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September 15 - September 19, 2025
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.
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“There, there.” Gallowglass lifted her into a bear hug. “It’s been some time since the sight of me brought a woman to tears. Besides, it really should be me weeping at our reunion. As far as you’re concerned, it’s been only a few days since we spoke. By my reckoning it’s been centuries.”
Their life in the sixteenth century had not always been easy, but their days had been filled with love and the sense of hope that followed Diana wherever she went. Here at Sept-Tours, they seemed surrounded on all sides by death and de Clermonts.
“Oh, well, that’s all right, then. Just tell Ysabeau that Corra’s clumsiness is good for the grandbabies. Granny will hand over her vases as sacrificial offerings. Meanwhile I’ll try to keep the flying termagant entertained so Auntie can sleep.”
“You’ve got everybody at Sept-Tours quaking in their boots, you know.” With this abrupt change of topic, Hamish approached. “The rest of them haven’t realized yet that the most terrified person in the château is you.”
“Punishing Knox doesn’t begin to address what happened. He and Gerbert violated my home. Knox murdered a woman who was like a mother to my wife.”
“You may think my greeting unnecessarily formal, Phoebe, but no vampire touches another’s mate—or even his betrothed—without permission.” He
The chemical and emotional responses that accompanied mating were intense, and even perfectly healthy vampires found it difficult to let their mates out of their sight.
“I expected to handle it.” Matthew’s forehead lowered until it was resting on his fingers. “I believed that the love I felt for Diana was stronger than the disease.” “Oh, Matthew. You can be more idealistic than Hugh on even his sunniest days.”
“I had to force myself to leave her side tonight.” Matthew’s eyes darted around the chapel. “I can’t sit still, I want to kill something—badly—and even so it was almost impossible for me to venture beyond the sound of her breathing.”
Fernando had to remind himself that newly mated vampires often underestimated how strongly the bond could affect them.
“She won’t have to adapt,” Matthew said through gritted teeth. “I won’t take her freedom—no matter what it costs me. I wasn’t with Diana at every moment in the sixteenth century. There’s no reason for that to change in the twenty-first.” “You managed your feelings in the past because whenever you weren’t at her side, Gallowglass was. Oh, he told me all about your life in London and Prague,” Fernando said when Matthew turned a startled face his way. “And if not Gallowglass, Diana was with someone else: Philippe, Davy, another witch, Mary, Henry. Do you honestly think that mobile phones are
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“We’ve been choking on democracy since the day you left.”
“This family was more fun when we had fewer medical degrees,” Gallowglass said darkly. “I remember the good old days, when we sewed ourselves up if we were wounded in battle and didn’t give a tinker’s dam about our iron levels and vitamin D.”
“Not so long as Philippe was head of the family,” Fernando murmured. “He preferred that his children and grandchildren wield swords rather than ideas. It made you all so much more pliable.”
“Thank you for watching Diana, Maman,” he said, kissing Ysabeau’s cheek. “And you, my son?” Ysabeau put her palm to his cheek, searching as Fernando had for signs of blood rage. “Should I be watching over you instead?”
“Of course,” Ysabeau replied. This phrase meant many things in his mother’s private lexicon. What it never meant was that she agreed with you.
Matthew climbed the stairs to the tower’s top floor. There he looked down at Diana’s sleeping form. He smoothed her hair, smiling when his wife instinctively pressed her skull deeper into his waiting hand. Impossible as it was, they fit: vampire and witch, man and woman, husband and wife. The hard fist around his heart loosened a few precious millimeters.
After only a few breaths, Matthew’s heart calmed and his restlessness seeped away as Diana provided the peace that was eluding him. Here, within the circle of his arms, was all that he had ever wanted. A wife. Children. A family of his own.
Her skin was puffy and red from the crying, and the fine lines around her eyes were deepened by worry and grief. It destroyed him to see her this way.
He lifted the cloth, exposing the soft swell of her belly where his children grew, the curve of her breasts that every day ripened with fertile promise.
Matthew lowered Diana back onto the bed and trailed kisses down her body until he reached the hidden places only he knew.
“You told me I was reckless,” Diana said breathlessly as his mouth descended to the dragon’s head. “You are.” Matthew traced the swirling path of the dragon’s tail with his lips and tongue. His mouth drifted lower, deeper. “It drives me crazy.”
She wanted satisfaction and the peace that came with forgetting, but he wanted this moment—filled with safety and intimacy—to last forever.
