The Mother's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

The Mother stood at the top of Tower Strigoi and watched her shield flicker. For years her magic had hidden all of Walachia from human eyes. Now the great red dome above the kingdom guttered like a dying candle. Her people were witches, the Strigoi Vii, cursed by the goddess Hecate to draw power only from the moon. The Mother's whole purpose was to break that curse and give them back the sun. Her first attempt had failed. Worse, it had emptied every drop of moonlight she had stored for decades. She pressed her palm to the cold glass wall. The protection rune on the stone floor pulsed weak and thin. She could hold the shield another hour, no more. After that, hunters and rival clans would see the kingdom and pour in. Her headdress, crowned with moon-glass, held nothing now. She had burned it all. "I need moonlight," she said to the empty room. "Tonight. Or we are seen." Behind her, a door opened. Heartbeats in the tower stumbled, tugged off their rhythm. The Mother did not turn. Only one person pulled blood that way. "You are draining yourself dry," her daughter said. Maria Tepes, the Crimson Prințesă, crossed the floor in her red gown. The three-mile veil dragged behind her like spilled wine. She was the first blood bender, a witch who moved blood the way others moved water. She stopped beside her mother and looked up at the failing dome. "The shield falls before dawn," the Mother said. "I have no reserve left." Maria touched the ruby in her headdress. "I carry mine here. Years of moon, stored in stone. I keep it for my own work." The Mother turned. Her jaw was tight. She hated asking. She had taught this girl every rune she knew, and still the asking cut her. "Your stone would feed the shield through the night." "It would empty me too," Maria said. She did not soften it. "I would have nothing to raise the dead with. Nothing to bend." "Then we are seen, and your father's enemies come with fire." Maria looked at the dome. She looked at her mother. "You want the sun back for them. The whole clan." "I want them to walk in daylight without burning," the Mother said. "That does not happen if we are dead by morning." Maria pulled the ruby free of her headdress. She pressed it into the Mother's hand. "Take it. But know what you spend." The Mother closed her fist around the warm stone. She knelt on the rune and poured its light upward. The red dome steadied, then blazed strong again. Walachia stayed hidden. When it was done, Maria stood empty-handed and pale. "I cannot raise a single corpse now," she said. "For weeks." The Mother rose. The shield would hold. But she had spent her daughter's power to buy one night, and the curse still bound them all to the dark.