all this must have sounded terrifying to the matron,
Lysandre had spent most of her time with other orphans. Scary tales were abundant among the
children. She was regularly told of far creepier things than mere whispers in the dark. Suffice to say, she
was hardly impressed. In fact, these vague attempts at intimidation made her even more curious.

So they are collared, she thought. What of it?

She had seen these women walk around, talk mostly to each other, smile, even laugh. Oh yes,
Lysandre paid close attention to them. After all, she realized early on that she was a lot like them. At
times she would follow them around, observing them. One time she followed them all the way to their
home. They had a large house up near the north city wall. She spent most of that day looking from the
shadows. It didn’t seem like a bad life. There were at least six of them in the house. She had seen two of
them kiss once. Lysandre supposed that made sense. They weren’t going to collar them twice.

Her thoughts once again returned to Lara. Wild ideas rushed through her head.

What if…what if we were collared? If Lara and I were caught and sentenced…would those
women welcome us? It wouldn’t be this life, but at least we would be together.

These were dumb ideas, childish fantasies of eloping lovers and secret hideaways. And they
were all she had at that moment. She embraced the fantasies because the reality of it all was staring her
in the face, and it broke her heart to meet its gaze.

Applause snapped her out of her musings as she noticed the prince and Lara departing the hall.
Lysandre couldn’t bear looking at them. After a while, with the sound of trumpets, they both boarded a
royal chariot and the last thing Lysandre heard was the sound of hooves. The party turned to their
gossip once again. They were much louder this time.

Lysandre felt alone. Not needed. She supposed that last one was true enough, so she left the
plates, took one last look at the hall, and went to her room. She passed old Harriot mumbling something
to another servant, and they both shot her a dirty look.

That’s fine, she thought. I’ll soon be out of your hair as well.

It was the dead of night when she was shocked awake by someone entering her bed. She was
about to say something when she felt a hand in the dark covering her mouth. She knew that hand.
Delicate and gentle, she knew the perfume, and she knew the soft voice that whispered“It’s me.”

-------------------
 Harriot Barnes smirked the whole evening after seeing the street rat at the party. Her time was
about to end. Twenty years I served the Dunstons—I practically raised the young lady—and you would
now take my place? Oh, I think not, little rat. I think not. She snuck away when the prince arrived and
made her way to the servants’ rooms.

She had the key. She had all the keys! She was a trusted servant. Not some street rat picked on a
whim by a fickle child who would easily forget the kindness of old Harriot. This was fine; she knew how
to get rid of the unwanted. She knew all that could be known in this house.

Harriot knew where the young lady’s expensive jewelry was kept, knew how and when to get it,
and she had a very good idea where it should be found. While everyone was applauding the
engagement, Harriot put a jeweled gold necklace under Lysandre’s mattress. She stood up, looked at the
room around her, and smiled.

-------------------

“What are you doing here?”Lysandre whispered as her eyes got used to the dark and she saw
Lara’s hair and face reflecting the moonlight that poured through her small window.

“Was I not clear about it this morning?”

“No… I mean, yes, but I saw you leaving with the prince.”

“A short appearance for the crowd and the city elders, but that’s all. The wedding is in three
months still.”

Lysandre was silent.

“Lysa?”

She smiled. It was a sad smile.“Don’t… You know this is pointless.”

Lara stood up a little, leaning on one arm, and studied Lysandre’s face in the dark. Tears
glistened in the moonlight. “Lysa, please…”

“You will be married in three months and you will leave. There is no future for…for this.”

“You don’t know that!” Lara said.

“Okay, how? How do you see us going forward? We are in Dalkoffburg! If anyone found out
about us…”

“I am not forbidden to bring my maid to the palace with me. Away from Dalkoffburg.”

“And then what?” Lysandre could barely hold back the sob. “I would be the queen’s dirty little
secret for life? Or until we are discovered and you have to get rid of me?”

“No! I…I would never… I would never be rid of you!”

 She was crying. Lysandre could hear it and could no longer hold back. To devils with the future;
she was crying now and Lysandre couldn’t take it. She kissed her in the dark, and felt Lara sink into her
kiss. Soft, tender. She removed her nightgown, and they made love in the moonlight, muffling their own
moans of pleasure. They indulged in their secret and celebrated the moment…and then, the world
exploded around them.

It wasn’t the explosion of passion they were nearing.

No, instead it was harsh light from the doors that just opened. And standing there was old maid
Harriot with two guardsmen and an annoyed-looking Lord Dunston.

“Wake up, thief!”Harriot proclaimed loudly, and then was left wordless. There for all to see,
Lysandre and Lara laid entwined in their love for each other.

Harriot’s face was warped with incredulous rage.

“Harlot!”

“Demon whore!”

“Nightlust!”

“Corruptor of the—”

“Silence!” Lord Dunston shouted, then turned to the hallway and ordered the peeking servants
who were woken by the ruckus to return to their rooms.

He stood there silently, looking at Lara and Lysandre, then looked away.

“Father!” Lara called.

“Get dressed. Both of you,” he said, and closed the doors while leaving the candle in the room.

They were taken in two different chariots, Lara pleading with her father not to do what she
knew he was going to do. It was to no avail.

Lysandre knew what was going to happen as well. This was the law of the city. An old law from
days forgotten by most. She worried, but her worries were different from Lara’s. Life taught her not to
dwell on her misfortune, because there was never time for that.

They were going to be collared. There was no escaping the law of the elders. This much she was
sure of.

What did that mean for them, though? Worst outcome, Lara’s father disowns her. It was a
terrible possibility, but a plausible one, she thought. Where, then? The workinghouse would never take
them in. They would need shelter, so Lysandre would take her to the only place that might accept them:
the big house at the northern wall where others like them resided. Lara would need to learn hard labor.
It would be difficult, but still, they would be together.

There were other options, and she was about to consider them when the chariot stopped and
she was pulled out and brought into the hall of the elders.

It was a large, circular building. Older than most, if not all, of the other buildings in the city. It
stood out both physically, as it was the center of a large square, and by its material. It was one of the
only two buildings in the city built from the same black stones that comprised Castle Dalkoff.
Surrounding the building were five black free-standing pillars, each topped with an orb. Three made of
metal, and two of stone.

It was an old place, filled with old secrets and housing old people. In a way, Dalkoffburg bowed
down to three rulers: the nobility, the traders’ guild, and the elders. And of those three, it was the elders
who maintained the old laws, because they were the only ones among the three who could read them.
They kept old knowledge from disappearing the way it does when told over generations. All of the old
stories that twisted and changed through centuries of retelling, the elders knew them in their original
form. In a way, they were the true judges of the city.

And Lysandre was brought in for just that. Her judgment.

Lara was brought in a few minutes later in tears, her father whispering something energetically.
Lysandre saw Lara pleading once more, but he cut her off, this time loudly enough for Lysandre to hear.

“None of that, Lara! You will abandon this nonsense, and act like the queen you are meant to
be!”

Three elders entered the room then, old grumpy folk worthy of their name. One hairless, one
toothless, and one with a large wart on her forehead. There were more of them, however, at that late
hour, not even Lord Dunston’s name could have gathered them all.

“Lord Barnaby Dunston, what is this business of transgression we were told about? Waking an
old woman from her sleep like that. Very unbefitting!” Wart said, looking at Lord Dunston with the
scornful eye of a displeased teacher.

Hairless added: “And unusual. Transgressions are a serious business, but surely this could have
waited till morning.”

Toothless, however, whispered something to both of them, and pointed his bony finger at
Lysandre. She noticed their eyes widen as they turned to look at her.

“Never mind, “Hairless said. “We see that it is a matter of some urgency. And the other
transgressor?”

“My daughter, eminences.”

 This riled them up, vigorous whispering among the three. Every now and then they looked at
Lara, and then at Lysandre, and Lysandre could have swore she heard one of them call her “Melanie,”
and “devil reborn.” It didn’t take long for them to reach their conclusion.

“The laws are clear on this, Lord Dunston. Collaring for both of them.”

“Your eminences! My daughter… It was a lapse of judgment. You see, she is to be wed soon.”

“We heard,” Wart said, but allowed Lord Dunston to continue.

“She was… nervous, so she looked for comfort with her servant. It was a fleeting moment,
nothing more. Surely some leniency—”

“Our laws have kept us safe because we have honored them, Lord Dunston.” Hairless
proclaimed with an immodest air of self-importance. “That being said, given the impact…and proximity
of your daughter’s wedding, some leniency is, I think, possible.”

“Tell me, child,” Wart now continued, speaking directly to Lara. “Do you renounce this
temptress? Was your transgression a lapse in judgment and no more than that?”

Lysandre saw Lord Dunston’s hand on Lara’s shoulder grip her tighter. Saw her tears.

“Well?” Wart urged.

Lysandre saw Lara starting to shake her head at her father, her face in absolute agony, and she
couldn’t stand it anymore. “Tell them!” Lysandre shouted suddenly. “Tell them what you told me! You
were afraid of your wedding night and wanted someone to help you understand what it was like to
satisfy a man. And I showed you!”

Lara stared at her, eyes now red with tears, incredulous.

“Well, child?” Wart continued with a deeply encouraging tone of voice. “Is this how it
happened?”

Lara kept looking at Lysandre.

Unable to speak, Lysandre smiled and nodded. She turned away from her. Lara sobbed
relentlessly, her father pushing her to speak.

“Well, Lara? Come on, speak up! Was it so? Was it so, Lara?!”

“Yes…”

“Very well, child. Lord Dunston, you would do well to keep her indoors until her wedding day,
we think. She does not require collaring. This one, however…”

Lysandre heard her sentence, but she didn’t respond. She was hollow. Uncaring. Their voices
were nothing to her.
 She knew there was no future for them. She knew it was hopeless from the beginning. In a way,
this was the only way it could have ended.

She faintly remembered Lara screaming her name as she was led to the forge under the great
hall.

She was bound, tightly secured in a chair. The smith received a key from one of the elders,
probably the toothless one. Lysandre didn’t care. The smith used the key to open a large safety box built
inside the building wall. From it, he removed one of about a few dozen peculiar-looking necklaces. They
called them collars; however, they were really a series of metal plates linked together, with the final link
left unwelded.

Smith then heated up this remaining link and they placed a wet cloth behind her neck. Metal was made
red-hot and very pliable. The collar was then placed around her neck, the wet cloth serving as a shield
from the heated part. The smith then used the back part of the chair as a small anvil and hammered the
heated link until the metal was good and fused. The collar was in place and they cooled it off with cold
water, much of it going down Lysandre’s back, briefly snapping her out of her apathy.

What came after was worse. They didn’t properly cool the metal before removing the wet piece
of cloth and it burned her skin. She screamed, partially from the pain, the rest from a broken heart.
5.The Paths Untraveled

The air was cold when she was thrown out. It didn’t help that the back of her dress had been
drenched. That was the only thing that the blacksmith’s cooling water accomplished properly. It
certainly didn’t prevent the burn, and the burn itself, while not large, was certainly intense. It formed a
nasty blister that grew as much as it could before being punctured by the collar. What was left behind
was flayed skin, painfully irritated by the collar’s metal and bleeding at the edges.

Lysandre was alone. No chariots ready to take her anywhere nice. It was just her and the cold
autumn street of Dalkoffburg. Dawn wasn’t far away yet; that was a small comfort. She made her way to
the city well. Water was clean there and she would need it.

Her eyes burned from the tears, but she knew better than to fall apart then and there in despair.
No one would care, not anymore, not now. There were voices echoing down the street. Not unusual,
really. Once upon a time, even Lysandre would get up before the dawn and make her way across the
town towards a kitchen that suddenly seemed much more appealing. For a while. Lysandre wandered
aimlessly. She had an idea where she was, at least. It was, after all, the south side of the city. The
workinghouse and the river weren’t far from there. At the end of the street, Lysandre noticed a large
baker’s cart as several men unloaded large flour bags.

She passed them by and, as two of them called out to her, she noticed the third one gesture to
them, pointing at his neck. Their attitude changed, and they turned away.

If it wasn’t for the intense pain that radiated from the back of her neck and across her back and
skull, she might have found that whole moment amusing. She remembered very few things spoken past
her sentencing. One of them was something that Toothless slurred when the smith took out her collar.

“Never ssshall a vampire go near you!”

If she was in less pain, she might have thought, Vampire bakers, the lot of them. Begone, beasts!
As it was, she was driven to the city well. Only thoughts of the spring water and maybe a warm place
past that.

It didn’t take her much longer till she got to the well. There were always people there, but even
without the collar, she knew they were there on their own business and rarely paid attention to the
dealings of others.

Lysandre sat at the edge of the well. This was a natural spring of running water which the town
took effort to frame in marble. Best water you could get, certainly better than the stuff you pulled from
the great river Ranna. At least you never had to boil the spring water. With some effort, Lysandre tore
off a piece of her undergarments and soaked the cloth in fresh spring water. Then she folded it a few
times and placed it between the collar and the burn. She quickly noticed that the pressure on her neck
was uncomfortably tight, so she adjusted the cloth.

This was better. Far from good, but it was an improvement nevertheless. Her pain subsiding, she
turned her attention to other needs. A bit further down, where the square met another street, one of
the square fires burnt brightly. It was a small bonfire in a stone basin that merchants used while loading
and unloading their wares. Even at this hour, there were people around it. The fire did look inviting. And
she was cold. At the very least, it would take sunlight to dry off the back of her dress, and sunlight was a
cold hour away.

Still, she remembered the response of the baker boys. How would those merchants respond to
her collar? It didn’t help that her maid dress was open-necked and she had no scarf or veil to conceal it.
Lysandre looked around for anything she could use as a makeshift scarf. The only cloth she could see
were the tarps from merchant wagons, and those were guarded. She considered tearing off some of her
dress, but decided against it. It really was the last thing she had.

By that point, she was shivering. There was no going around it. She gathered her courage and
approached the fire. Its warmth brought back sensation into her limbs. Her hands were especially numb,
what with handling the spring water. Another four people around the stone basin, three men and one
woman, said nothing to her. Lysandre turned her back to the fire and went closer to better dry her back.

It was then that she felt a hand stopping her. She turned swiftly, but was met with a kind face. It
was one of the men sharing the warmth. Toothless and old himself, like one of the elders that judged
her, yet in other ways nothing alike. His eyes, though blue, were warm. His smile, though weary, was an
honest one.

“Be careful young’un. It’s old wood here and it has ways of throwing unexpected sparks. And
believe you me, long hair like yours goes up in flames fast!”

Embarrassed, Lysandre said a small “Thank you!”

He looked at her seriously for a moment, then pointed at her neck. “Got you good there, huh?”

She looked away.

“Oh I ain’t judgin’. Them old-timers have hearts of stone. Guess you’ll have to find yerself a
husband to get that off, eh?”

He paused for a moment, almost as if he was waiting for her response. She remained silent.

“Oh, don’t look at me. I’m too old for that!” he laughed. It was an honest laugh. Sure, it
contained only half the teeth, but it had all of his heart in it. “Name’s Barsan! Barsan Abbot!”

“Lysandre Streethold.”
 “Oh, now thar’s a big family!” he said, grinning.

She smiled back, but there was little joy in her. Barsan looked a little embarrassed. “You don’t
mind this?” She pointed at the collar.

“Me? Nah, I’m from the capital. From Herentia. Here to peddle some of my own wares, what
with the royal engagement and all. We’re used to all this. To each their own, I say, and to me their coin!”

Lysandre absentmindedly stared at the fire.

“Still…” he continued, “I visit Dalkoffburg often enough to know your laws and…that whole
thing.” He pointed at the collar. “Weird superstitious place, this.”

“I guess…” she muttered.

“Ever considered leaving it?”

“Can’t now.”

She pointed at the collar. While her mind was adrift during her sentencing, she did hear that
much. She was forbidden to go beyond the outer wall. She supposed they had ways of hunting her
down if she ever tried.

Travelling outside the city borders is forbidden for the collared girls.”

“I see.” Barsan grimaced.

She looked up, wincing from pain. The skies were growing lush with dawn’s light. Soon the
square would be full of people going about their business and she thought, I should go about mine. But
what was my business now? Where do I go?

The answer was obvious. She had contemplated it before, last time in a chariot when she
thought about taking care of Lara in a house she knew… near the north wall. She had no idea what she
would find there. Would they scoff at her for presuming herself invited to their gathering by virtue of
collar alone?

It was possible. Still, she had services to offer, she thought. Her hands were well used to work.
Perhaps they too needed a kitchen rat to scurry around its corners? Cleaning the place, and feeding on
crumbs. Not a terribly cheerful thought. Still, there was some comfort in its familiarity, if nothing else.

She touched the back of her dress. It wasn’t completely dry. Nevertheless, the morning’s walk
should take care of the rest.

She looked at old Barsan. He was working on opening a flask with one hand. Lysandre then
noticed he was missing four fingers on his other one. He saw her noticing.
 “Three to a young bear and one to a wolf!” he laughed. “Make no mistake, they paid for them in
hides.”

She reached out, gesturing to the flask.

He handed it to her. “I usually open it easily,” he mumbled, “but just can’t warm up this old
finger o’ mine. Once was a time I’d make a joke about a nice girl warmin’ it up fer me. Nowadays, let’s
face it, even the nightgirls have enough pride not to be seen with this ugly ol’ mug.” He chuckled.

“Aw who am I kidding. Both of ‘em are more useless by the day!” he said, looking at his other
hand as well. Lysandre noticed him forming a fist again and again and seemed to be doing it with some
effort.

She gave him the flask, now opened. He smiled at her, a slightly embarrassed warm smile. There
was no mean in the old man, Lysandre thought.

“You first!” he insisted. “You’ll like it. It’s the seven moons stuff!” he said confidentially.“Warm
you up on the inside better than any fire.”

Lysandre had heard of the seven moons. Expensive liquor; hard to find even if you had the
money.

She looked at the old man with curiosity, and took a swig. It tasted divine, both bittersweet and
burning. Then she felt wonderful warmth spreading inside her.

“See?” He winked at her. “Old Barsan knows his spirits!”

She gave him the flask, smiled widely, and said her goodbye.“Good luck with your tradings,
Barsan.”

“Spirits watch your path, Lysandre!” he replied seriously.

As she left the fire, Lysandre noticed the remaining three around it whispering and looking at
her.

I guess this is unavoidable from now on, she thought. Still, one friendly person out of four wasn’t
so bad. It wasn’t much different from her usual dealings with people before the collaring.

Morning had spread its warmth all over the square, a skillful painter washing out the blues of
the night and spreading the fires of dawn. It set ablaze the colorful stones of the buildings and the
marble of the watering well. If Lysandre could see herself at the moment, she might have admired the
effect that sunlight had on her hair and how it danced on her collar. Alas, Lysandre had no time for the
painter of the morning. For her, there were more pressing concerns as she stood for a moment looking
around, finding her direction. She avoided eye contact with people, but soon she noticed an odd thing.
They were doing the same. Every now and then she would see a passerby noticing her collar and just
looking away.
 And she thought to herself, This isn’t all that terrible. Pain in the neck aside, not being noticed
was certainly better than the open antagonism of old maid Harriot. What was it that she called her?
Harlot, demon whore, Nightlust?

A frown hovered on her face as she chased away the memory. A small thought still remained, a
fear gnawing at the back of her mind. What if more people reacted to her the way old Harriot did?

In a way, she didn’t have to wait long for that. An older woman passed her by and spit behind
her. Lysandre heard her mumble quietly, “Filthy Nightblossom.”

Blossom? she thought. Did she hear Harriot wrong? She was sure it was Nightlust.

Lysandre dismissed the thought, for a while at least, as a more encouraging idea formed. A
mumbling old lady spitting behind her was certainly an improvement over old Harriot’s shrieking in the
night. She decided to take small victories wherever she may find them.

Still, a bit curious, she turned to get a better look at the old woman and was stopped by the pain
in her neck. The cloth was dry on her burn. She decided to make one more stop to the fountain and be
on her way.

As she soaked the cloth, she overheard the excited conversations of the few local merchants
who were there to fill their water jugs. They spoke excitedly about the trade routes, and then the
conversation turned to the Dunstons and the royal engagement.

Lysandre pressed the wet cloth on her burn perhaps a little harsher than necessary. One pain to
soften another, she thought to herself, and moved on.

It was a long walk to the north wall as Dalkoffburg had grown over centuries from a small fort
settlement to an all-out metropolis. The hall of the elders was located in the south part. The south side
was often considered the odd side of the town. At the same time, it housed the hall of the elders, the
court of commons, and the traders’ guild. However, just a bit lower where the river Ranna cut though
the town itself, was the undercity of bridges. The poor part of the town where you would find the
workinghouse, the orphanages, and a lot of folks named Streethold. Now, east was the traders’ district
and, if one was to venture outside of the wall, Castle Dalkoff.

The north side housed the common folk. It would have been the least interesting part of
Dalkoffburg if it wasn’t for the other building made of black stone not nearly as large as its sister
building, the hall of the elders. No, this black building was the shrine for the last shard of Alyssa’s
soulmirror.

As for the west, that was where the nobility staked their claim. That was where…

Lysandre looked to the west. In the distance she could see the tower she knew well. It housed
the library, it housed her memories…and a part of her shattered heart.
 She pulled on her collar and pressed on the burn, and the tears that fell were nothing but tears
of pain. Nothing but that, she thought, and turned north.

She didn’t know every corner of the city. Still, she knew that all paths led to the traders’ district,
and from there on it would be easy to find the way to the north wall. Following the largest road was the
easiest way to reach the traders’ district, so she did just that. There were people who noticed her, some
pointing, others just looking the other way, some whispering.

This is my life now, she thought, and decided firmly she would not bother looking at people
around her. Soon the street opened up and exploded into a million small lights. She was there. The
traders’ district: dozens of stores, hundreds perhaps, glittering in the morning sun. Then, at one point,
there was a massive dark shadow that cut through it. Her eyes followed the shadow to its source. It was
high above, higher than the city walls elevated on the hilltop that was sliced in half by the river Ranna.
Castle Dalkoff. Abandoned and ominous. Even in the morning light, there was an unsettling presence to
it.

It was then that Lysandre realized a curious thought. In her nineteen years, she had never been
in the traders’ district or this close to the old castle. It was a curious realization, and at that point she
pondered it. It seemed impossible, and yet it was true. She had lived her life on the south and west sides
of the city, except that one time when she followed a collared girl to that house up north. Even then, the
path took her nowhere near the traders’ district. She remembered getting lost on her way back as well.

She looked to the castle once more to get her bearings and turned north. There were several
streets that went there. However, one was definitely what you’d call a main street. It probably led to the
mirror shrine, she thought, and that was as far north as she could get in the city.

She was right. It was a lengthy walk and much of it uphill, but she found the road was leading to
a small square. In the far end of it was a small black building built in a style reminiscent of Castle Dalkoff
itself. Lysandre distinctly remembered that the house was near the wall as well, so she figured she
would wander the area until something struck her as familiar.

Two hours later and still she had no luck. Lysandre sat down in the shadow of a tree to rest. She
was hungry, her burned neck pounding and her legs aching. Four young kids approached her, excitedly
whispering to each other.

“Hey!”

She ignored them.

“Hey, collared girls aren’t supposed to be here! Go home.”

Lysandre observed the kid and then an idea struck her. “I’d love to, but I seem to have lost my
bearings. Which way is home?”
 The kid seemed reluctant for a second, and then he mustered enough courage to point to a
small street.“That way, end of it and then to the left.”

Lysandre smiled a bit.

The kid seemed embarrassed, then he mumbled, “My mom says your kind speaks to vampires.”

Lysandre got up and fixed her dress.“Yes,” she said, giving the boy a serious look of a secret
holder.“But mostly about the beauty of the dawn and the calm of the sunsets. They are missing out on
those.”

She left the kids confused and her spirits slightly uplifted. If nothing else, there was an end to
her path. If the kid was right, that is.

To her great relief, he was. The house stood slightly separated from the rest of the street. It was
surprisingly big—two floors, a large courtyard—a manor among the commoners. She always found this
peculiar. How could they afford this place? Lysandre had little time to wonder about that. Introductions
were in order, at the very least.

She walked up to the fence and saw a woman in the courtyard working on something. From that
distance, the best she could discern was that she was either carving or painting some pottery. The
woman seemed deeply focused on her work, and Lysandre felt genuinely uneasy about interrupting the
work by calling her over. Would she think it too forward if she just entered the courtyard on her own?
Surely people visited this place. As she stood there considering her approach, a hand dropped on her
shoulder, snapping her out of her thoughts like a wild animal.

She turned around to see a slightly shorter woman observing her suspiciously. Her eyes were
green like Lysandre’s, but her hair was dark brown and cut short. The woman seemed to notice
Lysandre’s collar, and her whole body language relaxed, abandoning suspicion and opting for something
akin to warmth.

“Oh, they didn’t like you, I’m guessing!”

Lysandre was a little taken aback.

The woman smiled a nostalgic smile, her green eyes looking away.“They didn’t like me either.
Green eyes were enough to make them jittery, you know. But you…Green eyes, that red hair…oh, you
must have had them in a panic.”

Lysandre was still not sure she understood what the woman was talking about.

The woman then removed the scarf around her neck to reveal a matching collar glistening in the
sun.“The elders, the old farts. They must have been more jittery than a pack of squirrels facing a wolf.”
 Now the picture was forming—memories of whispered words. Fear in the eyes of Wart,
Toothless and Hairless. And something they’d said. Melanie, devil reborn. Lysandre frowned a little, then
smiled halfheartedly back at the woman.

“Cera! Cera Lovely. And that I very much am!”That seemed well rehearsed, a phrase spoken
with every introduction. And she was proud of it, Lysandre thought as she observed a charming smile on
Cera’s face.

“Lysandre Streethold.”

“Well, Lysandre, no point in you standing here like a gate ornament. Let’s get you introduced to
the rest of the family.”

Lysandre liked the sound of that.

Cera opened the gates and they entered.

6.The Nightblossoms

It was carving after all, Lysandre concluded as they approached the woman busy with decorating
pottery.

Cera walked up to the woman and started whispering something to her. Lysandre took the time
to observe the pottery carver. She was maybe forty years old with a sixty-year-old woman’s hands. Her
hair was black once, but streaked with grey now. It was the wrinkles on her face that told Lysandre
something else about her. Something she couldn’t see from afar.

