Varaan didn't look at him. She was watching the book like a rival—measuring, calculating. "It's a piece of him," she murmured. "A shard. A seed. The First's blood carries memory, and memory never dies. You bury it, you burn it... it just waits." Her voice had an edge now, less spoken and more remembered.
The hunger in her had been silenced by the Mirror, yes, but now something else stirred in its place—a flicker of recognition. That symbol—it had lived in her nightmares long before she'd become a vampire. It had been etched into the stone walls of ruins too ancient to date. And always, always, there was a throne beneath it—empty, but never forgotten.
