The silence in Rhysand’s Parisian haven was a living thing, as ancient and profound as the stone it inhabited. It was a quiet woven from five centuries of solitude, thick with the ghosts of unspoken words and the dust of forgotten art. He stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, a silhouette against the bruised twilight canvas of the city. Below, the Seine was a ribbon of liquid night, reflecting the nascent stars. He held a glass of claret, the deep red a near-perfect match for the blood that sustained him, but he felt no thirst. His senses were turned inward, replaying the moment in the Montmartre studio—the scent of charcoal and dust, the impossible feeling of Lena’s hand in his, the ghost of Isabeau’s touch completing a stroke he had watched her abandon centuries ago.
That memory, that fragile shard of hope, was a dangerous thing. It was a single candle flame in the vast, echoing cavern of his loneliness, and he knew how easily it could be extinguished. He had seen the terror in her eyes when she shoved him away, the war between the woman she was and the soul she had been. Her training, her indoctrination, was a fortress. But he had found a crack in the stone. He had to believe it was enough.
The ancient stillness shattered as the heavy oak door to his sanctuary was thrown open, slamming against its stone stop with a sound like a thunderclap. Only one person would dare such an entrance.
Annelise swept in, a tempest in black silk. The cool, pragmatic composure that was her trademark had been stripped away, leaving behind a raw, frantic energy that set his teeth on edge. Her pale face was taut with a fear he had not seen in over a hundred years, not since the purges in Vienna. Rain slicked her dark coat, and her breath misted in the cool air of the room.
“They did it, Rhysand,” she said, her voice low and sharp, devoid of any preamble. “The rumor, the whispers… it’s real. They used it.”
Rhysand turned slowly from the window, his body tensing, the fragile hope inside him instantly encased in ice. He knew what she meant. Project Helios. The name itself was a blasphemy. “Who?”
“Valerius,” she answered, and the name hung in the air between them, heavy with consequence. Lord Valerius was no fledgling. He was an elder of the Venetian court, a patron of the arts, nearly a millennium old. He was cautious, powerful, and deeply respected. He was supposed to be untouchable.
“He was leaving the Palazzo Contarini in the early morning,” Annelise continued, her words clipped, precise, as if reciting a battlefield report. “Not yet dawn, but the sun was breaking the horizon. They were waiting. A squad of them. He dispatched the first two easily, but a third… a hunter with a coated blade nicked his arm.” She took a shuddering breath. “It was over in seconds. On the steps of his own haven. They didn’t even bother to hide it. They left the ashes as a message.”
Rhysand pictured it: the ancient, proud vampire, a survivor of empires and inquisitions, reduced to a blackened silhouette on the marble steps of his home, the Venetian sun rising to mock his demise. A weapon that turned their greatest weakness into a poison, deliverable by the slightest scratch. It was a genocidal fantasy made real.
“Panic is spreading,” Annelise said, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “From Venice to Vienna, whispers are turning to screams. Elders are going to ground, abandoning their havens. The old ways of survival—secrecy, strength, the cover of night—they mean nothing if any hunter with a lucky strike can turn you to dust in the street. This isn’t a war anymore, Rhysand. It’s an extermination.”
He set his glass down, the soft clink of crystal on wood unnaturally loud in the charged silence. His mind was racing, connecting this horror to the one person at the center of his world. Voronin. The Helios serum. And Lena, his most prized weapon.
“This is his gambit,” Rhysand murmured, more to himself than to her. “Voronin is making his move.”
“And you are his primary target!” Annelise stepped forward, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. For the first time, her desperate fear for him overrode her composure. “Don’t you see? Valerius was the warning. He was the demonstration. You are the prize. They will send her for you, Rhysand. They will give her that poisoned blade and they will command her to put you down like an animal.”
“She wouldn’t,” he said, but the words felt hollow even to his own ears. The conditioning ran deep.
“She would!” Annelise’s voice cracked. “Because she is not Isabeau! Isabeau is dead! She has been dead for five hundred years. This woman is a hunter, born and bred by the Order of Luminos to be your end. She is the perfect weapon: a vessel for your obsession, the bait in a trap you are too arrogant, too sentimental to see.”