She had seen many strict, grumpy women in her life, enough to be able to recognize them by
the way wrinkles formed on their faces: vertical around their mouths, and if they had dimples, they too
had since formed into upright chasms that ended where sagging jowls began. In fact, the last time she
saw that was on the face of the old…

“Nightlust!”

“Demon whore!”

Lysandre frowned a little at the memory, but then looked at the woman sitting with pot and
carving tool in hand. Her wrinkles were diagonal, both the ones around her mouth and the small ones
framing her eyes. A person who smiles a lot, laughs perhaps even more. Recognizing this was a street
skill she’d picked up from some other Streetholds in her younger days at the orphanage. Recognizing a
person’s character by their wrinkles helped when begging for a coin or two from travelers. It wasn’t a
sure thing, mind you; nevertheless, about eight out of ten people with those wrinkles would give her a
coin back then.

“This is Leona! She and Mathilde pretty much run this place.”

Cera’s voice pulled Lysandre out of her thoughts, and she extended her hand. “Lysandre
Streethold.”

Leona studied her for a moment, and then concluded “A body of a pampered woman…” she said
a bit coldly, but then smiled, and each of her subtle wrinkles settled comfortably into the position they
were most used to.“Still, these are definitely hands that have seen a lot of work”

She took Lysandre’s hand and her dry palm made a soft scraping sound against Lysandre’s skin.

“Welcome among the Nightblossoms, sister.”

 Nightblossoms, not Nightlust… Lysandre thought momentarily.

“Welcome home!” Cera added

Lysandre smiled widely this time. It was the smile of a weary traveler who had finally gotten
home, and there were tears in that smile, and a weakness of legs. She couldn’t quite put it into words,
but she felt it. This was home. It was home by fate’s decree and the will of the spirits that govern it. Her
home decreed by the judgment of the elders, and the collar around her neck.

Oh yes. This was her home, and she felt welcome.

“Come in. A soft girl like you must be hungry,” Leona said as she stood up with some effort.

Lysandre smirked as all protesting in her about being called soft was silenced by the grumbling
of her stomach.

They entered the house. It was a nice place. No Dunston Manor by any means, but still, for this
part of the city, they seemed to be doing very well for themselves. Once again she wondered how they
could afford this life, but once again her mind pointed to more pertinent issues.

“Do you have some clean water?”

“Of course, but we have better drinks…” Cera started, but Lysandre interrupted her.

“No, not for drinking. I…I was burned during the collaring and…”

She took the cloth from the back of her collar. It was now only kept moist by her own blood
trickling on the edges where the skin was flayed. Cera nodded understandingly and told Lysandre to sit
down. She brought a small jar of something. It wasn’t water, however. It had a subtle smell to it. Not
entirely pleasant. She took a clean piece of cloth with her and dipped it into the gunk in the jar.

“Move your hair, please,” Cera said as she proceeded to fold the soaked cloth and then wrap it
tightly into another longer piece of fabric. This resulted in a strip of cloth with a small brown-tinted
bulge. She placed the bulge on Lysandre’s burned area, and the effect was immediate and intense.
Whatever it was, it produced a tingly sense of numbness and made her forget the pain. Cera tied the
cloth firmly in place.

“We’ll repeat this for a week.”

“You’ve done this before?” Lysandre asked.

“A few times.”

There was no joy to the words, no pride, and no comfort. Just a distant echo of old pains.
Meanwhile, Leona took out bread and milk and a large half-empty jar of jam. Lysandre ate ravenously.
Leona smirked, looking at Cera every now and then. Cera, however, was staring at Lysandre relentlessly.
 Lysandre finally noticed and mid-bite asked, “What is it?”

“So?” Cera asked, an impish grin on her face. “Where is the other one?”

Lysandre looked at both of them with utter confusion on her face. Leona just shrugged with
resignation. This was Cera’s field. Something Lysandre would soon learn well.

“The other one?”

“The other girl, the girl you were caught with. Does she need a roof over her head?”

“No… She is…home.”

“I see,” Cera said, studying Lysandre carefully. “So, what about you? You worked for a rich
family?”

Lysandre coughed a little as a piece of bread made its way into uncharted territory. “Wh-
what?”

“Your dress, your curves. You got the looks of a manor servant, and you definitely have worker’s
hands.”

Lysandre glanced at her hands, but said nothing.

“So who was it? Another servant girl?”

Lysandre mumbled, “Yes, another servant girl.”

At this point, Cera seemed endlessly amused by the whole thing, and Lysandre found herself
increasingly annoyed.

“How inappropriate. Two servant girls in their master’s house!”she said with an exaggerated
tone of outrage.

Mmm-hmm. Lysandre nodded and continued eating.

“Still…”Cera said with a more serious tone.“Good on her that her family didn’t turn from her.”

Lysandre frowned a little, but remained silent.

“I guess she got booted from her employment, though.”

“Not really,” Lysandre said, half lost in her thoughts of Lara and her father and the night behind
her.

Cera looked at her, surprised. Lysandre was suddenly aware that she’d made a big mistake.

“Rich people don’t keep collared girls in their employment! Not even out-of-sight jobs.”
 Lysandre quickly interrupted. “She wasn’t collared because she is getting married!”

At this moment she immediately knew things turned from bad to catastrophic, because now
even Leona looked at her incredulously.

“They will still collar you! There are no exceptions. The only time the collar is removed is once
you bring the proof of marriage to the elders’ court,” Leona said with a shade of outrage in her voice, as
she was finding Lysandre’s story increasingly hard to believe.

And Lysandre started feeling cornered. The beast of panic started baring its teeth. She didn’t
want to make herself a liar, untrustworthy… More than anything, she didn’t want to be kicked out.

“I mean…” she said, her voice slightly breaking. “Her father pleaded with the elders.”

She didn’t know anything about these things. She’d barely listened to her own sentencing, after
all. This was proving itself a bigger mistake with each word spoken. Cera would have none of it.

“Either the elders have suddenly gone soft, or the servant girl has the most important father
in…”Her voice drifted off, a peculiar expression hovering on her face.

Lysandre felt a strange knot in her stomach. Don’t go there, she thought with all her might.

“A girl who is soon to be married has her father convince the elders not to collar her…and they
accept his pleas… A very convincing… A very important father to a very important girl…”

Cera’s eyes widened. Leona now stared at Lysandre as well, hers an expression of curiosity.
Lysandre, however, looked like a rabbit cornered by hunting dogs.

“What?” Leona asked, now curious. Cera looked back at Lysandre meaningfully and put a finger
on her lips.

“Oh, nothing. Just nonsense!”she said, once again with an impish smile on her face, but her eyes
were showing something different.

She knew.

“Come with me! I’ll show you around!” Cera took Lysandre by the hand and pulled her away
from the table, leaving Leona behind. Lysandre glanced back at her and noticed her shaking her head,
smiling. Once around the corner, Cera gave Lysandre a good measuring look, and then grinned.

“So, a green-eyed red-headed minx and our future queen, huh? A forgotten story told
twice.”Cera looked at her earnestly, almost with a strange sense of awe. By sheer fate, Lysandre knew
the story of Alyssa and Melanie and could correctly guess what was going through Cera’s restless,
excited mind. Lysandre’s ears turned flaming red.

“Well, if you’re gonna get caught, I guess you may as well get caught big!”
 Lysandre said nothing; just shrugged sadly. Cera stopped grinning.

“It wasn’t just a fling, was it?”

Lysandre remained silent and Cera put her hand around her. When she spoke again, all mischief
was gone from her voice. “Your secret is safe with me.”

Lysandre grimaced with something resembling a smile, and Cera decided to change the topic.

“Honestly, it may be a small comfort still, living here… It’s not that bad, you know. Good roof
over your head. There is enough food and drink, and at times entertainment as well. You only met Leona
and me so far, but I swear, wait till you meet the rest.”

“Rest?”Lysandre asked suddenly as if reminded of it, feeling both curious and tired at the same
time.

“There are more of us, but most are out there working right now!”

“What about you?”

Cera looked to the side, now for the first time seemingly avoiding Lysandre’s gaze.“Oh, I’m one
of the Nightlusts. I…can’t work this week.”

There it was again, that word. Nightblossom. Nightlust.

“What’s the difference? I mean, between Nightblossoms and Nightlusts?” Lysandre looked
intensely at Cera.

“Well…we’re all called Nightblossoms—the collared women. Some of us, however…”

At that moment, Leona walked through the hallway and stumbled upon them.“Cera, don’t
dawdle! show Lysandre where she’ll be sleeping. She’s had a long night and I imagine could use some
rest.”

Lysandre looked at Leona gratefully.

“Come!” Cera said, and Lysandre followed her upstairs. It was a shared room in the attic space.
It was by no means dingy or rat-infested. On each side of the room was a bed paired with a small night
table. In between the beds was even a small stove with a chimney that led out through a circular
window. Cera pointed to the bed on the left and said, “This one is mine, and that’s yours. Okay?”

Lysandre nodded. Cera left her alone and went downstairs. Lysandre undressed and buried
herself under the covers, and for the first time properly allowed herself to cry for the life and love lost.
The walls were thin. Downstairs, Leona and Cera both heard the sobs. They said a little prayer to the
spirits. They too had once been there, uprooted from their lives, rejected by their friends and families.
 Lysandre wasn’t sure how long she had slept, but when she woke up, she was surprised to find
Cera in her bed, asleep. For a moment, a painful memory of a night before jolted her heart. A night
before…It felt like another world and another time altogether, yet barely a day had passed since.

Slightly uncomfortable, Lysandre repositioned herself and Cera opened her eyes.

“I thought that was your bed?” Lysandre said.

“It is, but I hate cold covers in the middle of the night. Always takes so long to warm them up.
Plus the moon is red.”

Lysandre nodded. “Very well. Then at least turn to the other side now.”

Cera did so and Lysandre put her arm around her, settling comfortably. She knew what the days
of the red moon felt like for her. She knew she would have liked an arm around her as well. They fell
asleep soon after. Not for long, however, as she was awoken by loud laughter from the kitchen below.

She got up, while Cera just sleepily mumbled, “It’s just Mathilde and the girls back from the
house of welcoming shadows. Go to sleep!”

Lysandre only caught a few words from that: Mathilde, house, wecalit? “We call it,” perhaps?
Lysandre shrugged and got dressed. She descended the creaking stairs as the sound of laughter grew
more and more intense. Even from the stairs she could notice a veritable feast on the table. She noticed
Leona storing away the bags of flour, assisted by a shorter woman. This new woman was blonde, hair
lighter than… Than Lara’s, Lysandre thought. Two more women walked by Lysandre, one of them
noticing her on the stairs.

“Hey, Leona? This the new girl?”

“Ah, yes!”Leona said. “I’d like to introduce you to Lysandre.”

Lysandre came down the stairs and exited the shadows of the corridor. The three new women
stood frozen for a moment. The tallest of them turned to Leona, all the while suppressing laughter.

“Oh, you weren’t exaggerating at all. She must have given them quite a scare.”

“Anyhow…”Leona interrupted any further talk. “These three ladies…”

The short one snorted a laugh. Leona gave her a strict look and the short one composed herself.

“These three ladies are Mathilde Streethold…”

Lysandre vaguely remembered something about Mathilde running the place with Leona. She
smiled at Mathilde. She was not as old as Leona, but getting there. Still, she was undeniably very
attractive. And well dressed. Lysandre found it oddly comforting that she wasn’t the only Streethold in
the house.
 “Selena Smith…”

Leona pointed at the short blonde girl. She was waving back at her energetically. A pixie among
the tall faefolk, she thought to herself. Even from there Lysandre could see her hands. Old scars,
hardened calluses. She smiled back at Selena. A hard-working pixie. Nice to meet you; I’m a hard-
working street rat! she thought to herself.

“And Shana Louder.”

She pointed at a dark-skinned girl standing next to Mathilde. Not counting Lysandre, she
seemed to be the youngest among them. She stood out by her posture. Dignified, almost formal, even in
such a relaxed company. Lysandre considered either noble blood or past employment by nobility.

Suddenly Cera entered the room. Not the cheerful thing she had been that morning, Lysandre
thought. No, what entered the room was grumpy—more a badger than a person. Lysandre fought back
a laugh of her own as she saw Cera collapse on a chair and protest, “Do you have to howl like that? I
swear…”She gripped her stomach.

“Red moon?” Mathilde asked, a commiserating smirk dancing on the corner of her lips.

Cera’s face was buried in her own arm as she mumbled, “Redder than this one’s hair!” She
halfheartedly pointed at Lysandre. Mathilde just smiled and produced a flask. She handed it to Cera,
whose entire demeanor changed rapidly.

“Oh, thank the spirits!”

“Thank me instead!” Mathilde laughed and turned her attention back to Lysandre. “Lysandre,
sit, eat! We had a great night tonight, so we’re due for some celebration.”

Leona brought a jug of wine and poured for all. They toasted to the Nightblossoms. Lysandre
did the same, not knowing what else to do.

She was surprised once again by the food on the table. This was no Dunston’s table, but it
wasn’t the kind of food you ate to survive alone. There were eggs, dried meats, onions and pickled
vegetables, and wine. Their conversations went on for a while. At some point she heard them mention
the house of welcoming shadows. Lysandre recognized this as the thing Cera mentioned, but even so, it
was referenced shortly and not in any way that would tell her anything useful about it. They talked for a
while longer before the topic shifted to earnings and tallying of coins.

This finally prompted Lysandre into action. “I would like to know…”she said loudly enough that
everyone turned to her. This made her embarrassed enough for her ears to flare up and her tone
dropped in volume significantly. “…what my duties are.”

Mathilde looked at her for a while. Leona then said, “Girl has worker’s hands.”

“But everything else…” Mathilde mused.

 “Mathilde!” Leona looked at Mathilde scornfully.

“Oh, I know!” Mathilde smiled warmly. “I wasn’t suggesting she should do it, but I think it’s fair
that she’s made aware of her options”

Lysandre observed their exchange and realized something about the two women. The way
Mathilde would take Leona’s hand when she was calming her down; the way she looked at her. The way
Leona’s stern face swiftly turned to a smile and a bit of a blush…

They loved each other.

Unfortunately, that was all she could understand from their conversation as neither of them
seemed willing to speak up and tell her about her duties. For the first time, Lysandre realized she was
undeniably getting treated as a child, and this annoyed her more than she was comfortable to admit.
She opened her mouth to say something, but Cera’s arm landed on hers, grabbing her attention. Cera
seemed to be in a vastly better mood. She was smirking and whispered, “Give it a few moments; our
mothers are trying to decide if you are old enough to be told some things.”

This didn’t help Lysandre’s annoyance, but she couldn’t help returning a small smile back to
Cera.

“Very well!” Mathilde proclaimed with Leona looking at her almost solemnly.“Your duties… In
this house, we all work and contribute in our own ways. As a Nightblossom—uh…a collared woman.”

Mathilde said this in the explanatory tone of a mother teaching a child, or what Lysandre
imagined such a tone would be. She was a Streethold, after all. In any case, Lysandre didn’t need the
explanation anymore, but kept quiet about it.

“As a Nightblossom, nobody out there is out to do you a kindness. In fact, most people very
much don’t want you around.”

Mathilde seemed to notice a slightly fearful look on Lysandre’s face and her own face relaxed
into a pleasant smile, every small wrinkle once again comfortably seated in its position.

“Now now. I may be exaggerating a bit to make a point. There are those who are kind to us and
to our plight. Still…”Her voice once again grew stern, determined. “You can’t rely on the kindness of
others. It is a rare fruit and provides little sustenance. Nightblossoms only truly have each other. We
care for each other and provide in different ways. Leona is handling pottery production with Selena. We
have contacts in the traders’ district who resell these to both the local and traveling merchants. So there
is that.”

Mathilde looked around the table, and she seemed slightly nervous to Lysandre.

“Right. That’s the pottery side of things. Now, of course, if you possess any skills of your own,
tell us! Maybe we can do something about those.”
 Lysandre took some time thinking about it, but concluded that she didn’t have any such skills
which might be profitable.“Nothing I can think of. I spent years working in the…”She bit her lip,
contemplating how much she would share of her past, then concluded this was fine.“…kitchen. Mostly
cleaning,” she finished, and immediately cast her eyes down, avoiding any eye contact.

“Fair enough!” Mathilde said. For a moment she seemed to be studying Lysandre, weighing her
words carefully.“Then pottery it is!”she concluded and smiled. Leona seemed relieved. Lysandre glanced
at Cera, remembering something she’d told her earlier.

“I’m one of the Nightlusts…”

Leona and Mathilde had turned to their own conversation when Lysandre interrupted.“What’s a
Nightlust?”

They turned to her, and it was hard not to notice the change in Leona’s demeanor. Lysandre
pressed on, however.“Cera told me today that she was a Nightlust, and I’ve heard the word once before,
and couldn’t quite decide whether or not it’s the same thing that people remembered differently.”

Leona spoke this time. “Lysandre, how old are you?”

“Nineteen,” she replied.

Leona pursed her lips—an expression that didn’t sit well on her face, Lysandre noticed.

“Well…I guess that is enough.”Leona nervously rubbed her hands. “Fine!” she said then, her
expression that of a person who had just made a tough decision.

“It all started with the Nightblossoms. The Nightblossoms are a story that happened a hundred
and forty-seven years ago now. At least six generations,” she mused.

“It was during the second great expansion of the city. Dalkoffburg was a much smaller place
originally. It had two large expansions happen to it over time. The first one happened during the reign of
Alyssa, and the other with the rise of the merchants’ guild.

“The merchants’ guild back then was much more openly corrupt. Today they have a sense of
subtlety about them, but back then extortion, intimidation, bribery…It was all done openly with few to
oppose them. Even the court of elders seemed disinterested.

“That was when eight women of our particular leanings got together with a common cause: to
usher the return of Queen Alyssa.”

Mathilde interrupted her. “How much do you know about Alyssa, Lysandre?”

For a moment she was back there, in that library. For a moment her heart ached. But she
swallowed the pain. She didn’t need much thinking for this one. She recited the same things she had
told Lara less than two days ago. She kept the “mad with love” part to herself and went with the city-
approved version.
 “Vampire queen. Tyrannical ruler, went power-mad. Attacked the city, many died, was slain by
her confidant shattering her soul mirror.”

Mathilde seemed impassive. “I will now tell you a different story. A story passed down from the
first Nightblossoms, from one who was a daughter to one of the elders of her time, an educated woman
who had learned some truths elders keep to themselves.

“Alyssa wasn’t always a queen. She appeared on a midsummer night, the shortest night of the
year when the spirit world is closest to ours. One of the three nights when the Nightblossom blooms.
She was a spirit once, you see; a creature of a different world. On that night she saw a girl being
attacked and decided to help. That girl was Melanie. Red-haired and green-eyed, beautiful and kind.

“And so, a spirit fell in love with a girl and a girl loved it back.”

“The girl’s name was Melanie, and she named the spirit maiden ‘Alyssa.’ In the old stories it was
the name of a moon-born maiden. She had shown Alyssa of the injustice and the sad history of
Dalkoffburg. A city on the crossroads of four kingdoms, and each wanted it for its position.

“And so, an enraged Alyssa tore asunder the conquering army and proclaimed the city to be
under her protection. She and Melanie took their home by the river, neither having interest in the city
itself anymore, for the deed was done.

“Alas, with nobody left to rule, fighting erupted. The merchants thought their guild should run
the city, the farmers thought they had the right, and there were a few scholars as well who tried to
stake their claim.

“But the rest…the rest called out to the spirit that saved them. They called to her one night in
front of her home. And she met with them and spoke with them and by dawn a queen was chosen by
the people.

“She was a creature of the night. A vampire, sustained in our world by blood. But she wasn’t a
ravenous beast. Small portions given gladly by Melanie were enough to keep her among us.

“Now, this is where the story becomes fragmented. The last we know of Melanie was that she
was around when Castle Dalkoff was built on top of an old occupying fortress. And even that was from
one single page of writing.

“After that she was lost to us, erased from history, and all we were told was that the queen
went mad one day.”

It seemed a compelling tale, Lysandre thought, but couldn’t see anything in it that would
contradict anything said in the city. Mathilde was silent, so Lysandre finally asked, “It may be a bit more
extensive, but isn’t that the same story that people know?”
 Mathilde was waiting for this, Lysandre immediately realized. It was as well-rehearsed as Cera’s
“lovely” introduction. This was even more apparent by the conspiratorial smiles of other women around
the table.

“And this is where we know something they don’t. There is a damaged book kept by the elders,
a book read generations ago by Andrea Vardas, the first of us, the only daughter of elder Simeon Vardas,
one of the four who made the law that binds us today.

“The book only had two pages that were undamaged enough to be read. Andrea thought it to
be the writings of a chronicler, a historian perhaps. The first of the two pages said this:

“‘And so our queen of roses chose the people once more, and stood broken-hearted against her
love and the beast she had…’”

“She had what?” Lysandre asked, now very much intrigued.

“That was all the text that she could read. Now, the second page had proven itself even more
interesting, and it said:

“‘Will you ever return?’ he asked.

A mirthless smile adorned her face. ‘Maybe, if someone loves me enough to fix what has been
broken.’

He listened to her voice, looking for hope in those words, but found none.

Her hand touched the surface of the mirror, causing it to ripple, and then she quietly uttered her
last words on this world: ‘No. I don’t think I will return.’

She walked through it and he was left alone.

He did as he was told, and shattered the mirror. And so it was done.”

Lysandre reached for the wine this time and drank deeply.

Mathilde continued her story after drinking from her own cup as well.“And that brings us to the
forming of the Nightblossoms. Eight there were, women who would be the first to bear the collar. They
heard Andrea’s words and believed the writing. Or even if they weren’t completely convinced by it, they
were at least in agreement that the city was rotting from within, and perhaps some bleeding would clear
the pus,” Mathilde said with a bit of a terrifying grin.

Lysandre’s face made the whole table erupt in laughter.

“Now, now, I assure you, they mostly believed the queen would be an improvement.

“Now, problem was, they told their plans to anyone who would listen. It made sense; after all,
they were trying to win over the hearts of the townsfolk to their cause. This stirred up some powerful
people, and a different talk erupted. Suppose they could do it. Bring back the blood queen. What then?
The maniac had once decimated the city! These fears, in the end, reached the elders and a decision had
to be made before the midsummer tri-night.

“Some asked for their heads for the heresy proposed. Simeon Vardas, however, having a
personal stake in this, proposed a different solution. A law was made in one night so that any woman
who would lay with another woman was to be collared in bloodsilver, so even if they tried, they would
never be able to come in contact with the queen.

“Now, for what it was, the law was elegant. It avoided bloodshed.” Here Mathilde paused,
staring at Lysandre.

Another calculated pause, Lysandre thought and instead of asking a question, simply took a sip
of wine.

“Wrong!”Mathilde exclaimed, slamming her hand on the table, a terrible expression on her face.
Lysandre was suddenly startled, and alert.

“The first collars had links of regular iron. Bloodsilver is a spirit metal, you see. More noble and
precious than gold, but it is scarce. So to cut down on its use, elders had the links made of cheap steel. It
turned out that some of the Nightblossoms couldn’t handle the touch of steel on their skin. It caused a
vicious rash.

“This wasn’t anything new. Some people hated the spring, for the flowers made them sneeze.
Other people’s skin was sensitive to metals. But these women were trying to bring back a vampire, and
lo and behold, their own skin was burned by what people thought was bloodsilver.

“And so, rumors spread like wildfire across the city, and with rumors came fear. People did what
people do best when fear takes them. They lashed out.

“People celebrate the bonfire night of Queensfall as the moment the city stood up against
Alyssa. But we Nightblossoms remember a very different bonfire night. This one not in early spring, but
in the middle of the summer. You won’t find mention of this one in city stories or songs.”

Mathilde’s eyes seemed to darken, her voice breaking. This was not rehearsed. This was sorrow
and deep anger.

“Four Nightblossoms were put to the fire before lawmen arrived to stop the terrible deed. And
so, in a desperate act, a proclamation was sent out by the elders—an addendum to the collaring law.

“I wonder, Lysandre… Do you know the terms of your punishment?”

She cast her eyes down, avoiding Mathilde’s gaze. Truth was, she didn’t. The entire sentencing
part was a heartbroken blur for her.
 Mathilde touched her arm gently and, with a warm tone, continued.“Don’t be embarrassed.
Quite a few of us ended up not paying attention. It’s somewhat hard to focus on the details when you
are forcibly uprooted from your own life like that. The sentence is simple. We are free to do as we will
within the city limits, but we must never go past the outer wall.”

“They would kill us if we tried leaving?” Lysandre whispered the question.

“No…they would put you in the dungeons for the rest of your life. See, that’s the other part of it,
the whole addendum to the collaring law: ‘Do no harm to the Nightblossoms. They can’t bring the queen
back anymore, but your aggression still might. Remember that Alyssa had risen from the lake to protect
Melanie. She may do so for these girls as well.’

“It was a desperate act of a father to save the life of his daughter, and in a way it has been
saving the lives of generations of Nightblossoms. We are rejected, but we are unharmed and left to our
own devices.”

Now Cera interrupted with an exaggeratedly pious tone of voice. “The only way we can be set
free is if we renounce our misguided ways and marry a man. Upon our wedding day, we can have these
removed.” She ran her fingers over her own collar and smirked. “I prefer my jewelry, thank you!”

Everyone shared in a small approving laugh, and Mathilde continued, “Oh, and they provided a
small kindness by making the links on the collars from bloodsilver as well.” She rolled her eyes.

But…Lysandre finally decided to ask.“The elders must have known about the book, about the
pages that say the story wasn’t true… So…why? Why do all this?”

She got no answers from Mathilde. Instead, Leona was the one to offer an answer of her own.“I
wondered this many times myself. Best I can tell you is, fear. They had centuries of tales of a
bloodthirsty vampire on one side, and a few damaged pages on the other. It was a matter of which story
to believe: fragmented, damaged implications; or a complete oral tradition?”

It was an unsettling idea—that they were all collared because some people chose to believe one
version of an old story over another. Lysandre realized she was clenching her fists. Cera then put her
hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay to be angry. At some point or another, we all were.”

