The wind that night tasted of iron and coming snow.
It tore across the Carpathian ridges, dragging dead leaves like shredded battle standards, hurling them against the black stone walls of Castle Ventrue. Torches guttered in their sconces. Wolves, real wolves, howled somewhere far below and then thought better of it.
Just beneath the clouds, seven pairs of ancient predators watched the dark mass of the earth .
They came in perfect descending order of age, youngest clans first, eldest last, an aerial funeral procession for anyone foolish enough to look up.
The Denin twins streaked ahead, all youthful arrogance and silver hair whipping behind them like comet tails.
Behind them the Bidenin, cloaked in raven feathers that were not feathers at all.
Then Hendrick, Bedrick, Stewart, CoLunar…
And finally, silent as extinction itself, the Lunar Clan, wrapped in night older than language.
They dropped through the clouds like fallen angels, skimmed the moon-bleached gravestones of the cemetery that ringed the castle, and poured through every broken window, every murder-hole, every crack wide enough for a shadow.
Inside, the castle itself seemed to hold its breath.
Arne Anton, the devil's firstborn, the sun-walker, the king who should never have been, paced the length of his bedchamber as though the marble floor had personally offended him.
Six-foot-four of coiled violence wrapped in black silk. Hair the color a storm makes just before it swallows the sky. Gray eyes the temperature of glacier melt. Every step cracked with barely leashed lightning.
He had not fed in three nights.
He had not slept in longer.
Because his daughter, his only child, the single creature in all the long centuries who had ever made his dead heart stutter, was in a human cage.
And the world was about to remember why no one touched what belonged to Arne Anton.
He felt them arrive, the elders, felt their ancient heartbeats like distant war drums, and still he made them wait.
Let them stew in the dark.
Let them remember who held the leash now.
Only when the silence in the grand hall below became unbearable had he moved
The doors to the courtroom opened without a touch.
Arne stepped through and the temperature plummeted ten degrees.
Every vampire in the chamber, some old enough to have watched Rome burn, suddenly remembered what it felt like to be prey.
He walked the length of the obsidian floor as though it were a catwalk built solely for him. Bright light, one almost equivalent to sunlight, channeled through hidden crystal conduits high in the vaulted ceiling, poured over him in beautiful gold rays. It should have seared him to ash. Instead it loved him, worshipped him, turned his pale skin luminous and his gray eyes into molten mercury. He loved his own glory over the sun.
He took the throne that had once belonged to a king he had personally disemboweled, and he smiled with absolutely no warmth.
An Elder of the Lunar Clan rose, ancient joints creaking like old doors.
"This summons was unannounced, Your Majesty."
Arne tilted his head, the movement slow, almost tender.
"Unannounced," he repeated, tasting the word. "My daughter was dragged through human streets in silver chains while your spies sipped espresso in Vienna and called it vigilance. Tell me, Elder, should I have sent a fucking invitation?"
The Elder's mouth flung open but the words just wouldn't form.
Arne leaned forward, elbows on his knees, voice dropping to a murmur that somehow filled every corner of the hall.
"Yvonne Arne is missing. My blood. My only blood. Taken by mortals who think garlic and badges make them safe."
He let that settle.
Then, softer still: "I am going to get her back. And every creature who laid a hand on her will spend the rest of eternity praying for the sun to hurry."
A shiver rippled through the elders, equal parts fear and hunger. They had seen Arne in love exactly once, the night Yvonne was born. The midwife had not survived the joy on his face.
"Ten warriors from every clan," he commanded. "The best. The fastest. The cruelest. Bring her to me untouched, or do not come back at all."
He rose.
Sunlight slid off his shoulders like a cloak.
"Dismissed.
" My Lord... That wouldn't be the best approach in this case". A small from the very beginning of the rows, where the Denin clan elders sat. That could have caused him his life, but surprisingly the Ventrue saw some sense in it.
"Alright... Just get my daughter back".
He was simply gone, a flicker of shadow and gold, leaving only the echo of that terrible, velvet voice behind.
The courtroom exploded into motion, orders hissed in dead languages, claws scraping stone. In under a minute the castle was empty again, save for the scent of ozone and old terror.
Two hundred kilometers south, in a ventless detention block that reeked of bleach, silver nitrate, and human sweat, Yvonne Arne lounged against the far wall of her cell as though it were a throne.
Blue eyes, arctic and wicked, tracked the guard's every nervous twitch.
Her round, deceptively angelic face framed by hair the color of fresh blood. Small, rosebud mouth curved around fangs almost long enough to make a saber-tooth jealous.
She wore the orange jumpsuit they had forced on her like it was couture, the fabric torn at the shoulder where she had tested the silver threading and found it wanting.
"Let me out," she sang, voice sweet enough to rot teeth. "Come on, handsome. Open the door and I'll only take a little taste."
The guard, young, human, already pale from twelve-hour shifts, slammed his baton against the bars hard enough to spark.
"Shut your mouth, freak. One more word and I swear I'll—"
"You'll what?" She leaned forward, smile widening until the tips of her fangs caught the fluorescent light. "Tell my daddy on me?"
The guard spat a curse and retreated to his plastic chair.
Yvonne's smile faded the instant his back turned.
Daddy.
The word tasted like salvation and damnation at once.
She closed her eyes and remembered the first time she had ever seen him truly afraid. She had been six nights old, barely able to hold her own head up, when a rival clan stormed the nursery. Arne had walked through fire, literally walked through fire, to reach her cradle. She still remembered the smell of his burned silk shirt, the way his charred arms had cradled her so gently she hadn't even cried.
He had whispered one thing against her tiny ear, over and over, while the castle burned around them:
"Mine. Mine. Mine."
She had belonged to him ever since, heart, soul, fangs, and future.
And now mortals had dared chain what was his.
She almost pitied them.
Almost.
A ripple moved through the air, too subtle for human senses.
Yvonne's head snapped up, eyes blazing electric blue.
They were here.
The guard reached for his radio.
He never made it.
Four Lunar Clan hunters materialized inside the corridor like nightmares learning to knock. The first one simply reached through the bars and removed the guard's throat before the scream could form.
The second unlocked the cell with a key he took from the cooling body.
The third and fourth stood sentinel, ancient eyes scanning for threats that would never come.
Yvonne stepped over the spreading pool of red without looking down.
"I want his head," she said, nudging the corpse with one bare foot.
The lead hunter, a woman with silver hair and a scar that bisected her face from brow to chin, sighed.
"Your father's exact orders were 'bring her back without further casualties.' Twentieth incident this year, princess. It's the eighth of February."
Yvonne pouted, an expression so unfairly beautiful it could have started wars.
"But he was rude."
The scarred woman rolled her eyes, already turning. "Move. The king is… not patient tonight."
Yvonne fell into step between her escort, humming under her breath.
As they ghosted through the ruined detention block and out into the cold mountain air, she tilted her face to the stars and smiled with her whole wicked heart.
Daddy was coming.
And when Arne Anton came for you, the only mercy was that it was over quickly.
Everything else, the screaming, the begging, the centuries of regret, belonged to him.
Just like she did.
Forever.