PROLOGUE Castle Helvita, Horde vampire stronghold RUSSIAN WINTER, IN AGES LONG PAST What fresh humiliation does this day bring?" Ivana the Bold asked her son, Lothaire, as guards escorted them to the vampire known as Stefanovich-the king of the Vampire Horde. And Lothaire's father. Though only nine, Lothaire could tell his mother's tone held a trace of recklessness. "And why wake you?" she demanded of him, as if he could explain his father's rash ways. The summons had come at noon, well past his bedtime. "I know not, Mother," he mumbled as he adjusted his clothing. He'd had only seconds to dress. "I grow weary of this treatment. One day he will push me too far and rue it." Lothaire had overheard her complaining to his uncle Fyodor about the king's "tirades and dalliances, his increasingly bizarre behavior." She'd softly confessed, "I threw away my love on your brother, am naught but an ill-treated mistress in this realm, though I was heir to the throne in Dacia." Fyodor had tried to comfort her, but she'd said, "I knew I only had so long with him before his heart stopped its beating. Now I question whether he has a heart at all." Today her ice-blue eyes were ablaze with a dangerous light. "I was meant for better than this."