Lysandre looked around the table and all the faces shared the same commiserating look. For
some reason this calmed her down. Maybe it was the reminder that she was not alone in this. Her hands
now relaxed, she looked at Leona and Mathilde and asked, “And the Nightlusts?”

Leona once again frowned at this, but said nothing. Shana was the one who spoke up instead.
This surprised Lysandre some, as the girl was sitting mostly quietly up till then.“We are the purveyors of
comfort and carnal delights for travelling women who seek other kind of affections.” She said it
solemnly and with an aura of such dignity that Lysandre was now sure of her noble background. Shana
then added in a much different tone, “It means we’ll go where the husbands dare not follow.” She
grinned.
 Lysandre got the idea and smiled embarrassedly.

Mathilde now continued, “Nightlusts started as a bit of a joke in a joyless time.”

There was no humor in her voice, however, so Lysandre decidedly stopped smiling.

“It wasn’t long after the laws were made that people started avoiding the company of
Nightblossoms. This also meant not employing them. It was hard to find a job, so women like us turned
to any and all ways of making a living. And that was when the long tradition of Nightblossom pottery
started.”

Leona smiled proudly atthat and added, “And we kept it strong for over a century!”

Mathilde then interrupted.“However, not all were interested in that specific line of work. Some
had once again turned to the nights.”

Lysandre observed them both. Like two storytellers trying to decide the right version of a tale.
Leona nodded and Mathilde resumed her story.

“Most of the first collared women were the original Nightblossoms. However, they were not the
only ones. Dalkoffburg had been a center of trade for centuries before, and would be for centuries to
come. One rule stood above all: money first. While vampire protection was our big export, there was a
lot to be said about profits brought in by people who exported nothing—the traders of the nights.”

Mathilde paused again to look at Lysandre. Lysandre just nodded. She understood well what
those words meant.

Satisfied with this, Mathilde continued. “The city recognized this early on. Instead of having such
business conducted on the city streets, they invested into building three large manors. ‘Houses of
welcoming shadows,’ they were called. And those houses had their wings dedicated to different
customers. Each of the three houses had one of those wings dedicated to women who would provide
pleasures for rich ladies of particular tastes.

“Now, the moment the collaring law was passed, most of the women working in those house
wings hitched on the first trader’s caravan out of the city. Those who failed to act fast were caught. This
left the managers of those houses in an awkward position. Demand was there, but supply seemed
nonexistent.

“This was so for a while until ingenuity met desperation. The managers of the houses of
welcoming shadows arranged a meeting with the Nightblossoms and proposed a deal. By then, the word
had spread of the plight of these women. It might have been the call of the forbidden, but the demand
grew in intensity. There were ladies of great importance seeking excitement who would pay exuberant
amounts of money for a night with a Nightblossom. Of course, being out-of-towners, they were free
form the collaring law, which made them potential customers. The managers knew well that at least half
of the Nightblossoms had once worked in their houses. And so, a meeting was had, and arrangements
made. Some remained potters, while others turned to the nights.”

“But all were Nightblossoms.” Leona interrupted with an almost stern tone of voice. “This had
never split us up. It wasn’t potters and the traders of the night. It was only the Nightblossoms, because
we were all sisters in bloodsilver.” There was a vigorous passion in her voice, even a shadow of genuine
anger. A remnant of old arguments, Lysandre thought. Someone must have tried to split the
Nightblossoms apart at some point.

Mathilde gently took Leona’s hand and smiled an intimate smile that was meant for Leona
alone.

Mathilde once again continued. “And so it went. Over time, the Nightblossoms pooled their coin
made in pottery and pleasures of the night, and bought this place. It was their inheritance to us.

“Now as for the name ‘Nightlusts’…” Here Mathilde once more grinned wickedly. “It didn’t take
long until the blossoms of the welcoming shadows started noticing masked rich women of the city
among their customers. At some point one of them was caught, and it was a great scandal. One of the
Nightblossoms, tired of it all, stepped in front of the crowd gathering by the elders’ court. She looked at
all of them and, with her scariest voice, she spoke to the crowd.”

Mathilde got up and changed her own voice now.

“’You would collar us and keep us hidden, but we are untamed. We are nightly creatures!
Nightlusts who will corrupt your wives and daughters and then all shall be collared or none will!’”

Selena the hard-working pixie then added, while pouring another glass of wine for herself, “You
can imagine that didn’t go over well with the upstanding folk of the city.”

Mathilde continued. “Not well indeed. It took the effort of all the town’s lawmen to stop the
mob from burning this place back then. It was a rough year, but since then we learned to choose our
battles. So yes, now we go by ‘Nightlusts,’ the three of us here who work in a house of welcoming
shadows: Cera, Shana, and me. This is our way of providing. You are free to choose your own.”

Her voice and her demeanor were sincere. Lysandre felt reassured by it.“I will stick with
pottery.”She grinned. “I only had two experiences with a woman and I don’t think I would be any good
at it.”

Cera laughed. “None of us were good at it, but we can teach…”

Mathilde gestured Cera to let it go, and she did.“Pottery it is.” Mathilde smiled in earnest.

Leona smiled in relief.

Lysandre looked at Cera. Cera just nodded.“Well, since I won’t be of much use at the house for
the next three days at least, I’ll take care of the food today. Oh, and also…”
 She moved Lysandre’s hair to the side and sniffed her neck. She looked at Leona, who knowingly
got up and passed the medicine for her burn. For a moment Lysandre remembered a thought full of
resignation, of surrender, from just a day ago: This is home.

There was no great joy to that idea back then. It was merely an acknowledgement of her own
predicament. Now, as she leaned on the table, her hair to the side, she thought of it again. As Cera took
care of her injury, and there was an excited chatter around the table, she mused on it.

This is home.

This is home…

This time, it was a happy thought.

7.The Potter and the Nightlust

Lysandre had seen her hands callused and cracked before. She was ashamed of them once, in a
library tower that seemed oceans away and centuries ago. All of that was nothing compared to what
pottery did to her skin in these seven weeks. Leona had warned her of this, but Lysandre greatly
underestimated the consequences.

She studied her hands, resting after a full day’s work. Evenings were getting colder by the day
and the fire felt so inviting. Lysandre sat next to Leona, who had fallen asleep. She too felt the urge, the
warmth on her face, the soothing crackling of fire. And yet her hands kept her awake. They didn’t hurt.
Not really. There were some injuries, but it was the sound they made when rubbed together. Like two
dry pieces of parchment. It was an old sound, she thought. She looked at Leona, and glanced at her
hands. A small smile hovered on Lysandre’s face. It was pretty late, she thought. She didn’t want to fall
asleep, as she was waiting for Cera.

She got up from her chair and walked outside. Selena was sitting on the porch, rubbing her
hands with a darkened cloth.

Lysandre leaned on the post next to her and observed the street. Seven weeks ago, this was all
foreign territory to her. Now it was her neighborhood and she knew it well. She knew the road Cera
would use on her way from the house of welcoming shadows.

Selena handed Lysandre the cloth. Lysandre observed it questioningly.

“It’s Lem grease. It helps with your skin. I just got it yesterday and I know how sensitive your
nose is.”

Lysandre smiled embarrassedly, and then sniffed the cloth. To her surprise, she found the smell
pleasant. Vague, but it reminded her of fresh bread. She rubbed the cloth on her hands.

“Keep doing it, let it soak in. Trust me, you forget to take care of your hands and it will get
bad.”Selena pointed at a long scar across her palm. “This! I did this to myself by not paying attention.
Your skin gets dry, and then it gets hard, and then one day, you’re grabbing a pot and your skin just
breaks. It’s been almost two whole months and you haven’t been using the stuff Leona and I use. I know
you’re feeling it by now!”

She looked stern, and it didn’t fit her, Lysandre thought. Then she remembered the sounds her
hands made a minute earlier when she rubbed them together. All of a sudden, the possibility of her skin
just breaking seemed way too real. She vigorously started rubbing in the Lem grease. Soon her hands
felt better. Not tender and soft, never that, but at the very least it felt more like leather and less like
parchment.

“No sign of Cera?”

“No,” Selena replied. “She did say that there was a large caravan of nobility visiting today,what
with the royal wedding growing near.”

Lysandre said nothing. In those seven weeks she had mastered hiding her pain when talk of the
royal wedding would start around the table. She was thankful to Cera for never saying anything about it.
Even more so, Cera would often be the first to change the topic.

“Did you know they are to be wed in the court of elders?”

“Oh?”Lysandre asked, seemingly disinterested.

“Yes,” Selena continued while wiping the rest of her ointment against her apron.“Though for the
life of me, I can’t understand why. Elders have nothing to do with weddings.”

“They do with some, ”Lysandre added, her eyes still focused on the distant street. The sun was
beginning to set, and it was hard to discern people in the distance. Selena observed her, puzzled.

Lysandre smiled.“They have something to do with the weddings of girls like us.”

“Right…Though this is hardly the same thing,” Selena added, smiling back. Lysandre just stared
at the skies for a while.

“I’ll take a walk, see if I run into Cera.”

Selena nodded and went inside, but not before handing Lysandre a scarf. “It’s getting cold out
there.”

What she meant was, it will be easier this way. The Nightblossoms had their own way of
speaking at times, away that made their predicament seem like the most normal of things. And Lysandre
went along with it. She took the scarf and wrapped it around her neck, hiding the bloodsilver.

Yes, she thought. It made things easier.

The lampmen were going about their business lighting up the city lamps. Lysandre stood on the
street for a moment, considering which path to take. There were three houses of welcoming shadows,
after all. Nightblossoms usually worked from the closest one unless specifically asked to attend a
previously arranged meeting. She hadn’t heard of any big customers that day. Cera would be the first
one to excitedly tell her about that when she would crawl into her bed. This habit persisted past the
days of the red moon. Lysandre was a bit surprised to realize it didn’t bother her.

In a way, it was a distraction. She kept a smile on her face, but like Cera noticed, Lara was no
fling. Lysandre missed her dearly. In a way, Cera’s presence in her bed made it easier for Lysandre to fall
asleep. And she had grown very fond of her. Not in the way she loved Lara, but still…enough to miss her
when she was away.

Lysandre decided to go to the closest of the three houses. It was not far from the large road that
led to the mirror shrine. As she walked along the road, she noticed a surprising number of lawmen
patrolling. She didn’t think much of this. She walked the lamp lit street for a while longer until she found
herself facing an elaborate fence. Its length ran all the way around the house of the welcoming shadows.
A little bit further down the street, the fence opened up to an out-of-sight passage. This was reserved
for the special customers of the Nightlusts. Lysandre occasionally accompanied Cera here, so she knew
the way well. The man standing in front of the doors was Sandro. Cera introduced him to her the first
time she visited the place. The house itself, however, was still a mystery as she’d never really crossed its
threshold.

She walked up to Sandro, who seemed preoccupied counting silver. She noticed a sword and a
dagger in his belt.

“Uh, good evening, Sandro.”

Her voice seemingly snapped him out of some deep thoughts, and she saw his hand twitch
towards his belt. Then his eyes widened some and his face relaxed.“Cera’s friend? One of the
Nightblossoms?”

“Y-yes?”

“You here looking for Cera?”

“Actually, yes. I wasn’t sure if she was here or…”

“Oh, she’s here,” he laughed. “A sudden influx of nobility made the poor girl work overtime.”

“Oh…” Lysandre sighed.

“You can go and check if she is done. Fourth door to the right. If she is busy, there will be a
flower hanging from the doorknob.”

“Right! Thank you!”She smiled, feeling silly and out of place.

She moved past Sandro, who returned his attention to his pile of coins. The hallway was
decorated in red and white marble. No matter what some thought of it, this was a place of trade, and
the city of Dalkoffburg took its trading seriously. The hallways were sprinkled with rose water. It was
pleasant without overloading the air. Lysandre was grateful for this. She was making her way to the
fourth door when she saw it open. A tall dark-haired woman exited the room laughing, followed by a
short red-haired girl.

Both of them looked at Lysandre in surprise, when the girl smiled widely and exclaimed,
“Lysandre?”
 It took Lysandre a few moments to place the voice and the face together. It was Cera. She was
wearing makeup and what must have been a red wig. But undeniably, it was her. Lysandre fought back a
laugh. This was, after all, Cera’s place of business.

“My apologies. I was just coming to see if you were doing something, or were in need of
something.”

The dark-haired woman responded to this, observing Lysandre with a curious look. “Tell me,
Cera, is this girl in business as well?” There was a bit of a lascivious smile on her face as she looked at
Lysandre.

“Duchess, you offend me!” Cera said with faux outrage. “All this night I shower you with my
affections, and yet a whiff of a different girl’s scent and already you turn from me.”

At this, the duchess laughed. “Oh no, precious Cera, I was thinking more along the lines of…”She
whispered something into Cera’s ear.

Cera’s eyes widened for a moment. The duchess turned away and left down the hallway. “Think
about it, Cera. I’ll be back in a fortnight.”

Lysandre felt like she made a mess of something. She considered how to begin her apology, but
Cera just grinned. “Come on, help me change and we’ll go home.”

“What was that about?” Lysandre asked while pointing in the direction the duchess had gone.

“Pay no attention to her. She had too much of a good time in one evening.”

Cera took off the red wig and proceeded to remove her makeup. It was already smeared in
places before that, and even her dress was haphazardly thrown on. It wasn’t difficult to get her out of it,
and very soon Cera as Lysandre knew her was standing in front of her. Satisfied with the state of the
room, she packed the rest of the items into separate wardrobes. Lysandre took the time to observe the
room itself while Cera was preoccupied. There were mirrors around it, some in that familiar shape she
had observed on Lara’s wall. In the center of the room was a large bed with no fewer than a dozen
pillows now organized on it. Cera made sure the room was kept presentable. Examining the bed,
Lysandre noticed there were silk straps attached to its posts.

Cera had spoken about this. They had been sleeping together since that first night when she
crawled into Lysandre’s bed, and every evening Cera told her things. Straps on the bed are either for
her, Lysandre thought, or her customer. She knew this much. Even among women with their leanings
there were those with furthermore refined tastes. Lysandre found it amusing but intimidating.

She remembered all of their late-night conversations in the dark, Cera’s arms around her. With
the autumn night air growing its cold teeth, it felt wonderful to be under the covers with someone. And
so they would share a bed and all the secrets of the day. It was on the third night of Lysandre’s arrival at
the house that she asked Cera about being a Nightlust.
 “Oh, a lot of my customers are women travelling as a part of a merchant caravan. They were
pulled to the house with the rest of their groups to celebrate good trades. There are, of course, girls of
good standing and nobility as well, and some just women who in their later age realized they wanted to
act on some desires they held back for most of their lives.

“The majority of them have no idea what they want. So to them I am but a matronly guide.
Others, however, had done this before and would ask for specific things. I would agree or refuse them
on those beforehand. Some fancied a night with a sassy brigand who was there to take their silver but
perhaps stay a while to claim them as well. Others were interested in being taken by a vampire; some
just required a release in the hands of a competent lover. And then…” Cera paused.

“Then what?” Lysandre remembered asking.

“Then there are the special customers. These come to me seeking a whole different kind of
release. See, most of these special customers are rich, powerful women of the city living in the confines
of empty marriages. It’s a significant risk for them to engage in these activities. The city may not have
jurisdiction over out-of-towners, but local women will get collared.

“And yet they still come. They come to indulge in things that would ruin their lives. Some end up
crying in my arms in the end. To those I am a Nightblossom. I will offer comfort and sometimes share in
a tear.

“And then there are others who deal with their desires in a different way. They come to me in
order to get their release, yes…but they also wish to punish me for leading them into that temptation.
So they will bind me and lash me with belts, and floggers and other such tools that we provide for
them.”

Lysandre was shocked by this.

“Oh, it’s nothing terrible. Like I said, we provide them with tools of punishment and even
suggest methods beforehand; assuring them the torment is as excruciating as it is delectable. In truth
it’s more bark than bite, the lot of it. Don’t forget that we are there to put on a show. So we writhe and
moan for some, and cry and plead for others. I’ve even used the same punishments on some of the girls
that came to me flat-out demanding it.”

“Do you…like it? Being a Nightlust, I mean.” Lysandre remembered asking Cera.

Cera kissed her neck then, the first time that she’d done so. “Sometimes.”

Sometimes, Lysandre mused while looking at the straps on the bed. Was today one of the
“sometimes”?

“Come!”Cera urged, and Lysandre noticed she was already dressed in her everyday clothes. Cera
Lovely, and Lovely as her name. Lysandre smiled and went out the same way she’d entered. As they
exited the house, she noticed Cera tossing a whole silver coin to Sandro.
 “Spirits bless you! How much did you make from that duchess?” Lysandre asked once they were
out of sight.

Cera whispered and Lysandre’s jaw dropped.

Lysandre had spent nearly two months under Leona learning how to produce pottery. At the
back of the house was a kiln and a smaller separate housing space used for producing and storing
finished products. It was a lot of work. At first, her duties were limited to freshening up dried clay by
crushing it and mixing it with water in order for it to be workable. From there on, Selena and Leona
would take over, each at her own wheel. After a week and a half of that, Leona started teaching her how
to work the clay, and it wasn’t long afterwards that Lysandre started producing her first simple pots. In
seven weeks, she had learned that pottery was hard work that made her muscles ache, her skin crack,
and made her sensitive nose frown, but she had worked far more in her life and earned far less.

This? This was fair work, and it paid well enough. Lysandre knew well the value of money
earned. She had been employed through the workinghouse since she was fourteen. It was simple. The
house would provide you with a bed and a roof over your head. You paid for it by being their labor sent
off to work where you were needed. A portion of your earnings went to the house, and some of it the
house took to cover taxes, and you got to keep the little that was left. It was surviving, but it could have
been worse. This taught Lysandre to count every copper coin and guard it jealously. The only time she
was paid well was as Lara’s maid. Compared to that, pottery paid much less and was a much harder
labor.

And here was Cera tossing the man a silver coin. A silver coin could feed you and give you a bed
atan inn for two days at least; four if you chose your meals carefully.

In fact, here was Cera earning more in this one night with the duchess than Leona, Selena and
Lysandre at their pottery wheels in three weeks.

Cera guessed right what was going through Lysandre’s mind. She hugged her and smiled.“Ha!
Don’t misunderstand. This is a one-in-a-hundred kind of a situation. One of those special customers.”

“So what was it that she asked you?” Lysandre asked, now even more intrigued.

“Asked me?”Cera seemed genuinely confused.

“About me? About the thing she wanted you to think about?”

“Oh…that? No, I told you that was nothing. You made your decision, little potter!”

“I am taller than you.” Lysandre scoffed. But then it dawned on her. “She wanted me to…do
what you do?”

“Actually, she was being ambitious enough to ask for both of us and the price was triple what I
got tonight. Come on, you going or…?”
 Lysandre was standing in the middle of the street like a statue.“Triple…”

“Come on!” Cera pulled her. “The last thing I need is Leona accusing me of pulling you away
from her line of work and into mine.”

They moved on and circled around the house when they were met with an unusual sight:
Chariots, dozens of them, all parked in front of the house of whispering shadows.

Cera noticed Lysandre’s surprise. “Nobility from the capital!” she said. “All here to lick the boots
of Lord Dunston.”

Lysandre looked at Cera now, frowning slightly.“Lara’s father? But…” Then she stopped and
thought about it. Cera patiently remained silent. “He was already important to them before due to his
control over his own established trading routes…but now…” she said.

Cera then continued, “Now his family tree will intertwine with royalty, and those who make
dealings with him first will have an advantage over others. I heard he is going to be offered the position
of minister of royal tradings.”

“Where did you hear that?”

Cera smirked. “In my line of work, if you service men, you’ll hear about their victories. But if you
service women, you’ll hear their secrets. And believe you me, the duchess has many secrets.”

Lysandre observed the chariots, and all of a sudden a deep sorrow washed over her. She
remembered Lara’s birthday party. The sea of people with their own interests trading on her life. And
beyond that sea, Lysandre, helpless. Small. These chariots were there for the same reason. Oh, they
were spending their nights here in the house of welcoming shadows, but their days were spent with the
Dunstons. It was all just an endless procession of leeches. Vampires like Lara’s father, every one of them
drinking deeply of Lara’s life.

Before Lysandre could even react to it, her eyes betrayed her. She had been doing a great job of
it for all her time with the Nightblossoms, but at that moment she was facing the reality of it all. There
was no stopping the tears, and so she wept there in the middle of the street. Seven weeks she had kept
her tears to herself, but she could no longer do that. She missed Lara’s laughter that would erupt into
snorts at times, her songs, her touches, and her sunflower eyes.

Cera didn’t know what to do. She had felt her losses in life, but in the end she had been caught
during one of her many flings. The girl with her was a part of a trading caravan, a fiery southerner who
could drink her under the table. Cera liked her, she was fun, but…she never loved the girl. In fact, she
would be hard-pressed to remember her name.

This was a broken heart. A love lost.

“Come,” she said. “Let’s go. I’ll tell you a story tonight, okay? Let’s just go.”
 Lysandre said nothing, but she did go.

The house was full when they got back. Leona had woken up as well, and Mathilde, Selena, and
Shana were all with her having dinner. Lysandre excused herself, saying she had an upset stomach, and
went to her room. Cera assured her she would be there soon as well. She could hear the merriment
from her room. She figured the other two houses of welcoming shadows had just as successful a night.
Nightlusts had provided this night.

Lysandre buried herself in the covers, trying her hardest to distract her thoughts from the
heartache. Instinctively she pulled on her collar, but the pain that distracted her a few times before was
no longer there. Cera’s medicine had done its thing. There was a scar there, but that was all. She
couldn’t fall asleep as her mind was troubled, and she didn’t want to be the mourning person in a party
crowd. So she laid there in the dark, listening. Muffled conversations from below. Someone washing
themselves in the bath. Could have been either Cera, Mathilde, or Shana, as the potters three already
did their washing up.

Then she heard someone climbing up the stairs. The door opened, and Cera entered the room,
small candle in hand. After getting a good look at the room, she smiled and put out the candle. There
was a rustling and then the bed creaked slightly as Cera got onto it. Lysandre immediately realized what
the rustling was. Underneath the covers, Cera was naked.

“What…?Uh, Cera?”

“Okay, hear me out!” Cera whispered. “I know these times are weighing hard on your heart. I
don’t think anyone can really remove that pain, but if you’d allow me, I’d like to at least try and dull it a
bit.”

There was no laughter in her voice, no mockery. The offer seemed sincere. More than that, her
voice was warm, inviting…lovely.

Lysandre remembered something—a conversation in the dark two weeks earlier. They were
lying in bed, Cera telling a story of her younger days, when they heard soft moans from below them.
There was no doubt what they were, but Lysandre still wondered who it was.

As if knowing the question, Cera had replied, “It’s Mathilde and Leona. I swear it always amazes
me where she gets the energy.”

“Who?”

“Mathilde.” Cera had paused for a moment, listening to the noises from below, and then
continued. “Thing is, after doing what we do, I don’t think I’d have the will to pleasure anybody else.
Still, she never forgets to remind Leona that others may share her body, but she alone holds her heart.”

That was two weeks ago.

Lysandre smiled, hugged Cera and just said:“Go to sleep, little Nightlust…and thank you.”
 Cera fell asleep first. Lysandre lay awake for a while longer, considering Cera’s gesture. That very
day she had spent her afternoon servicing a duchess and who knows who else, but at the end of it all
she took the time to offer her affections to Lysandre. To comfort her in the best way she knew.

There was no love between the two of them. Not the kind she felt for Lara, but Lysandre
realized, she loved Cera in a different way, and she hugged Cera just a bit closer.

A potter and a Nightlust, she thought. Leona and Mathilde seem to make it work.

She smiled, and soon sank into deep sleep.

8.Cursed

Lysandre sat alone in the great hall of Castle Dalkoff, silently hoping for the monsters of the
night to claim her and put an end to her misfortune. Anything would be better than living in such a
miserable state.

No monster came that night.

Perhaps the monsters were repelled by the cold bloodsilver around her neck. Perhaps there
were no monsters to speak of. She couldn’t say for sure, but she’d come to the castle looking for one of
two things: shelter, or her final release.

Both of these seemed equally appealing, but the castle could only offer one. No dark shadow
came to do away with her, ridding her of her guilt. The night remained mercilessly silent, uncaring about
her regrets.

She found an old moth-ruined curtain and wrapped herself in it, and as her shivering subsided,
she sank into an exhausted sleep.

Her last waking thoughts were: I am cursed.

-------------------

Two weeks earlier, her world was different. Not wonderful, perhaps, but at the very least
more…lovely.

“Okay, don’t mock me for this! It may be a silly question, but…” Lysandre paused, her ears
tingling in that familiar way that meant one thing only. A small passing look of annoyance passed her
face, but she shook it off and continued.“Would you still be a Nightlust if it wasn’t for…” Lysandre
pointed at the bloodsilver collar around her own neck. There was an honest look of awkward curiosity
on her.

Cera drowsily stared at Lysandre, not quite sure what to make of this unusual morning’s
greeting. She sat on the bed. Her often-mischievous face seemed unreadable for a moment, a
complicated mess of thoughts and emotions, and it seemed she too was grasping for words.

In the end, she nodded. “Me? Yes. I would likely end up doing this. My favorite memories are of
traveler girls who arrived in Dalkoffburg and wanted their first ‘adventure’ to be with me.”
 Her face was no longer unreadable. She was smiling widely.

“They usually come with trading caravans. Men and women alike, traveling merchant folk with
little chance of mingling outside of their caravan crowd. Naturally, they would find themselves
welcomed by our houses.”

Lysandre smirked.

Cera paced the room, putting on her clothes. “I recognize the new ones immediately, you know.
I can sense them sneaking looks in my direction. It’s a gift!”

Lysandre laughed at this.

“The way they would approach me being all timid and awkward…I swear, it always made me feel
powerful. They would follow me into my room, looking back as they left their escort. I would sit them on
my bed and then undress in front of them. I would climb the bed and they would back off as if they’d
been thrown into a cage with a wild animal.”

Half-naked, Cera swiftly moved towards Lysandre and for a moment, Lysandre knew how these
timid girls felt.

Cera placed her hand on Lysandre’s chest and whispered in a sultry tone, “I would calm their
timid hearts, and then…I would light their fire.”

She looked at Lysandre, grinning. There was no doubt about it—Cera was honest. There was an
eagerness to her smile that removed all doubts on this. Lysandre pushed her away, smirking back.