Every word was a shard of ice in his heart, because he knew she spoke from a place of cold, brutal logic. He knew she was right about the danger. But logic had no place in a vow that had transcended death itself.
“That is where you are wrong,” he said softly, his gaze drifting back to the window, to the distant lights of Montmartre where the ghost of an artist’s touch still lingered on his skin. “I saw her. In the studio. She remembered. It was just for a second, but it was Isabeau. She is still in there.”
Annelise let out a sound of pure exasperation, a strangled cry. “A flicker? A fragment? You would gamble your existence on a ghost of a memory in a killer’s mind? Rhysand, listen to me. This is not one of our games of shadow and influence. This is the end. We have to leave. Now. Tonight.”
She moved closer, her tone shifting from anger to a desperate plea. It was the voice of a friend who had stood by him through centuries of his grief, his hope, and his madness.
“Let’s go to the Americas, to the East, anywhere. This continent is becoming a graveyard. We can disappear. You can be safe. Live, Rhysand. Let her go. Staying here, waiting for her… it’s suicide.”
Her words painted a tempting picture: a life free from the hunt, free from the crushing weight of his vow. A life of simple survival. But it would be a hollow existence. An eternity of gray, devoid of the color Isabeau had brought into his world. He had not survived for five hundred years just to run when he was finally on the verge of reclaiming his soul.
More than that, he understood the Order’s strategy with chilling clarity. This public execution, this new weapon—it wasn’t just a message to the vampire world. It was a test for Lena. Voronin had seen her hesitate, had sensed her doubt. Now, he was forcing her hand, demanding a definitive act of loyalty. He was commanding her to kill the monster from her past to prove her allegiance to the Order’s future.
To abandon her now would be to leave her to them, to surrender her soul to Voronin completely. It would be the ultimate betrayal.
“I cannot,” he said, his voice imbued with the unshakeable certainty of his vow. He finally turned to face Annelise, his eyes dark with resolve. “They are forcing her into a corner. They mean to break her or use her to break me. If I flee, I leave her to a fate worse than death. I condemn her to being their monster forever. I will not do that.”
“So you will stay and die?” Annelise challenged, her own eyes glittering with unshed, angry tears. “For a woman who carries your love’s face but a zealot’s heart? What is the honor in that?”
“The honor,” Rhysand replied, his voice resonating with the weight of centuries, “is in keeping my promise. I swore I would find her. I did not say it would be easy, or safe.”
He saw the fight go out of her, replaced by a profound, heartbreaking sadness. She had known what his answer would be before she even asked. She had seen this stubborn, self-destructive devotion in him for centuries.
She slowly nodded, a gesture of defeat. “I have watched you chase this ghost across lifetimes, my friend. I have watched it bring you nothing but pain. I always feared it would one day be the death of you.”
She reached out and rested a hand on his arm, her touch cool but grounding. “You are a fool, Rhysand de Valois. A magnificent, romantic, damned fool.”
“I am aware,” he said, a faint, melancholic smile touching his lips.
Annelise held his gaze for a long moment, a silent farewell passing between them. He knew she would not abandon him, not truly. She would watch from the shadows, ready to aid him if she could, or to mourn him if she could not. But in this, he was alone.
“Then I suppose you will need to be prepared,” she said, her voice regaining a sliver of its usual practicality. “They will not wait long.”
She withdrew her hand and turned, her movements once again controlled and precise as she walked back toward the door. She paused on the threshold, her back to him.
“Be careful, old friend,” she murmured, and then she was gone, melting back into the rainy Parisian night, leaving the profound silence to rush back in.
Rhysand stood unmoving, the echo of her warning resonating in the quiet room. A Blade in the Sun. The Order had drawn a line, not in sand, but in ash. And they were sending Lena to make him cross it. The candle flame of hope he’d been guarding flickered violently, threatened not by a gentle breeze, but by an oncoming hurricane. He would not let it go out. He would stand his ground, and when she came for him, he would face the storm she brought with her. He had to believe the woman he loved was still inside it.