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Prologue

Mircea, Venice, 1458

It was freezing He knew that because he could see other peoples’ breath frost the air as they passed, a crowd of shapes that should have been nothing ht and sound andlife He could close his eyes and still see theht strea out behind them like the pennants that used to fly from the ramparts at home

One approached the shadohere he stood; she was so vivid that she al deep and dark, but not cold Not the color of the ocean, but of the skies, lie that soht That somewhere nearby, a hunter waited

A strand of red hair slipped out of the hood of her cloak, curling against a cheek that others lowed peach and pink and warrays of the narrow street, and the silvered thread of a canal behind her The colors dih of breath that issued fro in her veins called to hiht he’d wrapped around himself and take one step into the street

That was all it would take

One step, one lifted hand to call her to his side, one vague brush against her mind to overcome the fear that hastened her feet and sent those beautiful eyes darting into shadows Just one

He didn’t take it

But someone else did

Mircea saw him even before he rave and without the hard-won restraint Mircea had learned He one in bloodlust could have made it this far otherwise Venice was an open port, where vampire territories were forbidden and everyone was per before he reached it

She ca her in shadow Mircea could sht she seee, exotic perfuainst the sweet sn

Because she wasn’t alone

He couldn’t see the one who trailed her, like the fisherave off was diht on the water below So dark, in fact, that even with vision many times sharper than a human’s, Mircea could barely discern him, and only because he had known he would be there

The boy didn’t see hi but her Mircea remembered those days, not so far in his own past When the bloodlust took you, it was a terrible thing, like being possessed, to the point that he understood why humans called them demons and thrust crosses in their faces

Crosses didn’t help Or holy water, or garlic, or wedging bricks into thein a vain atte if they rose When the demon rode you, only blood would satisfy hi like sanity