Cera smiled for a moment longer, but then her smile disappeared and a more somber
expression took its place. Cera’s voice sank a little again. Not in a seductive way. No, if anything, there
was a shadow of sadness on her face now.

“However…it is not a silly question at all.” She looked at Lysandre seriously. “Mathilde certainly
would prefer to share her bed with Leona alone. As for Shana…it’s hard to say. There are days when I
think she likes this more than I do, and yet there are days when she curses it all. Life is a game of cards
and we were dealt a shitty hand, Lysandre. But you play the cards you’ve got, not the cards you wish you
had. Come, let’s get some food in us and see if we can play our game better today.”

Cera left the room and Lysandre was left alone with her thoughts.

And of those she had many. Two days have passed since she visited Cera at the house of the
whispering shadows. Two days since she overheard the duchess make her offer.

And for two days this offer has been on her mind: For her and Cera together, she offered triple.

Lysandre contemplated the impact of it. She absentmindedly rubbed her hands, which once
again produced the uncomfortably dry and raspy sound. Looking at them, she frowned for a bit.
Something had to be done about those if her idea was to come to fruition. She knew that there was little
chance for some miraculous recovery ointment that would soften her callused skin, but Lemgrease did
help.

The duchess would return in a fortnight. This much she knew and she had already lost two days.
She clenched her fists and got up. Triple…she thought once again. For Cera and me, she would pay triple.
By the spirits, that was the entire pottery group’s earnings for more than a month.

For the first time in weeks, she looked at herself with any interest in a small mirror on the wall.
Cera was usually the one making any use of it. Lysandre actively avoided it, as it reminded her of the
past. Of a different mirror and a small ritual in front of it.

A pained expression crossed her face, but she buried those thoughts. She needed this mirror.
There was work to be done.

She looked at herself, carefully evaluating what she saw. Her green dress was stowed away as
she made use of one of Mathilde’s old ones, but her reflection was not entirely displeasing. Her hair
was…well, it was certainly all over the place, but other than that, it was passable.

She tried imitating some of Cera’s mannerisms. Smiling somewhere close to seductively, looking
coyly at her reflection, copying the way Cera’s hands always somehow found their way to her cleavage
whenever she talked about her customers. It wasn’t all the way there, she thought, but it was a start.

She sighed to an empty room. “Leona is not gonna be happy about this.”

-------------------

By the time Lysandre made her way to the kitchen, the breakfast was nearly over, with the
Nightblossoms each going about her own business. Selena and Leona made their way around the
kitchen table, clearing out most of the remains while Shana whispered something in Cera’s ear. Both
glanced at Lysandre for a moment, and she could have sworn their little secretive talk was about her.

Lysandre sat at the table. Even with most of it cleared, she noticed fresh fruit and dried meat on
the platter. Selena cheerfully whispered, “There is much more than that. This whole royal engagement
thing has the nobility swarming the houses of welcoming shadows.” She leaned back in the chair,
obviously full from her own breakfast, grinning. “This is going to be a good winter, thanks to our girls.”

Lysandre frowned. Selena’s words bothered her, but to her surprise, it wasn’t the mentioning of
Lara’s impending wedding that did it. No, it was something new. An unfamiliar feeling of envy.

In her life she never had much to be envious about. She never envied the Dunstons because that
would be like envying the spirits. Those were different worlds altogether. She never envied the girls at
the workinghouse, as each of them barely made ends meet.

Then and there, however, she envied the Nightlusts. Perhaps it was the fact that for the first
time, she truly felt like a part of something. Like she was helping. Like she personally mattered, and
there they were, their earnings positively dwarfing the efforts of her aching back and dry hands.
 Leona poured some milk for Lysandre and patted her on the shoulder. “Everyone does their part
in this household. The potters and the Nightlusts.”

Lysandre felt like her frown gave away too much of her worries and forced a smile. Leona looked
at her for a second and, seemingly satisfied with the response, continued.“Dig in. Today we have to
unload the clay and get the pottery ready for shipping.”

Lysandre nodded while she carefully studied Shana and Cera. Shana’s mannerisms were
seductive in a different way from Cera’s. Every movement of her arms was more flowing. She had a
habit of touching her own hands in a gentle way while talking. There was an undeniable charm to the
gesture. It was a fairy-like glamour of moving fingers and gentle caresses. It gave her a sense of grace
that Lysandre knew she couldn’t imitate. She thought once again of the sound her dry palms made and
grimaced.

“Lemgrease helped, huh?”

Lysandre was pulled out of her thoughts and looked at Selena.

Selena pointed at Lysandre’s hands and Lysandre realized that she was unconsciously mimicking
Shana’s little hand gestures. Like a burglar caught in the act, she flinched, closing her fists, redness
creeping into her ears.

“Yes, ”she mumbled while taking a bite of her buttered bread. “Is there more?”

“Sure,” Selena nodded and pushed the butter.

“No, uh… I mean, is there more Lemgrease?”

“Oh yes, we always have a good stock of that. I’ll show you where we keep it after breakfast.”

Shana burst out in laughter at the other side of the table while Cera tried her best to shush her.

“What is it?” Selena asked.

“Nothing,” Cera said with a sense of urgency.

“Yes, nothing, ”Shana said while giving Lysandre a smirk.

Selena shrugged and left the table. “I’m off to the kiln.”

Lysandre mumbled, “I’ll be there soon.”

With only her, Cera, and Shana left in the room, Lysandre turned to Cera and asked with a cold
tone of voice, “What did you tell her?”

“Nothing!” Cera exclaimed, desperately trying to keep a serious face and failing miserably at the
same time. Seeing the futility of her efforts, she burst into laughter and continued, “Okay, fine. I may
have bragged about a certain duchess’ offer and how you could out-earn us all.”
 Feeling like her most secret thoughts were suddenly made real and displayed to the world,
Lysandre stared speechless at both of them. Then, with no idea what to say, she ran out of the room.

She heard Cera and Shana calling her back, but she couldn’t face them.

-------------------

A few hours later, as she was in the storage room wrapping the pottery, Lysandre was pulled out
of her thoughts by Shana. Lysandre turned to see her leaning against a doorpost, elegantly backlit with
sunlight crowning her dark curly hair. Even her leaning like that had a way of owning the room. For a
moment, Lysandre thought of the first time she met her. She suspected noble upbringing back then. She
supposed that was why she never asked her about it. Lysandre knew well that sometimes one’s past is
best left alone.

“Do you have some time?” Shana asked seriously.

“I guess,” Lysandre replied, studying Shana’s face. There was no smirk, or any sign of mockery
on it. Instead, there was a kindness to it that felt inviting.

They walked out into the sun and found their way to a small bench in the shadow of an oak
behind the house. Shana gestured in that flowing motion of hers. “Sit. There’re some things I want to
share with you.”

Slightly confused, Lysandre sat on the bench. Shana took a seat next to her and leaned against
the old tree. She took a deep breath, savoring the silence of the moment. It was a strangely quiet noon,
but it was the end of the harvest season, after all. Most people spent their time tending the fields those
days, making the most of their crops.

“I’m not from Dalkoffburg, you know.” Shana broke the silence.

Lysandre said nothing, but looked at her. Shana was a southerner—that much was obvious from
her dark skin and black curly hair. But southerners were common in a trading city. Many settled there
over generations.

Shana continued with a tone of someone looking through the attic rooms of her memory. “I’m
from Elara. It’s way down in the south by the Crimson Ocean. I had a big family once. Four brothers and
three sisters. Farmers, all of us. Then the Santini War came. Father got drafted into service and died.
Mother worked herself into an early grave and then there were just us kids.

“One of my brothers went off to seek his fortune. Two joined the inquisition and the last one,
Amin, tried to keep the family afloat. Did every job he could to keep food on the table, and as soon as
my sisters were old enough to pitch in, they scattered around doing odd jobs.”

“Something like us, here?” Lysandre interrupted.

 Shana smiled warmly, but with a touch of sadness in her eyes. “Yes, something like that. Now,
me… I was the oldest child. Nineteen years of age at the time. Now, living among the poor, you learn to
work the streets, you learn fast to navigate the ugly side of towns, you learn how hard it is to earn your
coin…”

Lysandre absentmindedly rubbed her hands.

“I worked for a while as a barmaid. Low earnings and a lot of drunken sailors with fruit
merchant’s hands. In fact, there were two of us there. Me and Helena. A very attractive girl. Had this
very charming way about her. She would almost float through crowds. Untouched by the grime and the
slime, you know…”

Lysandre nodded.

“So, one day I came in and Helena was roughed up. A sailor got too frisky and a brawl erupted.
She was fine, mind you, but in her eyes you could see she was done with it all. She cameto me that day
and said, ‘I’m out, Shana! I got an offer from the palace of bliss.’ That was Elara’s own upstanding house
of welcoming shadows.”

Lysandre nodded. She assumed as much from the flowery name.

“Helena took my hand that day and asked me to join her. And naturally I was reluctant. At the
time I was still untouched, mind you. I had no idea what to expect of it all. Then Helena toldme of the
money that she would make there and suddenly my fears mattered little. All I could think about was
how I could keep my family well fed. Stop my brother from working himself to death like my mother
before him. So a few days later, I accepted.”

There was a moment of silence, interrupted only by the autumn breeze rustling the dry leaves
and the bark of a dog somewhere in the distance.

“Why…” Lysandre stuttered nervously, wringing her hands. “Why are you telling me this?”

Shana turned to her and studied her for a moment, that slight smile with a hint of sadness in her
eyes lingering. “Because you have that restless way about you that I had for days.”

“Do you regret it?”Lysandre asked, now clutching the side of her dress.

“My decision?” Shana seemed to ponder that for a moment. “No. my decision kept my family
fed. Kept my sisters from going down the same road. And in the end, like any situation in life, you find
your ways to make the best of it. There were times I greatly enjoyed it. There were times when it was a
messy chore. And there were bad times that one likes to forget. What I regret was my ultimate stupidity
in the end.”

Lysandre stared at her questioningly.

 “See, there is a saying in the business: ‘Satisfied clients have loose lips.’ It’s up to us to keep ours
sealed.” She looked at Lysandre meaningfully. “I serviced men and women alike, and after a while I got
good at it. Really good. Had my fair share of returning clients. Rich people, important people. People
who, after they spent their nights in my embrace, felt taken care of. They felt wanted. They felt like they
could trust me.

“And I abused that trust. I traded on it, in fact.

“It was small things at first. A wealthy merchant tells me of a shipment they’re expecting. It will
make them a lot of money. I sell that information at the docks and what happens after that is out of my
hands, but it usually involved mysterious pirate raids.”

Lysandre stared at her, wide-eyed.

“Same with military people and nobility. They all came to me, and I gave to them and I took
from them, and I traded on what I gained, and in the end it all caught up with me. Someone’s loose lips
pointed some very angry people towards me, and I had to make my escape.”

The dog barked again, this time closer, and Lysandre flinched, imagining squads of assassins with
bloodhounds furiously on Shana’s trail.

“I had to abandon my family, flee town to town, survive in any way I could. And then I heard of
Dalkoffburg. Heard of the plight of the Nightblossoms and…”

She was silent for a moment, a look of shame on her face.

“I thought I could use it. Use them. I mean, it seemed perfect. Collared women of Dalkoffburg.
The Nightblossoms. Doomed never to leave the city, but never to be harmed by anyone and left to their
own devices. It seemed like the only way to truly escape my hunters.

“So I came here, took my oath of citizenship, and a week later I accidentally got caught with a
traveling merchant girl. Well, I say that…” she laughed, “…but the truth is, I had to bed four of them until
I actually got caught. Anyway, I got what I wanted,” she said while slightly tugging on her own
bloodsilver collar. “I lived on my old earnings for a few weeks, but in the end I knew I had to find my
place of work in the city. Of course, I immediately turned to the houses of the welcoming shadows. To
my big surprise, this was very difficult, as nobody would accept my employment openly.

“That was when I met Mathilde. She taught me the ways of the city, took me in, got me
introduced to the people running the secret rooms of the houses of welcoming shadows…and I’ve been
with the Nightblossoms ever since.

“There were bad times and there were great times. Telling them my story was…challenging. I
mean, no matter how you look at it, this was my choice,” she said while pointing at her collar.
“They…you…you had no choice in all of it.”
 There was no longer a smile on her face, but something akin to embarrassment.“Believe it or
not, Cera was the one who took it the hardest. She was always very defensive about the Nightblossoms.
She wore her collar almost like a badge of honor. It took me months to get back on her good side.”

Lysandre had a small, puzzled look on her face. “Cera being angry… You know, I actually can’t
imagine it. I’ve seen her a bit grumpy during her days, but…”

“Oh, yes. She is a pissed-off pot of rage when you get her going. See, it wasn’t my little idea that
bothered her. Dalkoffburg had generations of Nightblossoms and Nightlusts residing within its walls, and
about half of them came to the city for the same reason. The notoriety of the Nightlusts is a powerful
aphrodisiac for those willing to pay. Travelers seeking our services are frowned upon in theory, but in
practice, it’s all good money coming to the city.

“As for us, we get to do our job protected from harm by old laws and older superstitions. Sure,
we get talked about behind our backs, and occasionally someone will spit in your general direction, but I
had that back in Elara as well.”

“We’re also city-bound as well,” Lysandre noted.

“True,” Shana replied while removing a stray leaf that had found its way into her hair. “But I’ll
tell you this. I’ve seen other cities, and I’ve been on the roads. As far as prisons go, this is a gilded one.”

Lysandre seemed to consider that for a moment. “So what was it that pissed off Cera, then?”

“Oh, right, I guess I didn’t really tell you, did I? It was the obvious thing: I lied about it. Funny
thing is, I really had no reason to. You see, I didn’t know it then, but even Mathilde came to this city in
the same way and for the same reason as I did.”

“Mathilde?” Lysandre stopped her with a baffled expression. “But she’s a Streethold! A city
orphan!”

Shana laughed at this loudly enough to briefly grab the attention of a passerby on the other side
of the fence. “You really are a city child through and through, aren’t you?”

Lysandre stared in confusion.

Shana continued with a heartfelt grin. “The Streetholds aren’t just the largest family in the city,
as you so defiantly claim at times. It’s the largest family in all the kingdoms.”

Lysandre loved that idea and smiled widely. They sat in silence for a while then, Shana enjoying
the autumn breeze, Lysandre thinking of things said and things unanswered. It was another long pause,
a silence drowned in a leaf-laden gust of wind.

“I know you’re tempted by the offer.” Shana suddenly broke the silence.“I was once tempted by
a similar one as well,” she said, her eyes finally meeting Lysandre’s. “It’s hard not to be. It seems like a
blessing in this strange prison, doesn’t it?”
 Lysandre remained silent, but nodded.

Shana leaned back and stared at the sky breaking through the ever-thinning leaves of the old
oak.

Lysandre broke the silence and asked, “Should I take it?”

Shana observed her, but said nothing.

Lysandre fidgeted with the side of her skirt for a moment and then repeated the question.
“Should I take the offer? Become a Nightlust?”

Shana looked down for a moment, noticing her own hands restlessly crumpling her own skirt.
She frowned.“I can’t answer that for you. What I mean is…”She paused and straightened the crumpled
side of her skirt. “It’s not an answer that anyone can give you. I said yes to it myself. I expected to do the
work and come back to my family and put food on the table…and here I am…”

Lysandre smiled slightly and said, “Here you are, doing the work and coming home to your
family and putting food on the table.”

Shana stared at her for a second, but then the thing started making sense. “Heh…you
Streetholds,” she chuckled.“You and Mathilde are so much alike. Quick to accept people into your lives.
Truly you are the greatest family in Dalkoffburg.”

“In all the kingdoms!”Lysandre replied, a smug little smile now settled on her face.

“Well,” Shana said while getting up. “Looking at that grin on your face, I think you have your
mind made up.”

“I think I do,” Lysandre replied, looking relaxed. “Are you still in contact with your brothers and
sisters?”

Shana grimaced slightly. Something in her look, the way her eyes frowned and looked to the side
for a moment, grabbed Lysandre’s attention. There was something familiar in that look. She had seen it
many times on the faces of other children in the workinghouse. It was the face of someone hiding a
secret.

The face of a liar…

Shana, however, muttered in an apologetic tone, “No. I can’t write or read and neither can
they.”

Lysandre nodded and relaxed. No, not a liar, she thought, a feeling of guilt washing over her. She
was just embarrassed. Still, there really was no reason for it. Most people in the city, including herself,
couldn’t read a single letter.
 She remembered, for a moment, a library…the smell of books, and of the shelves, and the
burned book and the letters that danced restlessly and nonsensically in front of her eyes. She
remembered other things as well: the table…and…

A rush of blood tingling in her ears signaled the end of the conversation as she muttered her
excuse. “I must go and get the pottery sorted out.” She left for the kiln, covering her ears with her hair
and leaving Shana behind.

Shana sat on the bench for a little while longer until Lysandre was out of sight. Then it was as if
all the warmth was drained out of her face. Her eyes glaring into the distance, her mouth thin with
worry, and there was something else to her as well…a sense of danger.

She took out a small piece of paper folded in the lining of her dress, and if anyone saw her, they
could have sworn that she was writing.

-------------------

Lysandre dreamed of the library in Dunston Manor that night. She was walking among the
shelves, hearing Lara playing her strange instruments and silently whispering the song ‘Melanie of the
Night.’

She tried finding her among the shelves, but every way she turned there were more shelves,
more books, and the song faded in the distance. She reached the end of her maze and there was a small
table with a burned book on it. An important book. A secret book.

She opened it, but in the dream the book kept its secrets from her as it did on the day she first
saw it. Letters dancing around an image, that of a dark-haired woman giving her heat to a red-haired
woman.

She heard Shana’s voice behind her and turned to see her staring at the book.“It makes no sense
to me either, but…”She pointed at the red-haired woman. “She sort of looks like you, doesn’t she?”

Melanie… Melanie of red hair and green eyes…

“Melanie of the night,” Lysandre said in the dream, and the music came back again…

“Forget her…” Lara sang from behind the shelves. “Forget her, they said, the green and the
red…”

-------------------

Lysandre woke up feeling disoriented.

Cera was still asleep. She’d arrived late the previous night looking unusually tired. Lysandre
knew the reason. It had been weighing heavy on her heart for days, after all. The wedding was
approaching. The city was brimming with nobility, many of whom spent their days drinking the local
wine cellars dry, and then spent their nights donating generously to the night houses.
 There were enough of them, in fact, that even the Nightblossoms found themselves barely
handling the increased demand. Shana and Mathilde both looked exhausted, but there was an air of
good cheer around the house for all their effort. After all, more customers meant an easier winter.

Lysandre sat up in bed with Cera firm asleep on her stomach. Top of Cera’s back laid exposed to
the elements, as the rest was covered by her worn-out nightgown. She smiled at Cera’s soft open-
mouthed snores, half muffled with her face buried in the pillow. She took the blanket and started pulling
it up to cover Cera, but then she paused

For a moment she studied Cera’s back where her nightgown had been loosened. Under her hair
the bloodsilver collar glistened, reflecting the framed light of the nearby window. Just beneath the
collar, Lysandre noticed the scar. She knew it well and she had a similar burn mark on her neck as well.
That scar was expected. The other ones, however, weren’t.

Now sitting on the bed, she observed a series of thin scars that up until then she’d never
noticed. Straight white lines, many of them crisscrossed and diving under her nightgown.

Lysandre carefully pulled Cera’s dress upwards and positioned herself so that she could have a
better look at this oddity. What she found was a web of scars, most thin, some thicker, running across
her back. Cera moved in her sleep, mumbling some indistinguishable words that only made sense to
those dreaming.

Lysandre, feeling like she was crossing some unspoken boundary, quickly covered Cera with a
blanket, thinking of Shana’s words:

“Believe it or not, Cera was the one who took it the hardest. She was always very defensive
about the Nightblossoms. She wore her collar almost like a badge of honor. It took me months to get
back on her good side.”

She smiled warmly at Cera and slithered her way out of the bed, making a considerable effort
not to wake her up.

She put on her dress and quietly walked down the stairs. She could hear Mathilde and Leona in
the main room of the house. They spoke silently, indistinguishable private words that Lysandre knew
better than to listen in on. Instead, she went down the hallway to the back door of the house and exited
into the yard, making her way towards the small outhouse.

Somewhere in the distance, some men sang a drunken song, probably just making their way
back to their homes. There was a brisk chill in the air as autumn tightened its grip on the world, slowly
removing all but the most stubborn leaves, which now seemed like a royal carpet.

Fit for a queen, she thought. Her thoughts turned dark almost instantly as a memory of a song
made her eyes well up. She tightened her fists and cleared her eyes. A cold, practical side of her insisted
on ceasing this nonsense. One must think of the future.
 It was, she thought, the Dalkoffburg within her. A greedy survivalist spirit that everyone in the
city nurtured to some degree. At that moment she welcomed its cold embrace. She needed it because it
was the only thing that stopped her broken heart from overtaking her.

“Think of tomorrow,” she said.“Think of…” she paused, running through her fingers and
checking the numbers.“Twelve,” she mumbled. Twelve days till the duchess returned.

One way or another, she would be ready.

She looked towards the city and wiped away a stray tear, the last protest of her broken heart.

-------------------

In the distance, across the eastern wall, she saw it looming outlined against the eastern light,
breaking between gusts of wind that cleared the mist just enough: Castle Dalkoff. For a moment, she
found the place strangely beautiful. A crown placed upon the city. A rusty old thing with gems missing,
but she could imagine it being beautiful once.

Lysandre caught herself pondering the castle and put an end to it. She knew why it suddenly
called to her. It was the bloody dream and the bloody song and Lara’s voice behind the endless
bookshelves.“By the spirits, go sing to someone else and haunt another’s heart!”she suddenly yelled.

A neighbor cleaning the leaves from his porch gave her a perplexed look. Embarrassed, Lysandre
rushed back into the house, nearly knocking Shana over. Mumbling an apology, she made her way back
to her room.

Cera was awake and getting dressed. Turning to Lysandre, she was met by a strangely
intentional gaze of someone at the crossroads of their life. On one side of it all, a pile of pottery. On the
other…well…if someone had told Lysandre where the other path would actually take her, she might
have laughed in disbelief.

After all, it’s not often that an orphan girl’s decision would end up toppling kingdoms. And it all
started when she looked Cera in the eyes and said, “Teach me to be a Nightlust!”
9. Whispers in the Night

Cera stared at her with a small frown resting questioningly on her forehead. Lysandre put a
significant effort into maintaining defiant eye contact. In the enclosed space of their little room, the very
air felt charged, as if before one of those autumn thunderstorms that often rip out trees from the
hillsides.

Cera remained silent for so long that Lysandre thought of repeating her request, but then Cera
broke the silence. “Is it…because of the whole duchess thing?”

Lysandre looked down, avoiding Cera’s eyes, her heart beating wildly. She expected Cera to go
into a tirade of trying to dissuade her from this hard-made decision. But Cera, in her very Cera way, just
nodded. “Oh yes, I’d do it for that kind of money, too. Also, the duchess herself is quite easy on the
eyes.” A lascivious grin adorned her face.

“That’s not why—” Lysandre was about to protest, but Cera covered her mouth.

“Keep it down! I’d like to keep this between us. No point in annoying Leona with this…at least
until we see if you even have the potential for this line of work.”

Lysandre shot her a slightly offended dirty look. “I’ve made love before!” she hissed in a low
tone. Cera barely held back her laughter.

“Lysa, we don’t ‘make love’ in my line of work. We entertain! We provide them with fantasies
and delusions and send them back home thinking they are the greatest lovers that the spirits in their
kindness dropped upon this world.”

She moved in closer and started walking around Lysandre, all the while her hand playfully
caressing her waist.

“What I mean by that is, you have to perform well on your own, but the real trick is in getting
them to believe that they performed even better.”

She said this as her hand playfully dipped below Lysandre’s waistline, now briefly caressing the
side of her leg. Even though she was fully dressed, safe in the layers of her workday dress, there was still
a strange power in Cera’s touch.

“It’s beyond sex, you know.”

 She carried on caressing Lysandre, her hand now sliding along her back

“You are there to make them feel wanted, appreciated, confident in a way they never thought
they could be. It is a feeling they never forget, and it is this feeling that keeps them coming back to you.
Can you fake that? Can you perform in the way that makes them feel like they are your queen?”

Lysandre stiffened up for a moment at that word. Cera noticed, and guessing the reason, she
added in an unusually salacious tone of voice, “Or perhaps… a duchess?”

Lysandre turned around to face Cera. While smaller in stature, she very much dominated the
room with an unmistakable air of confidence. This was her territory, after all.“I can, ”Lysandre said,
trying to sound confident and in her own opinion failing miserably at it.

“Well then. Convince me!” Cera said this in a surprisingly cold, distant tone of voice. “Come
now. I thought you were a Nightlust! I heard such stories about your kind, and here I am facing nothing
more than some timid creature unworthy of my patronage.”

It took Lysandre a few moments to pick up on Cera’s game.She was a customer. More than that,
she was the duchess, and she was issuing Lysandre a challenge.

It was, of course, meant to playfully provoke Lysandre into action, but it did more than that.

Cera’s tone of voice somehow angered her. There was a small undertone of condescension in
Cera’s delivery that rang a familiar little bell in the back of her mind. She was underestimating her,
calling her out, shaming her. Lysandre recognized the anger and its deep-rooted cause. It was hard not
to.

“Harlot!”

“Demon whore!”

“Nightlust!”

Oh yes, Lysandre knew where the fury was coming from. And she reacted, fueled by it.

Yes, she thought as she grabbed a surprised Cera and pushed her onto the bed.

“Harlot!”

Her face was cold, but her green eyes burned with a long-suppressed rage. Cera looked up as
this creature with fire in her hair loomed over her, undoing her dress.

“Demon whore!”

Lysandre’s mouth thinned out ina pained grimace.

“Lysa…” Cera started, her face showing slight concern.

 Lysandre put her hand over Cera’s mouth.

“Nightlust!”