This was the ancient way for a vampire to know his mate, the sacred moment of communion when thoughts and emotions were exchanged honestly and without judgment. Vampires were secretive creatures, but when a vampire took blood from his mate’s heart vein, there was a moment of perfect peace and understanding that quieted the constant, dull need to hunt and possess.
“I would have spared you this loss if I could have,” Matthew murmured, kissing the mark his mouth left on her skin. He rolled them over so that he was on his back and Diana was draped over his recumbent form. She looked down into his eyes. “I know. Just don’t ever leave me, Matthew. Not without saying good-bye.” “I will never leave you,” he promised.
Diana touched her lips to Matthew’s forehead. She pressed them into the skin between his eyes. Most warmblooded mates could not share in the vampire’s ritual of togetherness, but his wife had found a way around the limitation, as she did with most obstacles in her path. Diana had discovered that when she kissed him just here, she also caught glimpses of his innermost thoughts and the dark places where his fears and secrets hid.
“You may be head of the family, Baldwin, but never forget that I am its assassin,” Matthew growled.
Vampires were fast, but magic was faster.
“This sleeve came from your wedding dress.” Matthew touched the fragile fabric, tracing the outlines of a cornucopia, the traditional symbol of abundance. “I will never forget the sight of you, coming down the hill to the village with the torches blazing and the children clearing the way through the snow.” His smile was full of love and a pleased pride.
Diana— Do not let the ghosts of the past steal the joy from the future. Thank you for holding my hand. You can let go now. Your father, in blood and vow, Philippe P.S. The coin is for the ferryman. Tell Matthew I will see you safe on the other side.
“Matthew told you to go to his tower.” Verin’s eyes narrowed. “He is your mate, and you’re supposed to obey him like a proper vampire wife.”
“What other assurances did you make, little viper?” Ysabeau asked lazily. “You hiss so prettily, Baldwin, but there’s a sting somewhere.”
“The last time I was held against my will, you were my jailer, Baldwin,” Ysabeau said in a syrupy voice. “Will you do the honors again?”
The thought of what vampire blood might do to the mosquito population was deeply disturbing.
“We all have our roles in this family. Baldwin will bully us. Marcus will look after the brotherhood. Matthew will look after you, and you will look after my grandchildren. As for me, I find that I am invigorated at the prospect of being held for ransom once more.” My mother-in-law’s feral smile made me believe her.
“So I’m supposed to wait and gestate. And your plan is to twiddle your thumbs and watch the calendar with me?”
“You forget that I was reborn in a very different time, Diana, when most creatures were expected to obey someone else without question—your lord, your priest, your father, your husband. Carrying out Baldwin’s orders is not as difficult for me as it will be for you.”
“How you must miss him.” I swallowed down the lump that threatened to choke me. “He was extraordinary, Ysabeau.” “Yes,” she said softly. “We shall never see another one such as him.”
“But secrets are unreliable allies. They allow us to believe we are safe, yet all the while they are destroying us.”
“Do not let the ghosts of the past rob the future of its joys.”
“Remember that in the difficult days to come, as the darkest de Clermont family secrets are exposed to the light. Remember that and you will show them all that you are Philippe de Clermont’s daughter in more than name.”
“Philippe did find me in a fortress and rescued me from that terrible place. But I was no beauty then, no matter what romantic stories your grandfather told later. I’d shorn my head with a broken shell that a bird had dropped on the window ledge, so that they couldn’t use my hair to hold me down. I still have the scars, though they are hidden now.
“It is why Philippe forgave Matthew for not killing you, Marcus, though he had ordered him to do so. Philippe knew what it was to love someone too much to see him perish unjustly.”
“And if we all did what we should, we would wake to find ourselves in paradise,”
“Then not only will I forgive you, I’ll be the first to offer you my allegiance,” Marcus said, “not only as my father but as my sire.”
“You must try to allow me to finish my thoughts. Never”—he caught my fist before it made contact with his shoulder—“never again will I make the mistake of underestimating you.”
“First I was subjected to witchwater falling from the tower. Now there is a dragon in my hallway. This is what comes of having witches in the family.”
“The more Matthew thinks about his son, the more he is taken back to a time when he did not like himself or the choices he made.”
In case anyone thought Sarah’s new car and her lack of slogans meant her paganism was wavering, Matthew purchased a witch antenna ball. She had red hair and was wearing a pointy hat and sunglasses.