Yes, old Harriot, I will be all those things! But above all I will be a Nightlust, for those who care
for me. For my family. For my potters. She smiled finally as she dropped her dress on the ground, now
standing naked before Cera, the room lit by a single beam of light sneaking though the small round
window that doubled as a chimney exit for their stove. This light surrounded Lysandre’s body and
wreathed her hair once more in that way that she could never appreciate, but never went unnoticed by
others. To others she was a vision of passion crowned in flame, with nothing but a gleaming collar
adorning her neck. Bloodsilver had away of catching light that made it look quite magical. Then again, it
was a spirit metal. Most likely there was some magic to it.

Cera looked at her, not with concern this time, but with something akin to real desire.

Lysandre descended upon her, passionately, hungrily, and…

Well, she did her best.

To her great dismay, she swiftly learned that this was no romantic act of lovemaking. This was
cruelty driven by unrestrained honesty.

And yes, Cera was honest. She guided Lysandre’s fingers when they went astray. Guided her lips
when they wandered off. Coldly pointing out her failures, all the while breaking her spirit.

Yes, her inexperience was readily apparent. She had only ever done this twice, and those
moments, as wonderful as they had been, were a matter of heart. This was a matter of body. An act
with a singular purpose of providing pleasure, of impressing.

And alas, she was failing on both ends, she thought.

On the fifth time that Cera slapped away her hand and then guided her fingers back to the place
Lysandre kept missing, Lysandre’s frustration got the better of her and she withdrew, frowning at the
other end of the bed. Frowning at her hand, she mumbled, “It’s…my hands are callused and I…”

“It’s not that.” Cera scooted closer to her. “There’s a movement to it. A rhythm. It’s a melody
and you just need to learn how to play it. It’s like a hand on an instrument.” She grinned. “Fingers in the
wrong position will make nothing but unpleasant noise.”

Cara slowly placed her hand between Lysandre’s legs.

“But if you position them just right…”

Lysandre gasped slightly.

“And you move the fingers in just the right way…”

 Lysandre’s breath quickened.

“Then…”

Lysandre released a slight desperate moan

“You can make a woman sing.”

Cera, never pulling her hand away from Lysandre, positioned herself in front of her and took her
hand.

Glassy-eyed, Lysandre looked at Cera as she licked Lysandre’s fingers and guided her hand
between her own legs.

She adjusted Lysandre’s fingers into position and whispered, “The chord is all set. Let’s see if you
can make me sing.”Lysandre was halfway in the hazy realm of pleasure that made thinking a challenging
notion.

Still, she did it. Mimicking Cera’s hand, copying Cera’s rhythm, she played her own little
symphony, and it wasn’t long until their slight moans turned into muffled sounds that would surely have
carried throughout the house if they hadn’t been drowned out by a kiss, shared partially out of
desperation to keep their little exercise a secret. There was something else to that kiss—an honesty of
sorts. And then Lysandre felt the tears rolling down her cheeks

With her other free hand, their breaths catching up after the crescendo of it all, Cera wiped
away Lysandre’s tears and there was a small grimace on her face. It was a commiserating look of
someone who understood, but couldn’t do much about it. After all, nothing cures a broken heart but
time.

From below they heard a commotion. The day was starting. Leona’s voice, followed by
Mathilde’s. This snapped them out of their little haze and the two got dressed in silence. As Lysandre
was about to open the door, however, Cera took her by the hand and once again in that cold tone of
voice, the tone of a customer, she proclaimed, “Not bad, little Nightlust.”

Lysandre, ears blushing and her cheeks joining in, smirked. “That will be four silver coins,” she
said as she exited the room.

“Hey, it wasn’t that good, Red!”

-------------------

On the second night of their secret practice, Cera taught Lysandrethings one could do with their
tongue. It was a lesson that Lysandre found quite intriguing. She in fact had every intention of mastering
that fine art herself the very next night, but the cycle of nature is a cruel thing that cares little for one’s
plans.

“I wanted to try it,” Lysandre said while frowning.

 Cera suppressed a burst of laughter. “Listen, there’s nothing of interest here for you right
now.”She gestured at her crotch. “Nothing but a bloody mess there! Although,” she continued with a
chuckle, “believe it or not, there are some customers who are very much into that.”

“What?” Lysandre’s eyes widened a little.

“Don’t act shocked. We’re in Dalkoffburg. The former throne of the vampire queen. I told you
that some of our customers pay richly for their fantasies. Just imagine how many of them fantasize
about some immortal vampire goddess of a woman going between their legs and feasting on their
blood, all the while pleasuring them.”

Lysandre’s face was pale for a moment as a terrifying thought ran through her mind. “The
duchess?!She doesn’t—”

Cera laughed.“Her? No! I’ve kept her company a few times now, and depending on her mood,
it’s either just a tender time together in which she fantasizes that she is the vampire queen who loves
me dearly, or a bit of powerplay in which she punishes me for my transgressions.”

“Punishes?”

“Binds me to the bedposts and then bites me as I beg for mercy!”

Lysandre’s eyes widen for the second time.“What?!”

“Relax, it’s nothing major. Do you see any bite marks on me?”

“No,” Lysandre said quietly after a small pause, her thoughts turning to other marks.“Uh…your
back…”she mumbled.

It was the smallest thing, the way Cera’s hand clenched around the fabric of her nightgown. Her
previously mischievous grin turned into a frozen grimace.

She absentmindedly ran her hand through her short brown hair, her green eyes darting across
the room. “Yes, well… Thing is, we all get that one customer sooner or later. This was mine. Uh…she was
a regular of sorts. She had her own…tastes. Fond of the whips and crops and similar nonsense.”

Lysandre’s eyes were frozen.

Cera raised her arms in defense. “No, don’t…don’t get it wrong. That stuff is not bad on its own.
We have our own stock. Soft leather stings a bit, but not enough to break the skin.”

“So how… I mean, what happened?”

“She was a local woman. Someone found out about her…tastes. They were blackmailing her and
she…”Cera’s voice drifted off. “Uh…she fell in love with me.”

Lysandre felt like the air was sucked out of the room.
 Cera sat down on her own usually empty bed. “I encouraged it, mind you. Returning customers
are…good for business.”

Her hands fiddled with her dress as she searched for words

“She was married to a rich merchant, you see, and had a good life…And yet, there I was, the
cause of all of her problems. The threat of collaring in her future felt too real, so she wanted to leave the
city. Take her husband’s savings and escape…with me.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Cera smiled slightly. Then she tugged gently on her bloodsilver collar.“This… they can track it.
They have a way—a magic, maybe, or something. No woman ever lived to escape this city with the collar
on. Still, I wanted her to escape, save herself. She was not ready for this. She was too…soft.

“So I told her lies: I never cared for her, she was just a customer, a walking purse. Anything to
break her heart. I remember the tears and the silence, and then the cold tone of voice in which she
responded. ‘I’m leaving this city. But first, since I am still here, I may as well pay for your services one
last time.’

“So she bound me to the bed and…well…we used to have these sticks that held the canopy over
the bed in place. She took one of them and…did that.”Cera’s hand reached over her shoulder, touching
the web of scars that spread across her back

Silence filled the room.

“Did you…”

“Love her back?”Cera finished Lysandre’s hesitant question with a cracked voice. Her eyes were
now cold, green and mirthless. She swallowed for a second and cleared her throat. “What does it matter
anymore?”

“It matters,” Lysandre said quietly.“…Her name was Lara Dunston.”

Cera looked up in surprise as Lysandre finally spoke the name. She sat in silence for hours as
Lysandre shared her own tale of love and misery, and when she was done, Cera moved over to their
shared bed and they sat together in silence. Not long after, they fell asleep like that.

The days seemed to fly by after that. Lysandre was split between her duties at the kiln during
the day, and her nightly practice with Cera. The rest of what time there was, she spent vigorously
drowning her hands in Lemgrease and hoping by some miracle that a lifetime of manual labor could be
erased in a week. It was a fool’s hope, but there was a softness to her palms she hadn’t felt since her
days serving as Lara’s personal maid.

Some other things needed tending to, she thought, looking at her hair. There was the matter of
her dress as well. The green thing that Lara gave her was up in her room, safely stored away as she
tended to her daily duties in some of Mathilde’s hand-me-downs. She wondered briefly if someone like
the duchess would expect her to be perfumed as well.

This thought cast a shadow of a frown on her face before she chased it away. What must be
done shall be done, she thought, exiting the house to be met with the familiar smell of the kiln. Oddly
enough, the clay and the smell of glaze never bothered her in the way the pleasant rich smells of
perfumes did. She took out a pile of dried clay from the barrel and poured water over it. She took the
wooden mallet and proceeded to crush and crumble the dried dirt, a routine she was used to and
usually found monotonously dull. Her mind, however, was racing. There were four nights till the duchess
arrived. Cera’s cycle was at its end and she promised to spend the remaining few nights teaching
Lysandre the finesse of her craft.

Thinking about this, Lysandre could barely suppress a smirk.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Shana, who was on her own cycle, so while away from the
house of welcoming shadows, she made herself available to help the potters. Delivering milk and some
jam and bread, she silently smiled at Lysandre.

Her dark eyes were full of secrets, Lysandre thought, and couldn’t suppress a grin. Shana knew.
She must have known. Be it from Cera’s gossip or from Lysandre’s change in habits, she must have
guessed.

Lysandre washed her hands in the basin and took to her meal as Shana left with nothing but a
whispered“ Good luck.”

Two nights later and Lysandre had learned many ways in which one can treat another’s body,
from nipples to mouth and to her surprise, even ass. Two nights before the fated night, she had treated
Cera to everything she had learned, and she could have sworn that Cera’s compliments were honest and
even more so…that she may have been a little bit impressed.

The last night beforehand, they made their plans. Cera would leave first. The duchess was
usually a latecomer to the party. “She is also the last to leave,” Cera had smirked.

Lysandre would stay at home for a while longer and tend to her usual duties before she would
excuse herself. The way they saw it was, none of them wanted to get into an argument with Mathilde
about Lysandre taking to the night. There was time for that later when they would know whether or not
she even had what it takes.

After all, it was one thing to satisfy a friend who helped guide you every step of the way.
Satisfying a stranger with their mind full of secret desires was another thing altogether. This was her big
night; her big test.

Reassuringly, Cera whispered in her ear. “Don’t worry, Lysa. Whatever happens this night, the
worst thing that might come out of it is you go back home.”
Neither of them could possibly imagine how wrong she was.
10. A Mistake

The castle was cold, Lysandre thought. She sat still on the large chair that she first saw when she
entered the hall. She couldn’t see much more. It was still night, after all. Her first attempt at falling
asleep was met with a sense of numbness that she couldn’t determine whether it was due to the hard
wood of the old chair or the cold autumn air. Her breath condensed in the cold air, as if it wanted to
prove that she was still among the living. Whether that would remain true by the night’s end remained
to be seen. She supposed it would have been quite the triumph to spend the night in Castle Dalkoff and
live to tell the tale.

Yet there was nobody she could share her triumph with. She was alone. No friends, no family,
no…Cera.

Tears cooled fast on her face, biting her cheeks as they dropped.

I should have stayed home. I should have…

-------------------

The fateful night had finally arrived. Lysandre did her best to keep herself out of Leona’s sight
throughout the day, as she knew her unusual restlessness would lead to questions. And she was restless.
Oh yes.

“Why did she have to tell me about the biting?”she groaned through gritted teeth.

It was silly, she thought, but it terrified her. Thoughts of being bound and helpless as some
stranger did things to her body made her stomach churn. She liked the other stuff—the hands and the
kisses and the tongue. Cera could have kept quiet about the duchess’ tastes and it would have made this
easier, she thought.

No…not easier. It would be more blissful in its ignorance, but Lysandre had a feeling that
nothing about the night would be easy.

She tried closing her eyes, thinking of the autumn air and the smell of leaves and the crackle of
the nearby kiln. She focused on the sound of Leona pounding out the clay, removing the air bubbles.
Suddenly the prospect of a potter’s life felt more appealing than ever, and really, would it be such a bad
thing? If Cera had been a potter, after all, she wouldn’t have…

The image of Cera’s back flashed in her mind and Lysandre’s stomach made one more desperate
lurch. Scarred like that by some obsessive woman. Then she thought of the duchess, the night she first
met her. There was a lascivious hunger to her eyes. There was this…possessiveness. She is not a woman
who takes refusal kindly. Lysandre couldn’t have known this with any certainty, but she felt it with every
ounce of her being.

What if she refused her? Would she be punished for it?

She thought once more of the scars and the teeth, and fought the need to vomit out of sheer
stress. “Leona, do we have any wine left?”she asked as she approached the kiln.

Leona looked up and her eyes widened. “Lysandre, are you okay? You are pale like the snow.”

“I’m fine, I just… I need wine.”

“Yes, of course. You know where we keep it.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Lysandre mumbled.

Leona straightened her back with visible effort.“The sun is setting,” she said in the tone of
someone ready to call it a day and rest her bones.

Lysandre shuddered at the idea. She made her way to the kitchen and opened the small door
that led to an alcove where the Nightblossoms kept what drinks there were in the house.

She hadn’t eaten anything during the day. She knew she couldn’t hold any of it down if she
tried. Instead, she thought wine would dull the edge of her unease. Make the night go by easier.

Four glasses in and the jagged edge of her fear was safely wrapped in a cozy sense of numbness
and the world lost some of its sharpness altogether, but that was fine. She was still good enough on her
feet to make that final journey.

Lysandre made her way upstairs and changed into her green dress. Looking at a small mirror,
she made the best she could of her hair before taking her long scarf and wrapping it around her
shoulders and neck, primarily to hide her collar. She often thought of this scarf as a shelter of sorts that
made her feel like a regular person every now and then. This would often be ended by curious men
trying to strike up conversations that were swiftly ended with her moving the scarf to the side and
revealing the collar.

They would turn from her. After all, she was one of them. The filthy Nightblossoms—no.

After tonight, she thought, a Nightlust.

-------------------

As she moved back to the ground floor, she bade a quick farewell to Leona, mumbling
something about escorting Cera home. It was a lie, of course, and had she known that those would be
her last words to Leona in a long time, she would have perhaps said more. Thank you for everything,
orYou were the closest thing to a mother in my whole miserable life.
 Anything was better than a lie.

Instead, she opened the doors and went into the cool evening air of Dalkoffburg.

The road to the house of the welcoming shadows was well known to her, but that night it felt
darker. No streetlamps could illuminate away the feeling of walking a dark path with an open maw at
the end of it. A maw that bites and—

She stumbled a little, her balance disrupted by dark thoughts and yes, no food and all of the
wine she had. Not perhaps her brightest idea, she thought in that small part of her mind that was still
calm and rational enough to see this whole business through.

She gathered her balance and what was left of her courage and continued walking. Soon a
familiar illuminated façade stared back at her with chariots in front and the ornate metal fence that had
a small door at its far end. Behind the house, where even the welcoming secrets hide their own secrets,
was a lone guard who kept safe a corridor of white and red marble. A corridor that smelled faintly of
rose water.

She greeted Sandro and he smiled at her, as usual busy dealing with his coins.

“Fourth—” he started.

“Door to the right,” Lysandre finished glumly. “And if there is a flower on the doorknob, it
means that she is busy.”

That means the duchess is here, she thought as she passed by Sandro and entered the cool lamp
lit hallway.

The smell of rose water was there, and on the knob of the fourth door to the right, there was
something else—an ornate plate depicting a flower. She had never seen such a flower before. She would
much later. She would know it by its name, the Nightblossom, and she would know its importance as
well. But then and there, it meant only one thing to her: It was the point of no return.

She put her ear to the door, thinking of making sure she could hear them. A part of her thought
it rude to interrupt. She heard the sound of a strained moan. For a brief moment, she was about to grin
as some of her fear faded away in the face of such a familiar sound.

Then the other sound landed. It was a sharp swish and a slap, followed by another of Cera’s
moans, but this time stronger, protesting…

Her hand hesitantly closed around the doorknob.

Another swish and a strained muffled moan. Not of pleasure, no. This was something else, this
was…

She is hurting her! Hurting Cera!

 Carefully, Lysandre opened the door, and the muffled voices cleared up enough for her to hear
the voice of the duchess. No longer a tempting alluring purr like the first night she met her. No, this was
cold, slicing the air as much as the thing in her hand.

“You betrayed me!”

Swish!

Cera’s muffled moan was now more pleading than ever, but with no words Lysandre could
understand.

“All of my love that I gave you and you wasted it away by sharing your bed with others!”

Swish!

Lysandre silently snuck into the room and finally had a clear view of what was happening. The
duchess was turned away from her, naked, covered with something liquid…red.

And in front of her, bound to the bedposts, there was Cera, blindfolded with her mouth gagged
by a leather device that Lysandre had seen on two occasions resting on the shelf of the room. She could
never decipher its meaning before, but its purpose was painfully obvious now.

She noticed Cera’s body was covered with the red liquid as well, and as the duchess raised her
hand again, she noticed something strange in her fist. As it descended upon Cera, it made that sharp
sound and Cera strained against her restraints once again, pleadingly moaning.

Lysandre’s head was spinning with fears of teeth and of pain and of…

“You said you loved me!” the duchess shouted and hit Cera one more time.

One last time.

Lysandre thought of Cera’s back, of the story, and all of a sudden the red liquid stuff on their
bodies made sense. Blood! Cera’s blood! she thought.

Her hand moved on its own. She took a porcelain vase from the shelf. A split-second thought
flashed through her mind. The vase was well done. A wonderful example of pottery.

Pity.

There was a loud sound of a crash, the sound of porcelain fragments hitting the floor, and the
duchess was on the ground.

Cera gave a yelp of surprise as Lysandre moved in to comfort her, to set her free, to save
her…She gently removed the blindfold and then, following that, unfastened the leather contraption that
filled her mouth. She smiled reassuringly, but the look on Cera’s eyes froze the smile on Lysandre’s face
into a confused grimace.
 “What have you done?!”

There was no relief in Cera’s voice. No gratitude. Instead there was panic and… anger?

“Untie me!”she insisted, her voice still that mixture of anger and panic with a twinge of disbelief
added for good measure.

As Lysandre released her hands, Cera kneeled on the floor, still covered in what Lysandre
thought was blood. She hurriedly started examining the back of the duchess’ head, her fingers getting
covered in what Lysandre knew was blood.

Cera hurriedly rifled through the duchess’ clothes that lay folded on the nearby chair, mumbling
to herself. “I know you had it, where… Ah!”

Almost triumphantly, she produced a long silver chain with a decoration on its end, housing a
mirror piece of that strange rhomboid shape that so many wore as protection.

She bought the shard to the duchess’ face with bated breath. The duchess, however, had no
problems breathing, and Cera finally sighed.

“Cera, are you…are you okay?” Lysandre hesitantly asked while touching Cera’s wet, red
shoulder. Cera stared daggers at her and Lysandre recoiled, but realized the wet red substance was on
her fingers, and it wasn’t blood. No, it was too transparent for blood. She smelled it, and to her surprise,
recognized it to be wine.

“Wh—”

“I told you she was a peculiar customer!” Cera’s desperate voice was now on the verge of tears.
“Why…”

“I thought she was hurting you!” Lysandre’s eyes darted across Cera’s messy face, not knowing
what to do, not fully comprehending what she had done.

Cera grabbed the thing the duchess had used on her, a crafted leather handle with many straps
hanging off from it, and without warning, hit Lysandre on her arm with it, her voice cracking with
desperation. “It’s a bloody toy!”

The hits landed, biting into Lysandre’s skin, but they were surprisingly toothless bites, providing
more heat than pain.

“The whole thing was a bloody game!” Crying, Cera dropped the thing on the ground.

“I…I wanted to help…”

“This was a fucking mistake, getting you here.”Cera’s hands restlessly ran through her hair,
removing the red wig she once again must have worn for the duchess’ pleasure. “Lawmen will come;
they’ll… Oh, spirits, if they find out that a Nightlust assaulted a foreign emissary, we’ll all be in for it!”
 The severity of the situation had turned Lysandre’s blood to ice for a moment, stopping her
breath, her very heart. Her actions had placed all of them in danger, the Nightlusts…the Nightblossoms,
the only family she’d ever had.

Cera was shaking, restlessly mumbling to herself. “I have to convince her it was
a…misunderstanding, an accident.” She was now kneeling again, talking to herself.“But if she doesn’t
accept it, if she…”

Cera looked at Lysandre, her makeup now a runny mess.

“You gotta leave! You…you gotta run, hide, whatever! Just go as far away from here as
possible!”

“Cera, I’m sorry—”

“No time for that; just leave! I’ll…I’ll try to persuade her to drop this somehow. I’ll…”She bit her
arm out of sheer desperation

“Cera…”Lysandre pleaded one last time.

“Leave! Don’t come back! Just run!”

And so Lysandre ran. Far from the house of the welcoming shadows, far from the
Nightblossoms’ house.

She ran until the night swallowed her whole.

11.The Runaway

Lysandre woke up wrapped in a musky old curtain. She was numb and cold from sleeping in
some old wooden chair. Momentarily disoriented, she looked around, staring at the silhouettes forming
in front of her. They were tall unfocused things, with lights dancing in between. She rubbed the hair and
weariness from her eyes and could finally see the shapes for what they were: pillars. They were pillars of
a magnificent hall. As for the hard chair she was sitting on, it wasn’t just a chair—it was a throne.

The castle…

She was in the old Castle Dalkoff. Stretching the stiffness out of her arms, she stood up and took
a deep breath. She untangled herself from the curtain and walked down the five steps made of dark
polished stone.

She looked around with the confusion of a suddenly awakened dreamer trying to discern their
dreams from their memories.

Yes, memories…

She remembered the cold autumn air biting her ears and clawing at her lungs.

She remembered running.

-------------------

The darkened streets, once so familiar, now seemed like the ever-changing walls of a prison cell
with no escape in sight. Lysandre’s racing heart and erratic breath made the collar feel tighter than ever.

A fleeting, half-formed thought passed through her mind. Maybe that was the point of it.
Perhaps this metal choker was there to prevent her from running in the most literal meaning of the
word.

She stopped for a moment to catch her breath, leaning on the cold stone wall of a house,
allowing the gravity of her situation to descend upon her.

Somewhere in the distance there was shouting. Like a hunted animal, she looked back. Her eyes
darted around, looking for the lawmen in pursuit of a criminal.

A murderer?

Oh spirits, did I kill her? Her mind raced and all of a sudden she felt dizzy. She knelt down to
regain her footing. She was alive when I was there, but…
 The shouting voices sounded off once again, now louder. She could now discern some words
and a poor attempt at a melody.

Just drunk people…

With considerable effort, Lysandre slowed her breathing. Panic would do her no good. She
needed to regain some control over this situation, but her one true fear could not be held back. Her own
safety aside, there was a terrible thought that gnawed at the back of her mind.

What if her actions hurt the Nightblossoms? What if the duchess reported this, and with
Lysandre absent, the lawmen went after—

She felt a wave of nausea and buried her head between her knees. She shivered for a while in
the shadowy side of the lamp lit street, unable to find the strength to move, resigned to her sorrow.

It was the numbness in her limbs that broke the grasp of her despair. The cold had a way of
tapping into that ancient survival instinct. It made us preoccupied with nothing but a singular idea of
finding warmth. With some difficulty, she stood up, feeling blood once again coursing through her limbs.
Then came the tingles that, in their discomfort, at least did some good. Briefly, they moved her thoughts
away from her guilt and grounded them in the moment.

Cera told her to run away. She said not to come back, and at least for the night, Lysandre would
do just that.

The fires of the grand square were not an option that night. Still, she knew where there’d be
hidden fires that belonged to all that gathered around them. She knew places like that well. The orphans
of Dalkoffburg were familiar with the secret nooks and narrow crevices of the city. After all, that was the
meaning of her last name: Streethold, the one who keeps to the streets. That night her name would be
put to the test, she thought.

Looking around for a landmark, her eyes stopped at the towering spires of Castle Dalkoff. That
was the east. Her destination, however, was the south of the city. She would go to the hidden undercity
of bridges. If only for one night, she would seek shelter there, and tomorrow she would think about…

Tomorrow…

Tomorrow, which once held so many promises, now felt like a joyless void.

In frustration she bit her numb hand, leaving deep marks but barely feeling the pressure.
Nevertheless, the pain was enough to snap her out of her creeping lethargy. Survive tonight. That was all
that mattered. And so, limping away on her tingling feet, she made her way towards the place out of
sight—the place for the homeless and the forgotten.

It took her almost an hour to reach the shore of the river Ranna. The water levels were low still.
In springtime it would fill the entire riverbed, but in autumn there were large areas of gravel and
driftwood and mud on which one could walk. Under the moonlight, Ranna looked unusually beautiful.
Every now and then its cold blue surface was broken up by warm orange tones of reflected lamplit
streets in the distance. Even so, there was no escaping the smell. The filth of the city ran through those
waters.

Lysandre paced along its bank for a while, avoiding the occasional clumps of driftwood. The air
here was even colder somehow, and it was hardly a surprise. Before it could be sullied by Dalkoffburg,
the river would carve the pure eastern hills, inhabited by nothing but wildlife—and, if the legends were
true, another elder vampire. Out there, the river was a force of nature, breaking mountains and eating
through valleys. Here in the city, it was a caged animal. A dirty, smelly thing confined by walls and bound
by bridges. It was a sad sight to behold. In that moment, Lysandre felt the strangest bit of kinship with it.

Then her attention was pulled in the direction of a nearby bridge. There was the sound of
laughter, and conversation.

This brought some of the vigor back in her step. As she moved in closer, she saw them clearly.
Next to the stone foundation of the bridge were eight firepits. She made her way towards the closest
one. The fire was crackling in a dug-up hole surrounded by rocks and fueled by plentiful driftwood.
There were about half a dozen people huddled together. She paused for a moment, observing them.
Deciding she would fit in well enough, being a Streethold and all, she joined the circle.

Her assumption, however, was wrong.

It was the dress that raised questions. Certainly it was no piece of clothing for nobility, but it
stood out among the unfortunates. She stood out, and people who stand out get noticed.

People who stand out get asked questions.

“Who might you be, girlie?”

An older woman wrapped in what must have been a dozen different tarps and blankets asked as
she tossed a piece of driftwood onto the fire and leaned back onto a pile of rocks covered by an old rag.
The thing almost looked like an improvised throne.

“I’m nobody,” Lysandre mumbled, holding her hands above the fire, reveling in the returning
sensation.

“We’re all nobodies here. Used up and cast away nobodies,” an old man said, chuckling.“But
even us nobodies have names, so what’s yours?”

“Lysandre…Streethold.”

“Oh, a Streethold! Another bastard of some passerby. Yeah, plenty of your kind around these
parts!” he laughed.“So which are you? My daddy was a rich merchant? A duke? A king? Most of you
Streetholds have a tall tale of your lineage to share; so what’s yours?”
 “I have no idea who either of my parents are,” Lysandre mumbled, her eyes avoiding the old
man’s.

“Well, I can tell you for sure that your mother was a whore!”the old man said, laughing.
Lysandre said nothing.

“Oh, shut your rotten mouth, Ivor!”the old woman cut him off.

“What? You know it’s true! Every Streethold I’ve ever met was thespawn of a whore.”He
continued glaring at Lysandre, whose face was mostly hidden under her scarf.

“Eyah!” The other woman around the fire chimed in.

“E’ery one of ‘em!”

“Don’t you mind them, girlie. They are just a bunch of old mudcrabs,” the blanketed woman
chuckled. “Life made them unlucky and spirits made them ugly, so now here they are, miserable and
grouchy all day long.”

The other woman protested vigorously at this. “I’ll have you know I was beautiful once! I was a
wealthy merchant’s wife.”

“Masha, you were never even a poor merchant’s quick fuck!” the old man shouted back at the
woman, but there was a sense of familiarity in his tone and Masha threw a pebble at the old man,
feigning insult. This broke the tension and Lysandre knew that the hazing was done. She couldn’t help
but smile slightly. She had seen talks like these before. In fact, she had been a part of them herself in the
days of the working house.

With some of the edge gone from his voice, the old man turned back to Lysandre. “Come now,
girl, show yourself. Nobody likes a hooded stranger in their midst.”

To their surprise, however, Lysandre recoiled from this, pulling away from the fire.

The old man frowned a bit and then burst into a fit of laughter. “Don’t worry if you’re ugly; you’ll
fit in with these two.”

Masha threw another pebble at him, shouting,“ Speak for yourself, you ol’ driftwood. One of
these days I might just toss you on the fire by mistake.”

While the two bickered, Lysandre noticed the others whispering amongst themselves. Every
now and then one or two of them would glance at her suspiciously. After all, she was a stranger at the
fire with her face hidden by her scarf.

Lysandre instinctively pulled up the neck folds of the scarf, making sure the collar remained
unseen. This, however, only made things worse.
 Inquisitive looks around the fire quickly turned to impatient glares, and then suddenly, one of
them reached out towards her.“Enough of this nonsense! If you would share in our fire, you will show
your face.”

Before Lysandre could react, the man pulled on the scarf. With a scraping sound of fabric against
fabric, she felt it leave her neck. At that moment, their looks changed from suspicious to something
bordering on fear.

The collar was out for all to see, suddenly glittering with an almost magical glow. Bloodsilver was
at its most beautiful in the moonlight. Like a glittering kaleidoscope, its shine danced on the
apprehensive faces of the small gathering. Lysandre tried covering it up with her own hair, hoping it
would somehow erase the very memory of it from their minds. There was no such luck.

They were now all whispering, pointing, talking about her. She knew what would inevitably
follow. Her kind was unwelcome. She grabbed her scarf, now on the floor, and turned away to leave. As
she made her way down the shore, she heard the old man call“ Masha, what are you doing? You one of
them now?”

Masha grabbed for Lysandre’s arm and Lysandre turned in defense, but Masha’s face was
uneasy but kind.

“Masha!” the old man called again.

“Oh, go chew on a donkey hoof, will you?!” Masha yelled back at him, her eyes fixated on
Lysandre. She took Lysandre’s hand and said, “Here…”

Lysandre felt something cold and rough touch her skin. When she looked at it, she saw a
textured metal stick and a strange rock in the palm of her hand.

“So you can make your own fire, at least, ”Masha muttered and turned away.

Lysandre stammered her way through a confused “thank you” and ran away once more into the
night. In the distance she could still hear Masha and the old man arguing in that amused tone of voice.
Soon, however, their voices faded away and all she could hear was the whistling of the autumn wind.
Looking at the sparkstone and fire rod in her hand, she wondered if there was some abandoned place
where she could put these gifts to good use and spend the night.

Standing alone at the riverbank, she looked around as the cold breeze moved her hair. The
bloodsilver collar once again greeted the moonlight by erupting in all its brilliance. She didn’t bother
covering it. At this moment, she had no patience for the people of the city anymore and if this made
them keep their distance, then they could do just that. What old magic is there in this thing, she
pondered, when it can chase away both people and vampires?

She stopped in her tracks. The soft sound of shoes on gravel ceased, and for a moment nothing
but the sound of slow running water was heard.
 “Vampires…” she whispered.

She turned around to the east and found her eyes stuck on a shadow in the distance. Beyond
the inner Dalkoffburg wall, on the hill, outlined in the moonlight…The forbidden castle.

Her castle. The castle of the Blood Queen.

She noticed that her shakes were gone. Almost like her body had already accepted the idea her
mind was still struggling with. It was okay, it told her. We don’t have much more to lose. Look at it;it
offers us shelter or it offers us death. At this point, both options sound perfectly acceptable, she thought.

One way or another, I can finally rest.

-------------------

The rest of her memories were like a dream.

Maybe I did dream most of it, she thought as the cold morning air persistently gnawed at her
earlobes. She dreamt of a resigned journey, of a hopeless climb to the castle gates. The castle stood in
front of her, ever open, yet rarely entered. Even then its visitors were mostly thrill-seekers and thieves.
She was neither of those. Instead she was merely a desperate soul seeking shelter. Part of her expected
that she would enter the place and disappear, painfully devoured by some dark creature and that would
be the end of her tale, as unfortunate as it was short.

Hers, however, was a different fate.

No creatures of the night came for her that night, and for a brief moment she touched her
collar. She would have even smiled if her circumstances weren’t so absolutely mirthless. Refusing to give
in to her despair, she decided that the great hall was no place to spend her nights.

For a while she wandered the castle hallways, exploring the numerous rooms. She was looking
for a fireplace. While the throne room possessed a majestic one, it also seemed hungry and hard to
maintain.

In the end she found a north-facing room that seemed mostly untouched. Old age had done its
work, more than three centuries of dust and grime, but it had a bed made of sturdy wood that resisted
the weather and the worms. It was old craftsmanship made to last. The stained glass in the narrow
window was still intact and prevented the biting wind from entering the room.

This will do, she thought, but her face was screwed up in an unpleasant expression as she looked
around at all the dust and cobwebs.

She went around the castle trying to gather any and all lamps and candles for her new room. To
her great disappointment, she soon realized that neither candles nor lamp oil could withstand the
passing of centuries. If she wanted light in her room, it would have to come from her fireplace.
 “For now, at least,” she spoke quietly. Even so, her voice eerily echoed through the shadowy
halls.

She spent the next two hours stockpiling old, broken furniture from around the castle until there
was enough of it in front of the room to keep her warm for days. She celebrated her achievement by
putting the sparkstone and the metal rod to good use, and soon there was a pleasant crackling fire in
her room. The warmth that radiated from it felt divine.

For a while she sat down next to it, just forgetting everything and letting the heat circulate
through her body. But soon her stomach would remind her that there was more to her survival than just
lighting the fire.

She made her way through the castle, which was much easier to navigate during the day. In fact,
the stained-glass windows that had the good fortune of remaining unbroken turned the gloomy old
place into something downright magical. It was a kaleidoscope of colors that briefly reminded her of her
collar in the moonlight. There was great beauty in such a despised thing, she thought.

“Ha!”She laid her hand on the castle wall, a gentle smile on her face. “I dub thee an honorary
Nightblossom!”

Her smile swiftly melted away as the mere mentioning of the Nightblossoms reminded her
troubled mind of her worries. She desperately wanted to go back to the Nightblossom house, if for no
other reason than to find out what happened to Cera. What happened to all of them?

Her fists clenched in frustration, she leaned against the cold stone. This separation from them
was probably for the best, but…she just wanted some news.

“Stop!”She hit the wall strong enough for the pain to pull her out of her miserable thoughts.

In hopes of finding the exit, she turned back to exploring the castle. It was a large, time-worn
place, with many rooms and intersecting hallways. By the time she found her way to the grand atrium, a
part of her was worried whether she would even be able to find her room again. The old stairway that
brought her down was covered in dust. Parts of the railing were damaged by old age, but other than
that it was in pretty decent shape. In fact, a lot of the castle had that same kind of feeling: old,
abandoned, but relatively untouched. While its outside had seen better days for sure, its insides were
surprisingly well preserved.

The atrium was a large open hall, the likes of which always made her feel anxious. Her place was
in the small rooms. A street rat belonged out of sight, after all. This place was intimidatingly vast, much
larger than the Dunston hall. With no lamps to reveal its mysteries, the cavernous room was illuminated
by three large, circular, stained-glass windows. Some pieces of the glass had been broken over time, and
Lysandre heard the flapping of bird wings above her. Her eyes, used to the half-light, could discern nests
on the pillar edges. For a moment her stomach howled, and she contemplated climbing for some bird
eggs. She was quickly dissuaded as the pillars were too high and too smooth. Disappointed, she looked
around once more, taking in the details of the place.
 There was man-made damage on the walls all around her. Decorative details on the moldings
took the brunt of it. Most of it had probably been broken off by adventurous thieves selling them as
charms, she pondered, running her fingers over the ruined patterns. Even she knew something about
the big business of vampiric protection that was the lifeblood of the city.

The only other thing that seemed intentionally damaged was a large painting above the wide
ornate fireplace. Above its twisting roses carved in dark marble was a framed piece done by some
unknown master centuries ago.

The faces were burned off, but initially it had been a painting of two women holding hands. It
didn’t take much effort to recognize them for who they were. After all, this was the castle of the
vampire queen. Who else could they have been but Alyssa Dalkoff and her beloved Melanie?

Lysandre walked towards the portrait, studying it closer. There was no mistake about it. Under
the frayed, burned edges, she could see painted locks of red hair. Absentmindedly, she ran a lock of her
own hair through her fingers, humming a song from a distant memory.

A song from a dream…

A melody of Melanie.

As if in response, a gust of cold air whistled through the hall, and she saw the large entrance
opening a little with a loud creak.

Startled for a moment by the sound, she turned around, only to see the light coming in. She
smiled in relief and, almost in response to the howl of the wind outside, her stomach responded with a
howl of its own.

She made her way out. It was a lovely autumn day outside. There was wind, but the sort that
made you smile on a warm day. It was as if nature desired to provide a sheer contrast to the strange
cold night she’d gone through, and some of her spirits were lifted. She took a careful peek through the
gate, looking around to check if anyone was nearby. Unwanted company was unlikely, but not
impossible. Satisfied with the solitude of the road ahead, she stepped out, adjusting her eyes to the
brilliant light of the day. She looked back at the castle and noticed its perpetual north side mist rising
from the riverside. The mist was good. It would keep the smoke from her room’s little fire well hidden.

Her stomach protested fiercely once again, and she turned to her more immediate needs.

A small path led alongside the castle, and she noticed a narrow stairway leading all the way
down to the riverbank. There, a stone-hewn port had been carved in the cliff side back when the castle
was still in use.

The port might have been even older, she thought, briefly remembering that the place was an
ancient fort even before the castle took its place.
 She descended to the riverbank and looked around. The river here was clean, unsullied by the
city. That meant that the water would be good to drink and whatever food she found in or around it
would be safe to eat. Now if only she could find something to carry it all in.

Looking around, she noticed an old doorway carved in the side of the mountain. The door itself
was long gone, mere splinters of its frame scattered around. Reluctantly, she took a look inside. To her
surprise, it was a small room with no way forward, but what path there was led upwards. She figured it
probably connected directly with the castle above. With her eyes once again adjusted to the darkness,
she could now discern broken planks and a large pile of rope on the ground. There she found something
else. She picked up a large metal circle in her hands. It was heavy and rusted with a groove running
through its circumference. Looking up once again, she knew what it all was. She smirked for a moment.
Dunston Manor had something similar, though much smaller in scale—a pulley to raise whatever was
brought by the boats.

In the corner, she noticed a few large ceramic pots. She took one of them out into the light,
examining it. It seemed sturdy enough and free of holes. Satisfied with her find, she took the pot and
washed it in the river. Happily, she concluded that the pot held water just fine.

Tying her skirt around her waist, she waded into the shallows. With no net or any kind of fishing
supplies, the fish were out of the question, but there were always mudcrabs on the shores of Ranna. As
a kid, she used to catch those often with other little Streetholds.

Soon she was making her way back up into the castle, the pot in her hand full of water and a few
large crabs that up till then had been lucky enough to make their home where people feared to go. It
took some time to find her way back to her room, but soon the fire was stoked, and there was a smell of
cooking permeating the place. While it was a welcome change from the dusty scent of the room, one
would hardly call it an improvement. Lysandre was fine with this. Dust, mudcrabs—she knew these
smells well enough and thought All things considered, this is not all that bad.

Absentmindedly, she scratched at her neck and brushed against her collar. She considered the
thing for a moment, once again a thought forming in her mind that even if there were evil spirits and
memories of old terrors in this castle, it was probably the collar that kept them away.

She supposed that was all right.

12.Melanie of the Night

A week had passed since Lysandre arrived at the castle. Once a strange, cold place, it had since
become a familiar thing to her. A home. Her small room had been cleaned over the course of the week
and supplied with any essentials that she could find. Some she obtained in her searches of the castle,
and others were spoils of her evening journeys back into the city where, like a vampire, she would
descend from the forbidden castle for her nourishment.

She was never much of a thief, but one does what need commands. Soon the people of the city
found bedsheets missing from their drying ropes, and there were even bags of flour missing from the
baker’s cart. All in all, none of these things were unusual, and none on their own would point to a single
red-haired culprit sneaking in the night.

On her second night in the city, Lysandre carefully made her way to the Nightblossom house,
her curiosity and her fear getting the better of her.

The moment she saw the house, some of the fear subsided. It had not been demolished by
some fire-wielding mob seeking vengeance for the death of a noblewoman. In fact, the lights were on.
Lysandre looked around carefully and, satisfied with the lack of traffic, she made her way closer to the
house. She didn’t have to get too close before she heard laughter. It was Shana.

Laughter, she thought. Laughter is good and…there were other voices. Her heart beating faster,
she took a few steps closer to the house. Reluctantly, she peeked through the window. There they were.
Lysandre smiled widely as she saw Cera talking to Leona. Cera, however, wasn’t smiling. She looked
tired, drained of her joy. Somehow she looked less…Cera.

Lysandre backed away.

It’s my fault, she thought, pulling her scarf tighter around her face to cover both it and the tears
that no effort of hers could hold back. Her mind conjured up scenarios of Cera’s punishment. Of her
paying for Lysandre’s stupidity and recklessness. Yes…they were better off without her. With everything
that happened, surely she was the last person they’d ever want to see. She moved back away from the
house, turning her back to her old home and looking at her new one in the distance. Yes, she thought. I
belong there, with other bad memories.

She swallowed her sadness for the moment, deciding that at the very least, they all seemed fine.
For better or worse, they persevered through all of this.

-------------------
 Two months passed and autumn gave out its last breath. The first snow of winter was at the
gates, and with it came visitors. By that time, Lysandre’s home away from home had become a
surprisingly cozy place. During the day, it was colorfully speckled by the light of the stained-glass
window. At night, more than a dozen lamps kept the dark at bay. By then, of course, Lysandre had
borrowed quite a supply of oil from the city lights, and there were other provisions stacked in the
corners of the room—flour, dried herbs, and spices. There were old tarps on the top of her bed covered
by several bed sheets and an improvised pillow. There were even some wild apples and nuts she’d found
while exploring the surrounding forested area.

All in all, she thought, it could be worse. Much worse, she grinned as she remembered her first
night of the red moon in the castle. If ever a vampire would have come for her that was surely the time.
In this she supposed her collar had proven itself useful. With it around her neck, the castle was but a
very large and very dusty house. Her house.
By then she had crafted some simple fishing nets, so if nothing else, there was always fish, and
in the tall towers of the castle she found many bird nests that she would sometimes pillage. Her
appearance, however, had grown progressively wilder. Her hair, now longer than ever, was once again a
tangled mess. She had also gotten sharp around the edges as the mere act of feeding herself involved a
whole lot of walking around. Her once-soft, rounded shoulders grew bony and slim. Still, she thought,
she had also gotten more resilient. She could walk for longer without growing tired, and she could carry
heavy jugs of water up to her room with minimal exhaustion.

“Speaking of which…”

She spoke to the empty room as she got up from her bed and threw another piece of drywood
on the fire. She stretched, took her pot and her lamp, and made her way down towards the atrium. She
made it to the entrance without ever turning on the lamp. By then, she had grown accustomed to the
layout of the castle. She was less certain about that stairway, though. The first snow of winter had
covered everything with a thin white coating, and she knew that the stairway to the port was likely to
have grown more treacherous than ever. A small part of her contemplated other options. Maybe she
could craft a rope ladder and instead make use of the port room tunnel. It wouldn’t do if she fell on her
way down those stairs and broke a leg. Having slipped twice on her way down already, this was a serious
problem.

With her thoughts turned to such dark possibilities, she made her way out of the castle,
wrapped in an old pale curtain. Just as she was about to ignite the wick on her lamp, she noticed
something out of place. There were footprints in the fresh snow. Not her own—she made every effort to
hide those. Very few took the road that passed near the castle, but a few travelers would have been
enough to notice. One would be enough to start spreading rumors about someone living in the castle.
No, Lysandre wanted none of that, and so she made sure to sweep away every trace of her presence.

And yet, there they were, dark shapes on the moonlit, snow-dusted winter canvas. More than
one person by the looks of it, she thought, her heart beating wildly.

There were intruders in her castle.

 She rushed back in, pale curtain floating in the breeze behind her. Her mind was a complicated
mess of panicked thoughts.

Did they find me? Was I not careful enough? Maybe someone saw the smoke through the mist?
Maybe the light in my window? But that can’t be—I looked around the castle. My room is on the north
side. Only the woods and the mist are there and…

She heard voices. They were too muffled to understand the words, but there were definitely
people in her castle. Her castle? She stopped for a moment.

Why not? She had even given it a name. This was Castle Nightblossom! To her great surprise,
with this simple thought her panic was washed away by a wave of anger. How dare they? This place is
forbidden!

This place is her home!

The voices are near, she thought, climbing the stairs. Soon she could understand the words.

“Come on, man, we never went this deep into the castle; let’s go back!”

The other voice snapped back at the first one, “Shut up! You wanna spend your whole life
sneaking around the gates of this bloody place stealing crumbs like a damned rat, or do you want to get
some good pieces and settle down? Every bit of this castle is gold, but if we get some of the ornaments
from the main hall… Do you have any idea just how much that old fart Rudd at the Broken Fang would
pay for those?”

“Yeah, that’s all fine if we live to sell them, innit?”

The other man scoffed at that and rushed his colleague along.

The main hall, Lysandre thought. And a curious idea took shape in her mind. Her thoughts went
back to the old farts who sentenced her. She remembered the fear in their eyes when they saw her hair.
Remembered others who whispered behind her back. The devil reborn… She thought of Lara’s song and
the great portrait at the lower hall.

The one they all feared. The devil reborn. Melanie! Her eyes burned with green flames of
determination as she rushed to the main hall. Cutting through the side rooms and using her knowledge
of the place, she arrived fast enough to prepare herself for her visitors.

She was used to the way the throne room looked during the night. It was illuminated by
moonlight, a large circle of it landing upon the large old wooden throne. Over time she had even learned
to appreciate the throne. There were ornaments of roses on it and gold engravings. She had also
realized there was a second seat there once. Probably a matching pair, and she guessed who the other
seat was for.
 The voices were growing louder as her guests approached, and she had to act quickly. Her pale
skin had a way of reflecting the moonlight on its own, so that was already good, and her untamed hair
and almost-bony visage had a certain presence about it. Of course, there was also the element of
surprise, she thought as she placed her hand on the scarf around her neck.

The waiting was the worst part. Her heart beating wildly once again, she realized that the anger
had once again given way to fear. But before she could properly question her own actions, the old doors
swung open and the outlines of two men entered the room.

“See?”the brave one spoke. “Nothing to fear here. Nothing but old superstitions and—”

Lysandre spoke from the chair.“Ah, visitors! We so rarely see willing sacrifices coming here
these days.”

She tried her hardest to keep her voice from trembling, but her fear was close to overtaking her.
In the back of her mind, she held close to the memory a story. The story of the Nightblossomwhostood
against the angry mob and claimed the name of Nightlust. Tempting them, challenging them…

And so Lysandre pushed back her fear, rose from the chair, and rose to the challenge.

The two men stopped in their tracks and stared at her, waging a battle against their own
growling beasts of fear.

She noticed one of them flinching and dropping his bag on the floor.

You blinked! she thought, and once again the fire in her heart turned to rage.

“Who dares enter the gates of Castle Dalkoff and stand before Melanie of the night? Who gives
up their life so willingly?”

With one swift move she removed her scarf, and as the moonlight struck the bloodsilver collar,
it erupted in brilliance, blinding the intruders.

“Bloody hell!”The recently brave one shouted and ran. The other one was paralyzed for a
moment. His accomplice shouted back at him, “Run, you idiot! It’s the Red Devil!”

This was all it took for the other one to turn around and flee for his life, stumbling through the
darkness.

Lysandre earnestly laughed at this, and in the eerie night air, the echoing quality of the castle
halls amplified the sound into something otherworldly. It made the intruders let out a terrified yelp
before disappearing out of sight.

Lysandre quickly made her way to the staircase that looked down onthe exit and the old stone
bridge that crossed the river. There, in the glistening moonlit snow, she could clearly see the two men
stumbling over each other to escape the cursed place. For the first time in a long time, Lysandre’s face
was beaming in an honest—if mischievous—grin.
 The next day, she made her way back to the throne room. As the sun illuminated the great
throne, she took a moment to wonder about the architecture of the whole thing. While the moonlight
was certainly useful for her little performance last night, she couldn’t imagine a vampire queen found
much enjoyment in such a sunlit place. Then again, she thought, she never really knew much about
vampires, and even the stuff she did know varied wildly. She shrugged and moved down the hall
towards the doors where one of the thieves dropped his bag the previous night.

She knelt down next to it and took the time to examine its contents. Small fragments of the
castle wall, she thought as she turned a piece of dark stone in her hand. She remembered something
that the timid one said—that the old man at the Broken Fang would pay well for stuff like this.

The Broken Fang, she thought. She vaguely remembered hearing about the place inthe
merchants’ district of the town. One of those vampire protection sellers.

“What would they need with castle pieces?” she asked the empty room, and received nothing
but a faint echo for an answer.

She picked up the satchel and saw that it was pretty light. Looking around, she saw a few more
pieces of rubble next to the wall. These were different. While the entire castle was built from the same
dark stone, some areas of it were covered in carvings and golden filigree. She picked up the throne room
fragments and admired the golden markings for a moment. Unable to discern their value, she gathered
those as well until the bag was as heavy as she could carry.

If they want rocks, she thought, I’ll sell them some rocks. She made her way down the castle and
went through the main gate. The snow had covered all the evidence of last night’s visitors, but she
thought it would be troublesome if she left her own tracks in it. Instead of crossing the bridge and taking
the old city road, she made her way down to the port and proceeded along the shore of Ranna. She
would cross one of the lower bridges, she thought, and meet the road there.

Shifting the satchel from one shoulder to another, she made her way back to the city gates. The
rocks were heavy, but if nothing else, they might solve some of her food problems through the winter.

That, they did.

13.Rudd

Lysandre moved her makeshift scarf out of her face for a moment, taking a look around the
traders’ district. Even covered in a thin coating of snow, the street still persistently glimmered with all
the mirror charms proudly displayed in the windows and in front of the entrances of numerous stores.
She was somewhat reminded of the iridescent shine of bloodsilver in the moonlight.

It occurred to her that she never noticed this brilliance on any of the other Nightblossoms’
collars. She supposed she never really had the chance to observe them in the full moonlight. Also, most
of the time they kept their necks covered. It made things easier. Wasn’t this why she wrapped a piece of
castle curtain around her own neck? It was easier this way. The last thing she wanted was to attract
attention with the bloodsilver around her neck misbehaving again.

It was the deep aching in her shoulder that turned her mind to decidedly less magical concerns.
The stones and the Broken Fang were her business that day. After asking around for the store, she soon
found herself at its very doorstep. It wasn’t hard to find. Most of the stores here were converted houses,
many without proper storefronts or large windows. This wasn’t all that surprising, as the expansion of
the district truly began only a century ago. That was when the business of vampire protection truly
started blossoming.

At some point the merchants’ guild agreed on their course of action. They would claim the large
eastern street as their own. It faced the castle itself, so it felt appropriate. In a way, it was a statement
of sorts: Behold, we put so much faith in our products that not even the Vampire Queen’s castle scares
us.

It worked.

Ultimately the deal was struck between the merchants, the elders, and the nobility. The district
was approved, and the great remodeling began. Most houses had very few ground-floor windows at the
time. This was an architectural remnant of more dangerous times. This was a part of the old town. Most
of it was built before there was an outer wall. Back then, even the inner wall was no more thana loose
pile of stones. Point was, these old houses made for poor storefronts, but the merchants made do with
what they had. After all, there is a certain appeal in a store revealing its secrets only to those ready to
cross its doorstep.

The Broken Fang was a different story. It was built during the reign of the Blood Queen, and
even then it served as a store. It had two large windows framed by roses of wood and stone. The owner
must have taken great pride in these, as they looked well kept. Lysandre took a closer look, noticing the
sheen on the wood and the lack of grime in the crevices of the stone carvings. Behind the glass, many
charms stood proudly displayed, and several shelves containing what were undoubtedly fragments of
the castle.

She smirked at this. It was forbidden by law to enter the castle, but at the same time fragments
of it were sold in such an open way. The city laws stop where the merchants’ profit begins, she
supposed. She pulled up the slipping bag and opened the door.

The air within the store was a sudden rush of scented warmth, nothing overwhelmingly
perfume-like, but instead a sweet soft smell of either pipe smoke or Sela wood. She figured it was the
wood, as it was supposed to be one of the often-traded vampire repellents. Then again, if the rumors
were true, vampires disliked anything and everything that might be sold for a coin or two. Dead rats and
old shoes not excluded from the list.

“Looking for work, are we?”

The voice came first. It sounded raspy and dry, the sort of voice that always sounds like its owner is
suppressing a persistent cough. The cough never came. What did come was an old man.

Rudd, she thought. That’s what her night visitors called him.

His dark blue suit was well maintained. His receding hairline gave him an air of dignity—
importance, even. He presented himself well for his age, and he must have been at least seventy years
old at the time. His brown eyes, however…they felt much younger. They were a young man’s eyes, she
thought. Just like a young man’s eyes, she saw his darting all over her. With young men, their eyes
would often stop at her collar or in its neighborhood.

Rudd’s gaze, however seemed more interested in the heavy bag.

“Work?” Lysandre was taken aback by the bluntness of his tone.

“Most people hauling bags as loaded as that one tend to offer me their services. Well, at the
very least, they do their best to convince me that the pebbles they picked off of Ranna’s riverbanks were
in fact smuggled straight out of the vampire queen’s castle.”

Lysandre frowned a bit, discouraged by the dismissive tone in the old man’s voice.

“Well now, come along; get your pebbles up here. Let’s see what you got there.”

As Lysandre lifted the bag up on the counter, the cloth around her neck shifted, and a ray of
sunshine touched the bloodsilver on her neck. For a moment, Rudd flinched.

“All pale and red-haired…and with quite the jewelry,“he muttered. He studied Lysandre
carefully,suddenly uninterested in her bag of rocks.

At that moment, she would have done anything not to be in the store anymore. Something was
wrong about the way he studied her with such interest, as ifhe knew some deep dark secret of her
heart. The only thing that kept her from running away from his store then and there was the threat of
the upcoming winter. Chances were she would end up spending it hidden away in that old castle, and
she guessed that the treacherous stairs to the shore of Ranna were easily frozen during the winter. She
needed the old man’s coin. She needed the food.

Then the old man gave her a smile she would one day learn to love dearly. A cunning, wry thing
that fit his face in the same way a warm smile fit Leona’s. You just knew that hidden within that smile
was his true nature.

“Interesting place, that old castle,“ Rudd spoke, some of that smile lingeringin the cornersof his
lips.“Dangerous place!“ He pointed his bony finger towards the window.“It still carries her presence, you
know?I guess any place that housed a true elder vampire has its scent or something. It’s like when an
animal pisses to mark its territory.“Then he chuckled. “Naturally,I’m not saying that Queen Alyssa made
a habit of pissing around her own castle.“

Lysandre stared at the old man in confusion.

“What Imean to say is, every piece of that castle carries within itself some of her influence,
her…scent. That’s what chases the other vampires away. We sell a lot of superstitious nonsense on
these streets, as people will buy just about anything you tell them has mystical properties, but the
stones of that castle…they’re the real deal.“

He took a moment to look at Lysandre and figure out whether or not she understood him.

She nodded.

His mouth curled slightly. “Right,“ he continued. “So the problem is, it’s against the law to set
foot within that castle. Forbidden by the inquisition and the elders alike. And yet…some adventurous
folks make their way in there every now and then and plunder some of its stones.Why,Ihad one such
fella come in this morning, telling me that the vampiric concubine of the old queen still haunts those
halls and he wouldn’t step a foot back in there. In fact, the poor lad was thinking of spreading the word
about the castle.“

Rudd gave Lysandre a curious look, studying her for any response, but found none. The corner of
his mouth ventured a small smirk. “Naturally,Itold him that would bring a lot of trouble his way.“

He turned his attention to the bag of rubble and started examining its content.

“Spreading rumors about vampires in or around Dalkoffburg…Bad idea!“he said while carefully
studying a larger piece of black stone. “Even worse if he was to start talking about red-headed vampires
in thatspecific castle. Rumors like that might just bring in the inquisition troops! That would make things
awkward for the city elders and nobility, you know!People like that are likely to just make a person
dissapear before these kinds of tall tales spread too far.“

Then he looked back at Lysandre with a knowing look of someone whokept a lot of secrets in his
life.
 “It’s bad for the business, you know!“

This time he grinned in such a way that he reminded her of a child who had just witnessed the
outcome of the most glorious prank of his lifetime.

A smirk now escaped Lysandre’s face as she realized what the old man was saying.“Yes…bad for
the business,“ she repeated.

“So…” Rudd continued.“About that business…”

-------------------

Lysandre left the store with a sense of dizziness. Seventeen golden ducats and fourteen more
silver coins lay hidden in her undergarments. It was a veritable fortune. She looked up at the old castle
and smiled widely. The castle provided. It gave her shelter, and it gave her food. She didn’t really know
why, but she felt the strangest urge, and took a bow towards it.

A small jingle of the bell sounded behind her and she saw Rudd standing there in the doorframe,
smiling at her. “That’s the first time I witnessed one of you young ones abide by the old ways.”

“Old ways?”Lysandre asked, her hand gripping the coins tighter as if the old man was about to
reconsider their trade.

“Back in the days of the queen, folk had a habit of doing a small bow to the castle as a sign
of…”He paused, seemingly weighing his words. He frowned a little and continued, “A sign of fealty, I
suppose. I thought you were doing the same.”

Lysandre blushed slightly. “No, it’s…”She looked up at the castle with a confused frown framing
her eyes.“I don’t know why I did it. It felt right. The old place provided for me.”

Rudd looked at her for a moment. “What is your name, girl?”

“Lysandre Streethold, ”she said.

“So an orphan, bound by bloodsilver. And…”he left the last part unsaid, but his eyes were
focused on her hair. Lysandre guessed that he, too, knew of the old stories. She frowned slightly, bracing
herself for some kind of a snide remark, but none came. Instead, the old man clicked his tongue in a
manner of someone who had just made a big decision.

“Lysandre, my name is Rudd Thatcher, and whenever you have something to sell, my doors will
be open.”

There was something about the old man’s eyes. Warmth, of sorts, and for a moment he
reminded her of another kind old man—Barsan Abbot of six fingers and seven moons.

She nodded at Rudd, and he made a small bow towards her. A gesture that surprised her, but he
would speak of it no more as the small bell rang once more and Rudd disappeared into his store.
 For the first time in months, Lysandre felt genuinely hopeful. She stood there on the stone-
cobbled street, considering her options. She could stay in the city; rent a room for a few months if she
wanted to. She had the coin now. She could afford the food, too. Good food. The meat, the jam, it
would be like it was with the…

She grimaced. The Nightblossoms.

Her hand clutched the lump hidden under her skirt with a raspy sound of coins scraping against
each other. No copper. This was a small fortune of gold ducats. She frowned and came to a decision.

She made a stop at a nearby tailor and picked a scarf, a nice thing made of deep green fabric
with a pattern of roses running down its entire length.

Later, she would contemplate why she chose that specific scarf. Later, when she would find her
actions shaping the fates of kingdoms, she would think back on this moment when she picked the scarf
covered in roses. And she would wonder…Was she already lost in the currents of grand fate that runs
the universe?

Then and there, however, she merely thought the scarf pretty. The merchant smiled at her
when she paid for it. His smile vanished when she removed the old curtain around her neck, and for a
moment he could see the bloodsilver’s glitter. He said nothing about it. Most said nothing. Lysandre
supposed that was the benefit of living in a greed-driven place. All other problems seemed to matter
less when there was coin to be made

Lysandre left the traders’ district, but she didn’t make her way out east towards the castle.
Instead, she took a familiar route. North, up towards the mirror shrine. Towards the Nightblossom
house. She remembered taking this route the first time when she was collared. Lost, in pain, and tired.
This time it was different. She knew the way. She was far from tired, but she supposed there was pain—
the kind of pain only guilt can bring.

She approached the house with her face and hair hidden by the scarf. She heard laughter and
ducked behind the fence. Carefully, she made her way towards the back of the kiln shed. There she saw
exactly what she was after. A short slide was built and regularly used for the purposes of delivering raw
clay. This was also the most frequently visited part of the yard, and she knew that anything thrown in
there would definitely be noticed. Hidden away from sight, she pulled out a small purse of coins.

She took out three golden coins. The purse now contained fourteen gold ducats. She sighed
looking at it. She was happy to do what she intended, but the thought of losing the small leather purse
bothered her. The old man had given it to her when he noticed her trying to decide where to hide a
fistful of gold. It felt rude to just let go of it like this.

Her eyes suddenly widened. Out of her bag, she pulled out the old curtain piece. She looked at it
for a moment, wondering why she’d kept it at all. Perhaps like the castle itself, it too provided for her. It
felt disrespectful to cast it aside. She smiled at the curtain piece and whispered, “You will provide for me
one last time, okay?”
 Lysandre emptied the purse into the curtain piece and nodded at the shimmering pile of gold in
front of her. She then placed her three ducats and the remaining silver back into the purse. Yes, she
would keep the three ducats for herself. There was enough there to keep her fed for at least two
months. She would earn more, of course. Old man Rudd was open for business and the castle was
generous. She was about to toss the rest of her earnings down the clay slide, but then took a moment.
She looked around and started picking at pebbles on the ground. After finding one that seemed
sufficiently sharp, she pulled a lock of her own hair and severed it with some effort.

She tied the lock into a knot, placed it in the curtain cloth, and bound the bundle tightly. After
making sure she remained unnoticed, she tossed the whole thing down the slide. Grinning like a
mischievous kid, she turned around and left.

-------------------

Later that day, Leona found the strange piece of cloth and stared wide-eyed at its contents. She
asked around the house if any of the others had left it there. It was more of a rhetorical question, as she
had a pretty good idea of who did the deed. When Cera got down to check on the noise, she too stared
at the gold, jaw agape. Leona smiled slightly. It was a nostalgic smile. She pulled a knot of hair from the
satchel and set it on the table. Cera touched it slightly, and for the first time in days, she grinned widely.

Lysandre saw none of that. By the time it happened, she was halfway up the hill towards the
castle, the bag once again full, but lighter for sure. After all, food is less heavy than stones.
14.The Bonfire Night

Rudd stared at Lysandre as she left the store. Almost five years, he thought. He still remembered
the timid girl who entered his store with a small fortune’s worth of rubble. She would come to him three
times a month, and so it went for a few months. Every time she would stay longer, talk more. He would
teach her things about the trade. What to look for; how to recognize a fake piece of rubble. And the girl
was quick to smile and eager to laugh. One time the blizzard hit hard and she barely made it to his store.
Once their business was done, she intended to make her way home.

“Home,” she called it, he thought to himself.

He had a very good idea of the place she called home. If he had been a wiser man, a stricter
man, he would have reported it. He knew better, though. He knew exactly how that would end,
especially looking the way she did. Oh yes, those bastards would have jumped at any excuse to be rid of
her. No, he would tell no one. What he knew, he would keep to himself. He was good at that. He’d had a
very long life to master the fine art of keeping many secrets, so what was another one for the pile?
Instead, he had a different idea. He had been musing on it for a while, and on that day, as the blizzard
devoured the castle whole, he made his offer.

He offered her a room on the upper floor of his house. Naturally, she objected. She was a proud
girl, but not a foolish one. It didn’t take long for her to see that her way back would prove suicidal, so
she stayed. There was also the benefit of Rudd not minding the collar. She would stay a single night, she
told him, just until the winds subsided.

The winds persisted for three weeks. It truly was a terrible winter. Wanting to make herself
useful and pay him back somehow, she offered to clean the place. To her great disappointment, the
store was kept spotless. Rudd knew better than to let his place of business fall into disrepair. Upon her
insistence, he found some work for her. His hands were old and fingers sore, and he really could have
used some help with the intricate mirror charms.

And so it began. The more time they spent together, the more they liked each other’s company.
She was opinionated but kind. He was cunning and eager to start a conversation about just about
anything. And so they would talk for hours about things important and silly alike. Day in and day out,
they kept each other company, and in the end when the winds settled, Rudd made his proposal.
Storekeeping was a lonely affair, and his hands were no longer young. He needed an assistant. Lysandre
gave this some thought. The idea of walking back to the castle was not all that appealing. The whole
place must have been colder than a tomb and the Broken Fang was so warm and…
 …it wasn’t lonely.

And so she stayed. For five years she disappeared into the mundane buzz of everyday life, and
she was perfectly fine with that. The quiet life of a nobody suited her, and she would have gladly lived it
for the rest of her days.

But then came the bonfire night. Then came the mirror, and death, and the letters.

Then came Alyssa.

-------------------

Lysandre exited into the crowded street. It would be at least an hour longer until most of the
people made their way towards the town squares, the big and the small ones. There would be song and
dance and food, and oh yes, there would be bonfires.

She stretched her back once more, feeling the weariness of running around, polishing the
mirrors, and fetching all those stones. She saw the Violet Man down the street, still accompanied by his
lovely escorts. She briefly wondered if the girls knew any of the Nightlusts, and this thought put a smile
on her face as she remembered Cera.

It was about a year after she moved in with Rudd that Cera found her. Lysandre was in front of
the store, maintaining its precious carved window frames, when a familiar voice rang out behind her.

“Too good for a potter, too dangerous for a Nightlust…”

Lysandre turned so suddenly that she nearly fell off from the stool she was using to reach the
wooden window frame above her.

“Cera!”

She didn’t know how to respond to this sudden visitation. Embrace her? Start apologizing? Run
away?

Cera’s warm grin quickly answered that question as she stretched out her arms and hugged
Lysandre, who was still up on her stool. A few passersby stopped and frowned at the sight of them
whispering. Lysandre reflexively pulled her scarf up, but Cera didn’t care. She yelled at them while
pointing at her own collar.

“Yes! I’ve bedded her before, see? Why? You got a sister? How about you? Mother? I prefer
them younger, but put a few drinks in me and…”

The passersby walked away, muttering about this scandalous behavior.

“What are you doing?” Lysandre whispered though gritted teeth, her eyes darting around.

“Me? What are you doing? You don’t belong here! Your place is with us!”
 Lysandre noticed something in Cera’s eyes. She was taken aback when she realized that Cera
was crying.

“You idiot! I searched through this whole bloody city for you! A year of looking around! And of
course you, miss coinpurse, kept sneaking around the house, leaving your little gifts!”

Cera tried keeping a stern frown, but it was impossible. Soon they were both laughing.

Soon they were in Lysandre’s room, and as they shared a drink, Lysandre finally found out what
happened later on that miserable night with the duchess

“So you ran away, right?”Cera started, her face grimacing slightly from the drink. “And there I
am, ass naked, covered in wine, and this duchess knocked out on the floor, and I have to figure out a
way to explain this whole thing to her without her calling the law upon us. I checked her head, right?
And there’s this mean lump on the back of it.”

Lysandre blushed with embarrassment

“As I’m doing that, she starts coming to, and I slip on the wine on the floor! I fall on my ass, get
bruised, and then I have this idea. I get all lovey-dovey and scared for her, and she gets up all confused!”

Cera started mimicking the motions, acting out the scene in front of Lysandre, her face an oasis
of pure joy.

“And I go in real close, and I whisper to her…”She took a sip.

“What?”Lysandre asked, now as impatient as she was amused.

“I whisper to her, ‘Oh my dear duchess, you can’t go on spilling all this blood on this marble
floor, for look, you bumped your head, and I bumped my ass!’”

“And would you believe it, this absolute nymph of a woman goes…”She caught her breath from
laughing.“…she goes, ‘Would you kiss my head and make it better?’ And I go, ‘Only if you kiss my ass in
return!’”

Lysandre was doubled over with laughter and Cera continued, after another good swig:

“And she did just that!”

“No!”

“Right on my left cheek! And then I fucked her silly!”

Lysandre fell off the bed laughing.“Damn it…”she finally said as she caught her own breath. “So I
left the house for—”

“Absolutely nothing!”Cera finished, wiping the tears of laughter out of her eyes.
 “But I figured… You told me to run!”Lysandre stared at her apologetically

“Out of the bloody bordello, not our home!”

Lysandre blushed.

Cera sat next to her. “I missed you, you know? We got some new girls in the house. They’re
together, so I gave them our room. I’m now down in the living room. How about you? Are you happy
here?”

Lysandre looked around her room. It was well furnished. She had her own desk. She mostly used
it when she wanted to relax by assembling especially shattered pieces of the castle mosaics. She found
the activity oddly soothing. She had a large bed, a stove of her own, a wardrobe. She now owned more
clothes that she would ever use. And there was always food.

“Yes,” she said after a moment and smiled warmly at Cera. “Rudd…he’s a good person.”

Cera smiled back. “Listen, uh, like I said, the house is full at the moment, but you are always
welcome to visit.”

“Yes?”Lysandre asked, smiling warmly.

“Always!” Cera took her by her chin and gave her the serious Cera look, which again made
Lysandre laugh. But when her laughter subsided and she looked back at Cera, there was warmth in her
eyes, and her hands seemed to shake a little.

And then they kissed.

Perhaps it was the joy of being reunited, or perhaps the reason for the kiss laid hidden between the
rushing heartbeats that made her slightly dizzy. She didn’t know and in that moment she didn’t much
care. There was time for reasons later.

They had all the time they could ever want…

-------------------

Ever since that day, Lysandre regularly visited the Nightblossoms. Visited Cera. And every year
they met for the bonfire night. Them, the unwelcome ones, the castaways. They would meet outside the
inner wall. They would bring food, and drinks. They would eat, drink, and fornicate, and in the end they
would spit at the city.

“Tonight,” Lysandre whispered, and grinned widely.

-------------------

It was quite the walk. The usual gathering place was near the northern exit, so Lysandre made
her way uphill towards the old mirror shrine. By then this journey was a matter of routine. These days,
Rudd’s old bones whispered of mutiny even during short walks. That left it up to Lysandre to carry a bag
full of freshly assembled mirror charms up north for the ritual of the dark blessing.

The shrine housed Dalkoffburg’s last remaining piece of Alyssa’s soulmirror. More pieces
existed, of course, but they had been sold off to kings and nobility ages ago. These trades funded many
things in the city. The functioning sewers, the inner and the outer city walls—all bought and paid for by
the legacy of the blood queen. Even with her gone, and her departure celebrated every Queensfall, she
was still there, providing for the city.

The mirror charm ritual, or the dark blessing, was just one of her legacies. People say it was
devised by the very man who banished her: her faithful servant, Harker Devlin. Some frowned upon it.
They called it dark magic and vampiric sorcery most foul, but none could deny its effectiveness. The
ritual worked. Merchants would pay a tithe to rent a place on one of the large shelves facing the altar.
Every charm was carefully angled to reflect the soulmirror, and they were left like that for a day and a
night. Something would happen to them after that. Nobody understood it entirely, but the mirror glass
of the charms would turn dark. They would remain reflective, but they would also feel deeper, like a
bottomless pool of water hiding endless mysteries. At least Lysandre thought so.

Anyway, this was the Queensfall. Her business was not with the mirror that night, she thought
as she passed the shrine and made her way down the northmost alley that followed the inner wall. She
reached the north gate and moved past it. The guards showed no interest in her. This was the fate of
Nightblossoms. First they are infamous, then they become known, and then ignored. Lysandre preferred
it so. As fates go, one could have it much worse.

Past the inner wall were fields for miles, spreading all the way to the outer wall in the distance.
The ground here was fertile and protected. The city granary was to the east, and there, a bit more north,
was a small hill she knew very well. Even at a distance, she could see a rising plume of smoke

“A bonfire of our very own,” she chuckled, and picked up her pace.

They were all there, some very recent additions to the household included. Leona and Mathilde
were laying together on a stack of hay, and one could have easily mistaken them for much younger girls
as the dimming light of the sunset softened their features just enough to show an idyllic picture of them
in each other’s arms.

Mathilde noticed Lysandre first and moved to get up, smiling warmly, a goblet of wine in her
hands.

Lysandre stopped her. “No, no! You stay down! I’m not here to interrupt you. Not when both of
you look so lovely tonight.”

At that moment Cera practically hanged herself around Lysandre’s neck and almost swept her
off her feet.“You called?”

“What?” Lysandre yelped, surprised by the sudden loss of balance.

 Cera held on to her, smiling. “You said ‘lovely,’ and here I am!”

Lysandre rolled her eyes, but her face was radiating joy.

She turned towards Cera, one pair of green eyes staring at another. Lysandre’s cheeks blushed
red as her affection for the impish Miss Lovely took over. Cera’s cheeks were already red, as she’d had
an early start with the wine. Lysandre was smitten. It was a warm evening, and Cera wore a sleeveless
dress which made her look even more appealing with the bloodsilver collar shimmering in the sunset.
Cera,however, wasted no time admiring Lysandre. Instead, she pulled her towards another haystack.

Lysandre protested while laughing, “But I haven’t met the new ones!”

As she disappeared behind the hay, she gave the unknown women a swift wave and a yelp.“I’m
Lysandre! Pleased to meet—wah!”

And she was out of sight as Cera giggled. “Those are Cassandra and Elaine! Girls, say hi!”

Lysandre could hear laughter and a faint “Hi!” as Cera planted a hungry kiss upon her. She was
on top of her, short hair ruffled and wild. And that grin of hers…Lysandre remembered the first day she
saw it. Back then she was a broken-hearted mess, and never fully appreciated how absurdly beautiful
that grin made her.

Lysandre was grateful for the privacy of shadows, for they hid many things, including her tell-all
blush. It was the kind of a blush once reserved for a noble girl with sunflower eyes. A blush she thought
she had lost forever, and now it was the blush that threatened to complicate things.

Cera made it clear over the years that she wasn’t one for attachments. Love was not her strong
suit, but she was affectionate. As for Lysandre, contrary to her best efforts not to, she had fallen in love.
This, however, was a secret feeling she would keep to herself. A secret that, like her blush, lay hidden in
the blue shadows of that bonfire night.

As Cera’s hands started exploring her body, her last lucid thought for a while was…Maybe
someday.

-------------------

In the aftermath of their passion, they laid in the hay—messy, sweaty in the warm evening air.

“You know, Red…with the weeks of Queensfall and the whole damn court of Herentia visiting
the city, I’ve had some busy times, but something about you still sets me on fire.”

Cera grinned ravenously as she laid on top, her head resting on Lysandre’s stomach. Lysandre
had sunken into the haystack as she caressed Cera’s short, ruffled hair.

“After weeks of bedding other women, I still get you hot and bothered, huh?”she mused.
 “It’s a compliment!”Cera whispered. Her soft breath on Lysandre’s belly sent shivers down her
back.

It was an odd compliment, but Lysandre knew enough about Cera’s work to accept it as
such.“So, the Nightlusts provided again?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did the lovely duchess make her appearance again?”

“Yes, actually. Though we made some new rules. No wine on the marble floors!”She looked at
Lysandre, smirking. “We wouldn’t want anyone to slip again.”

Lysandre shared a laugh at that one.

“But there were many more,” Cera continued. Then she lifted her head up a bit and looked
around. After making sure nobody was within earshot, she continued in a much lower tone of voice,
“One of them gave me three ducats for my services.”

Lysandre pulled herself up. “Three— Are you okay? What did she want?”Instinctively, she
started looking over Cera’s body.

Her concern was met with a soft chuckle. “Ssshhh! It’s nothing like that. This one was different.
She came in hooded and masked. In fact, she never took the mask off. The whole thing was arranged
beforehand.”

“So you have no idea who she was?”

“None! Even her hair was covered. If I had to guess, the secrecy alone makes me think that she’s
local. Well…that or she’s married. And given her payment, she is probably nobility.”

“Someone tosses three ducats for a quick fuck, they are definitely nobility.” There was some
meanness to this. If she was perfectly honest, Lysandre felt a bit jealous of the whole thing. A part of her
wondered if it was like this for Leona and Mathilde as well…except the feelings were mutual for those
two. She sighed.

“I am not a quick fuck!”

Lysandre was snapped out of her thoughts by an edge in Cera’s voice, and when she looked at
her, it was apparent that she’d crossed a line.“I’m sorry…it’s just… I don’t know. I don’t like to listen
about you and other women.”

Cera got up. There was a small, confused frown on her face.

Lysandre suspected that she’d given away too much right there and quickly added, “At least not
so soon after you and I…”
 “Had a quick fuck?” Cera stared at her intently.

Every bit of Lysandre’s heart screamed at her to say it. Just say it. Made love! Instead, she sank
deeper into the haystack and just nodded.“Sorry,” she mumbled.“Tell me more about your masked
benefactor.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” Lysandre said, regaining control over her rebellious heart.

“Well, Ikind of assumed that she was one of those vampire queen admirers. When they were
arranging the whole thing, I was given instructions. Rich ones always have instructions. This one wanted
the fantasy—the red hair and green eyes. But…”Her voice drifted away.

Lysandre stared at her. “But what?”

“Well, usually the vampire queen scenario has them playing along. This one… this one was
different.”

Almost like she was avoiding the topic, Cera changed the theme.

“You know, sometimes I actually wonder who is spreading all these stories. I swear that in the
city, only a few know that the queen had her lover with red hair and green eyes. But out there, they
hear it and they come with their fantasies and—”

“So what made this one different?”Lysandre interrupted her. To her own surprise, she found
herself intrigued by this strange encounter.

“Huh? Oh…this one, she was tender. She kept the lights down. Lysandre, don’t laugh, but for the
first time ever…I felt loved.”

Lysandre didn’t laugh. In fact, a part of her took offense to this and committed to memory that
efforts must be doubled if Cera was ever going to return her feelings.

“No, it was more than that! See, usually the whole ‘vampire queen and her lover’ scenario is just
an excuse to engage in some powerplay. It gets a bit rough at times…well…you know!

Lysandre knew too well.

Cera ran her hand tenderly across Lysandre’s chest and down her stomach.“But this one… I
swear, it was as if she was worshipping me. And…then she started crying.”

“Crying?”Lysandre was snapped out of her wandering thoughts that seemed to eagerly follow
Cera’s curious hand.
 “Yes. She was kissing me from my chest, going down. Mind you, I’m usually the one doing that
to a client, so this was a surprising change of pace. But by the time she got between my legs I felt her
tears on me.”

“You sure it wasn’t her drool?”Lysandre smirked, but there was an edge to her voice. As if
something about Cera’s story bothered her on some deep, almost forgotten level.

“No, ”Cera said seriously, staring into the horizon where the city bonfires now illuminated the
night. “See…that was the only time she said anything to me. In fact, I’m not even sure if she said it to
me. It was the strangest thing, but the words she spoke…she sobbed them.”

“So what did she say?”

There was a cold chill that made Lysandre’s whole body tense up. It wasn’t from a sudden dash
of an evening breeze. No, it was Cera’s words. Just three words that made the world spin beneath her:

“’Oh, my street rat.’”

-------------------

The sun had fully set by the time they made their way back to the campfire. There they could
hear music as Shana was playing a flute, and there was a delightful smell of roasted sausages and warm
bread. Shana laughed at the state of them, as they both looked like misused scarecrows. This was
doublytrue for Lysandre, whose hair had so much hay in it that she may as well have been wearing a
wig.

“I see you were checking if our dear Lysandre is still worthy of satisfying nobility?”

Selena, visibly drunk and leaning on Shana, added, “If not, she can always…you know!”

She took the empty bottle and tapped herself on the head with it. It was a gesture done a bit
too energetically and was swiftly met with a loud yelp. This caused an outburst of laughter from
everyone. Lysandre gave her a half-hearted smile which didn’t go unnoticed, and provoked a round of
retelling the tale of her mistaken rescue attempt and the subjugation of a deviant duchess.

Meanwhile, Lysandre felt more restless that she had in years. It was impossible, of course. It
couldn’t have been her. Lara Dunston is the future queen of Herentia. She wouldn’t be seen skulking in
hidden rooms with…

But that’s exactly where she was seen, a nagging little voice in her head insisted. Remember?

“Harlot!”

No…

“Demon whore!”
 Stop it!

“Nightlust!”

She was suddenly not sure of anything anymore. Could it be her? And if it was, the spirits had a
cruel sense of humor in matching the first love of her life with the second one.

“Okay, okay, enough teasing my brave savior!”Cera hugged Lysandre and cheerfully gave her a
kiss on the cheek. Lysandre, snapped out of her thoughts, stared at Cera with a studying look.

“Hey, you okay? We were just teasing you a bit.”Cera now looked back at her, no longer smiling
but with some concern. Lysandre forced a smile and waved the whole thing away.

“No, I’m fine. I honestly got a bit dizzy. Did a lot of work and walking and…other stuff without a
bite to eat today.”

This prompted a cheerful chatter among them as the new girls passed around roasted sausages,
cheese, and bread, and Leona opened another bottle of wine. And for a while the world was magical. As
their own little bonfire crackled, they sat around and talked about the work, about life, and about all the
things that made it worth living.

As the conversation turned to love, Lysandre noticed one of the new girls’ collars start to
shimmer brightly. The rest of the gathering suddenly stopped their merriment, and it was as if the whole
group’s mood was doused by cold water. The girl—Cassandra—smiled at the rest of them and said it
was fine, but her eyes were shiny with tears. And then she broke down and started sobbing. As she
leaned forward to wipe her tears, Lysandre noticed to her great surprise that she was wearing a mirror
charm to accompany her bloodsilver collar.

She gave Cera a questioning look, but Cera remained silent. Looking around, she noticed Selena
nervously fiddling with something shiny in her hand. It was another mirror charm.Lysandre frowned a
little, and upon further inspection, noticed a chain around Leona’s neck that sank into her cleavage.
Then she saw a matching chain around Mathilde’s neck. Mirror charms, she thought. But why were they
wearing mirror charms?

“Uh…am I missing something here?”she whispered to Cera. Cera frowned a bit, not sure what to
make of that question.“Is it me, or is everyone but you wearing a mirror charm?”

“Ah,”Cera exclaimed, and in a swift motion produced her own charm from the side of her dress.

“Why would any of you need that?”Lysandre meant to ask this in a whispering tone, but her
surprise made it loud enough for others to pick up. There was an awkward silence, broken only by
Cassandra’s sobs.

“Lysandre…”Mathilde spoke with a crack in her voice. “We lost two new girls.”

“Wh-what do you mean ‘lost’?”

 An owl took flight from a nearby tree and Shana’s eyes started darting around like she was
expecting an attack. Suddenly, the others seemed restless as well.

“Recently we had three new girls arrive from Herentia: Cassandra, Marie, and Tea. Only
Cassandra is left.”

Lysandre feared asking the question because the answer was terrifyingly apparent. She
stuttered for a moment and only got two words out: “O-other two…?”

Shana spoke with a strangely commanding tone of voice. It felt out of place hearing her like
this.“Three weeks ago, they disappeared after leaving the house of the welcoming shadows. The guard
saw them leave, but they never made it back. My sources reported their bodies being found with their
throats ripped out and blood drained.”

“Their throats…” Lysandre was wide-eyed, a storm of thoughts spinning in her mind.“But the
bloodsilver…and… What do you mean ‘your sources’?”She gave Shana an incredulous look, and to her
great surprise, Shana’s own face froze.

“I meant my friends! Uh…force of habit! From the old days in Elara when I used to trade on
information and I had my…uh, sources. But my friends are trustworthy!”she said as she regained her
composure.“If they saw it, then it’s true.”

Lysandre paced in front of the fire. “And their bodies?” she asked, visibly nervous. Then, before
anyone could answer, she did it herself.“They disappeared them, didn’t they? The city…it did what it
does best.”

Shana nodded, her eyes now studying Lysandre.

Then Cassandra said with a broken voice, “We came here because we thought it was a safe
place.” She tugged on the collar. “That this would keep us safe from people and…”Her hand now slipped
down her chain to the small charm dancing at the end of it, shimmering with reflected fire.

“No!”Lysandre exclaimed with a panicked, incredulous look in her eyes. This was wrong. The
bloodsilver was supposed to protect them. Protect the city from them. It was stronger than any
charm…wasn’t it? Was that, too, a lie? Did they suffer the burns and the scratches for years for nothing?
Walk around branded for no reason whatsoever? No, she refused to believe that!

“Listen, I am sorry about all of this, but…”Lysandre bit her finger, trying to organize her
thoughts. Then she continued with a sense of growing panic in her voice, “You said they were coming
back from the house of the welcoming shadows? Does anyone know if they had a good night?”

“A great one,” Cera replied.“Sandro could attest to that. For Tea, at least. She had a special
customer that night.”

“Then…I’m sorry, but they were probably mugged.”

 “Mugged?” Cassandra asked with a pained voice.

“It couldn’t have been a vampire. Listen, I spent five years working in the protection business
and I can tell you this: Vampires are rare! But this fucking city has more than one way of making use of
them. There are killers down there in the undercity of bridges.”

She pointed towards a crack in the city where the river made its bed.

“They have these…claw-like things. Rippers, they call them. They use them when they don’t
want people to ever find the body. See, they rip people’s throats and let the city hide the evidence for
them because it’s bad for business to…to…”

“Oh, Tea!” Cassandra broke into tears again.

Lysandre put her hand over her mouth. What was she doing? she thought. This girl didn’t need
this right now.

Shana once again spoke up, her dark skin reflecting the light of the fire and her eyes piercing
Lysandre, punctuating the serious tone of her voice.“Lysandre…I know how the muggings are done in
this city. They are a bloody mess. But there was no blood in or around her.”

Lysandre sat down, stunned.“But then…”Her hand absentmindedly went over her own collar.
“Then this is all horseshit.”Her fist clenched around its metal. The added pressure produced an
unpleasant choking sensation as the little spare room there was between her neck and the collar was
suddenly occupied.“They branded us and they marked us for nothing…”

She growled the sentence through gritted teeth. The others said nothing. Only Cassandra’s sobs
broke their silence. That…and the song.

There was a sound of song and merriment in the distance.

15.The Mirror

It was a few hours past midnight when the Nightblossoms arrived home. It was a ritual repeated
yearly. It was a noisy affair, and year in and year out one of them would start a song, and others would
join in, followed by loud protests from nearby windows.

That night there was no song. They said their goodbyes quietly, once again asking Lysandre if
she’d like to spend the night.

Lysandre refused. Cera held her hand and pleaded with her to stay.

“I can’t. I must open the store in the morning. Don’t worry; I’ll be fine.”

She turned to leave, but then paused, turned back, and gave Cera a kiss. She put everything into
that kiss, her very heart, and for a moment she saw in Cera’s eyes that she felt it.

Lysandre waved at her and left. Cera was left on the doorstep, stunned for a moment. Then,
instead of entering the house, she sat down. Running her fingers across her own lips, she wondered…

She asked a question into the night. “When did I start loving you, Red?”

She wouldn’t find the answer to this. Not this night. Not ever.

This was the night of the mirror.

The night when fate swept all everything away.

-------------------

Lysandre walked in the dark for a while. She walked slowly,her thoughts making her dizzy.

A vampire in Dalkoffburg.

Dead Nightblossoms.

And…Cera’s mysterious benefactor. A woman of tender touch, seeking a green-eyed,red-haired

lover…

“My street rat.”

 There was too much of everything to process. Once again, she felt lightheaded from the sheer
impact of this night.

Suddenly the dead silence of night was broken by the sound of a loose street tile shifting with a
deep clack. She thought it would be Cera coming to take her back to the Nightblossom house. Cera, who
wouldn’t take no for an answer. Cera, who would magically return her feelings and her life would gain
some stability.

Some joy.

Lysandre turned around and all blood left her face.

There, a bit further down the street, stood a figure. It was tall, with unnaturally long arms, and
its eyes were glowing. Not red, like old tales often described it, but instead pale blue. It was a cold light.

She rubbed her own eyes quickly, hoping that they were playing tricks on her. She’d drunk a lot
that night. That must have been it. She was just seeing things. There was no way that this tall figure
moving closer towards her had glowing eyes.

“Is it you?”it spoke with a cracked voice. “The street rat?”

She wanted to scream, but her throat closed in panic, and the most she could let out was a
squeak. Like that of a street rat.

She turned and started running, but the creature was on her trail. She made a sudden turn into
the nearby alley. This was her old neighborhood. Cera had taught her about all the secret nooks and
passages, but he was still gaining on her.

Once again she felt like the collar was choking her, and somewhere deep within, her mounting
despair howled in her head. It was all a lie. This won’t save you. They lied and you’ll die! As if in
response, the collar grew brilliant once again, and for a moment her pursuer seemed stunned. She
didn’t notice this. She had no time to look back, and instead she pushed down her despair and clung to
her only chance of escape.

The cat’s trail!

She took another sudden right turn down a narrow alley, and within that alley she moved some
planks and squeezed into a space between two houses that were built uncomfortably close to each
other. She pulled back the plank to keep herself out of sight, but the plank stopped as her pursuer pulled
it back. She hoped against hope that the narrow passage that barely fit her would be enough. That the
monster couldn’t follow.

Suddenly an arm darted towards her, strong and gloved. She was barely out of its reach as the
monster’s face and shoulder pushed into the passage. Still barely out of reach, Lysandre kept pushing
through the space that usually only had cats moving through it comfortably. For a moment she looked
back and saw the dark shape blocking out all of the streetlight.
 Its eyes burned with a cold shine. They were the color of the moon.

She tried screaming again, but it was no use. Be it the panic, the choking feeling of the
bloodsilver around her neck, or the very fact that she was barely squeezing through as it was, no scream
escaped her mouth.

Her only hope was to push forward, and so she did. By the time she made it to the other side,
her dress was scraped, her arms dirty, and the monster that pursued her was gone.

Her heart racing, she looked around the street. She considered trying to scream for help, but
then she thought maybe silence was the better choice. At least until she found some protection.

Her eyes widened. She knew exactly where to go.

She looked around, and when she was sure that her hunter was nowhere to be seen, she
crossed the road in silence and made her way through the backyards with a clear goal in sight.

-------------------

Cera sat in front of the Nightblossoms’ house for a while longer. Her thoughts were an
uncharacteristic dance of romantic ideas when she heard a clack from down the street. She had been
there long enough to know the exact large loose tile that made that sound.

She smiled, fixed her hair a bit, and leaned back on the stairs, trying to make herself look
presentably seductive. Of course it was Lysandre coming back. She must have changed her mind. She sat
like that for a while, but no red-haired beauty entered their yard. Instead, there was a dead silence.
Frowning a little, she got up from the stairs, straightened her dress, and moved towards the door.

She exited the yard and, with some curiosity, looked down the street towards the place where
the loose tile was located. Many times she’d spent her mornings in bed listening to random passersby
and chariots walk over its unbalanced surface and making that sound. She loved that sound.

Tlock!

Like the hoof of a horse.

Tlock!

A piece of pottery being stacked, maybe?

Tlock!

A granite slab covering a tomb…

By the time she got to it, however, nobody was there. She could have sworn there was a voice
now coming from around the corner. Frowning, she moved down the street. The warm light of the
lamps was gone. A few of them had enough oil down the road, but the rest of the street was a stained-
glass image made of blues and blacks. The houses were nothing but shapes like the teeth of some great
monster, biting into the skyline.

Cera was fine with the shadows and the dark. Many times, she’d made her way back to the
Nightblossom home past the final lamp hours. She was familiar with Dalkoffburg of the shadows. In fact,
by then she knew every shadow and the shape it belonged to.

As she circled around the corner, however, she saw a new shadow. A shadow that did not
belong there. Its owner swiftly ran into the alley nearby, and there was a noise.

A noise of planks.

The cat’s trail!

Something about this set Cera’s nerves on edge. She ran towards the street, her mind
connecting things. Lysandre was just here. Lysandre knew about the cat’s trail. And there was that
shadow. A shadow that ran away from her. But ran from what…?

No…not running, she thought as she got to the alley entrance. Pursuing!

Lysandre didn’t have a mirror charm. Lysandre would be defenseless

Whatever it was, it was too tall, too large to get into the alley. But it wanted someone in there.

Her heart drummed in her ears. It must be her. Of course it’s her. She is the unluckiest girl Ihave
ever met. Cera pulled out her mirror charm and put it around her neck. She was protected!

Immediately, she looked around. This place had another one, she thought, but it was hard to
find it in the dark. She got low to the ground and ran her hands over the stone tiles until one of them
produced a soft tlack sound.

“There!”

She grabbed onto the edge of the stone, intent on throwing it at the man. She was good with
rocks. One of the few things she was good at, she thought.

As the rock gave way and her fingers wrapped around its edge, she grinned triumphantly…

…and then a dark shadow fell upon her.

-------------------

“There must be one here!”Lysandre whispered through gritted teeth. She frantically looked
through the narrow window of the mirror shrine, but there were no lights inside. If there were mirrors
there, she couldn’t see them, and the doors were locked.

That was no obstacle for her.

 -------------------

It was her second year of working at the Broken Fang. In fact, it was a few nights before the
Queensfall. Rudd had invested in a large supply of mirror charms, as he’d gotten the news that there
was an especially big crowd planned that year, and whoever had the charms to sell would profit greatly.

Unfortunately, there was no such thing as exclusive information in Dalkoffburg. Just exclusively
priced ones. Turned out, a few of the large sellers of mirror charms got the word about this possible
customer surge, and a bidding war started with the old acolyte running the shrine. In the end, four
merchants bought all the shelf space for the ritual. The mirrors were stacked, and the gates closed, not
to be opened until a day and a night later.

Rudd was annoyed with the whole situation and decided he would try to sabotage his
competition. The idea was simple. That night, he would break into the mirror shrine and flip all the
mirrors backwards.

“No charge, no charms!” he’d said with a devious smile on his face.

Lysandre sat at the counter, staring at the old man in shock. She always knew he was cunning,
but this was beyond just cunning. “You are ruthless,” she’d said, wide-eyed.

Rudd had composed himself, no longer smiling, but adopting the tone of a reasonable professor
trying to explain his position. “This is not ruthless. It’s…”He’d seemed to be searching for the right
words.“Prudent! Have you seen the craftsmanship of their charms?” He sounded outraged.“It’s sloppy!
In fact, it’s an embarrassment to the good name of this city and all of us trying to maintain it. I won’t
stand for it!”

Lysandre wasn’t buying his product and instead started poking holes in his plan.“So you will go
to the mirror shrine in the dead of night?”

“Yes!”

“With no lamps? Full dark?”

“Yes…?”

“And then you, the person who needs spectacles to cut his food, will pick the lock of the shrine,
and in silence and even more darkness, turn around every charm in the place?”

Rudd frowned.“Then what is your suggestion?”

“Hire a thief.”

“In this town you pay a thief to do something, and then you will have to pay them again and
again every time they decide that your little secret might be of interest to someone.”

“Pay an assassin to take out the thief.”Lysandre was having fun with the whole situation.
 “And then I’d have to keep paying the assassin to keep that a secret!”

Lysandre had laughed. Then she stopped laughing when she noticed Rudd’s stare turning from
frustrated to cunning again.

“You know how to pick locks!”

“How do you know?”she’d asked, surprised.

It was the wrong thing to say.“No, I don’t!” or “That’s ridiculous!”would have worked. Instead,
that night when the lamps had gone out, there was a dark figure with bushy hair crouching in silence in
front of the door of the mirror shrine.

-------------------

Three years later, that dark figure was back there again, this time driven by need. The moonlight
provided enough light for her to do what she needed. The lock was an old thing. She supposed it was as
old as the doors itself, but certainly not as old as the building. After all, this had beenbuilt during the
reign of the blood queen.

She looked around for her pursuer, but the streets were empty. More importantly, they were
completely silent. Hardly surprising, as this place was far from any of the town squares.

She tried pushing the doors just in case the spirits looked kindly upon her and made the acolyte
forget to lock it up. She had no such luck. This was fine. She hadn’t gone in that way when she first broke
into the place. Now, Rudd had been right when he said she could pick a lock. She’d done it on two of his
cabinets. The difference was, those weren’t complicated locks meant to keep safe something as
important as a soulmirror.

Even worse, her first attempt at breaking into the shrine was at night with no lights.

No, in the end, the lock wasn’t her way in. The small back window, however, was. It was out of
sight from the outside, so the acolyte never really closed it completely. He would leave it slightly open to
keep the air fresh in the shrine. It was an old place, and prone to smelling like one as well.

Back behind the building, she blindly reached for the window, and with some pressure she felt it
give in and open like the last time. She took off her dress and folded it up. Wearing only her
undergarments, she climbed up and squeezed through the narrow opening. She remembered the first
time she did this, it had cost her her dress as it got caught on the nail that was supposed to hold the
window shut.

This time she knew better. She took the bundle of cloth that was her dress and she was inside.

The place felt cold, but she decided it prudent to do her work quickly and leave instead of
putting her dress back on. With her eyes adjusting to the darkness, she could discern the shelves and the
shrine. There was another small window on the other side, a round thing that faced the soulmirror.
Instinctively, Lysandre turned towards the mirror. It stood there, a darkness within the dark. A piece of
void cut out of some different reality. Cold and powerful.

And staring at her.

This always creeped her out. In fact, after her first few times setting up the charms for the ritual,
she asked Rudd about it.“How come nobody ever tried to steal the mirror?”

Rudd dropped a particularly shiny piece of wall ornament on the counter and gave her a very
strange look that lasted a bit too long for comfort.

“Rudd?”

“Why would you ask such a thing?”

“Well, almost every time I’m there, the acolyte is never in the room, there are no guards, and
the thing must be valuable. You told me once that other pieces of it funded half the city infrastructure,
so…what I mean is, if it’s that valuable…”

“Tell me, Lysandre. When you are in the room with the mirror, how does it make you feel?”

“Uh…” She paused, blushing.“Don’t laugh, but…I always feel naked around it. It feels like it’s
searching. Like it sees me, past the clothes, past my body…it sees me!”

Rudd seemed to think about this for a few seconds and then said in a matter-of-fact way, “A
man tried stealing the mirror once. The poor bastard didn’t make it down the street. He just collapsed
screaming. They say the mirror drove him insane.”

Lysandre listened to this, wide-eyed. She crumpled the side of her dress for a while and then
suddenly broke the silence.“What if a woman tried?”

Rudd’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time ever, the old man seemed on edge.

“What I mean is…maybe it’s…uh…Alyssa loved a woman. Maybe a woman could do it?”

Rudd leaned back in his chair, his face escaping the light of the lamp. He looked strange that
way. Ancient beyond his age. He finally said in a hushed tone, “Only if she loved her enough to fix what
was broken…”

Lysandre stared at him. She’d heard those words before but couldn’t remember when or where.
“What do you—”

Rudd leaned forward again, this time smiling in that Rudd way of his. “Don’t you even think of
stealing that mirror, Lysandre. I can sell a lot of unsellable things, but even I have my limits.”

-------------------

“Don’t you even think of stealing that mirror.”

 The thought of stealing it never crossed her mind. She was just confused by it. It was the
anomaly in the heart of the city. A precious thing in a city ran by greed that nobody wanted but
everyone needed.

A thing that might drive you mad or save your life.

A thing that was, at that very moment, gazing into her soul in the dark.

She shuddered a little and told herself it was the cold. She held on to her bundled dress tighter
and started carefully feeling her way across the shelves. Her eyes now entirely used to the dark, she
turned around and looked at the shelves in the room.

There was not a single charm left. All of them had been picked up already. Probably even sold. It
was the Queensfall, after all.

In the distance, she thought she heard a scream, and instinctively ducked. She bit her hand as a
wave of panicked terror washed over her. The Broken Fang was more than half an hour of walking from
there. Running was out of the question, and she had no mirror to protect herself. She clawed angrily at
her collar, cursing under her breath. Cursing the city and the people in it.

And from the depth of her hatred and rage, an idea was formed.

“Don’t you even think of stealing that mirror.”

There was a mirror she could take.

“Don’t you even think of stealing that mirror.”

Of course there was.

She got up and walked towards the shrine. The air around the mirror felt cold, somehow colder
that the rest of the shrine.

It wasn’t too large. Just about the size of one of those personal mirrors that wealthy girls used to
fix their hair at times.

Her memories whispered: “My street rat.”

She shook her head. This was big. A crime unlike any other. This mirror kept a lot of the town
safe. This was bad. It made a lot of the town’s money, and somehow in Dalkoffburg, that made it worse.

“Don’t you even think of stealing that mirror.” Rudd’s voice echoed in her head, drowned out
only by the sound of her own heartbeat.

This keeps us safe, she thought, and for the first time ran her fingers over the mirror’s cold
surface. She could have sworn there was a faint purple trail left by her touch. Then she touched her own
collar.
 “This was supposed to keep us safe as well.”

She said us louder than the other words. Us was her family! Us were the Nightblossoms!
Us were now hunted.

As for Them? The city? Shadows take them, for all she cared. She steeled herself and grabbed
the mirror.

As she made her way back through the window, she cared little for the consequences of it all. If
need be, she would return the bloody thing tomorrow. The shrine would be closed anyway. It was
always closed for a week after the Queensfall in memory of those slain during the bloodtide. This was
one of the few traditions that remained unbroken since the fall of Queen Alyssa. The mirror was
undisturbed and bonfire ashes were spread around the town. Suffice to say, a week without trade never
sat well with the merchants’ guild, but the elders remained adamant on this.

Yes, she could just return the mirror tomorrow.

Still, any plans she had for tomorrow depended heavily on whether or not she could survive the
night. She kept to the shadows, turning the mirror away from her. She never had any need of such
things—or at least she thought till that night. However, she knew how the charms were meant to be
used and she assumed the mirror would work the same. Turn it towards the vampire. It is imbued with
the magic of an elder vampire, and as such works the same as their own dominant gaze. They will submit
to its power and flee. It seemed simple enough, but a suspicious part of her mind kept reminding her
that the collars should have worked as well.

With mirror in hand, she made her way down towards the east end of the city. There was the
Broken Fang. There was safety.

It was a forty-minute walk on a normal day to reach the Broken Fang from the mirror shrine.
This, however, was not normal, nor was it a day.

It took her twice as long to make her way down. There was an upside to it all. It seemed that
whatever the mirror could be doing to her, it had no effect on her sanity. Perhaps that part was just one
of the many city tales—an ounce of truth and a mountain of lies.

She carried onwards, hiding in the shadows. The street was empty, but she would take no more
chances that night. She didn’t want anyone to notice her with the mirror. This was the merchants’
district. It had been her home for five years now. Even if she wasn’t particularly liked by many, she was
known. She was the girl from the Broken Fang, Rudd’s Nightlust, or just “that red harlot.”Still, to some,
she was Lysandre. To a few, she was even a friend. That night, she thought it wise to avoid every single
one of them.

At least, while she had in her hands the most important relic of the city.
 She heard a noise behind her and hid in a small passage between two stores. The noise grew
louder, a rumble of sorts, and in a desperate moment, she pulled out the mirror and used it to look
around the corner. To her great relief, she saw three men rolling empty barrels down towards the wine
merchants’ store. She took a moment to calm down her racing heart. She looked at the mirror and
decided to use it as a warning sign. She looked around the corner once more. The men were now gone.
The street was once again clear.

Lysandre exited the alley and looked around. A bit further ahead, she could see the lights. This
was the busy part of town. The lamps were meant to burn through the night. It was the heart of the
traders’ district, and looking upwards, she saw the castle. A dark shape carved in the night sky. In its
absolute darkness, it reminded her of the mirror itself. It, too, felt somehow unreal. A missing piece
taken from the world with a black void left behind. Jagged, ruinous, broken, just like the mirror

Another noise in the distance made her turn away, the mirror held like a shield. She expected to
see those pale blue glowing eyes. But there was nothing. A wandering cat, she supposed… or another
street rat. Absentmindedly, she turned the mirror towards herself and looked at her own reflection.

The edges of the mirror seemed to shimmer with a faint purple glow. Lysandre lifted it up higher
to get a closer look, and then, reflected in its pristine surface, she saw something impossible.

Something that shouldn’t be. Couldn’t be! She turned around suddenly to confirm it. There,
behind her, was Castle Dalkoff. Her old home away from home. Her Castle Nightblossom, as ruinous and
splintered as it ever was, but there, in the mirror…

“Oh spirits, it is driving me mad.”

Reflected in the mirror, the castle was whole. No, not even whole. It was beyond just whole.
There were lights within it. Wondrous architecture and brilliant lights combined. Her castle…it was…

“Beautiful,” Lysandre whispered as the warm glow of its reflection illuminated her face.

-------------------

Somewhere beyond the veil of the human world, in the realm of the spirits, a lonely queen felt a
chill run down her spine.