Alexis Tomar had spied on presidents and kings for Dracula, but she could not buy one old witch. Her brother Tyler knelt in the throne hall, filling Dracula's cup with rat blood, his back bent from years of starving. She had traded her own life for his, become a vampire and a spy so he would live. Now she wanted to free him from the familiar bond. Only one person knew how to undo it. And that person had never once agreed to speak. Alexis found the Mother in the chapel, veil trailing behind her for miles across the stone. Ioana had made the binding herself. She had turned Tyler into Renfield with a single spell, then refused to lift it. Alexis stopped a careful distance away. "Teach me to reverse my brother's curse," Alexis said. "Name your price." The Mother did not turn. "You have nothing I want." "I have secrets. I sit beside every leader in the mortal world." "I hide this whole city from that world. Your secrets are noise." She finally looked at Alexis. Her blue eyes were flat. "Renfield's curse is tied to Dracula's thirst. Break one, you break the other. I will not weaken my husband to comfort a servant." Alexis felt the door close. The Mother would not trade. She could not be threatened. Alexis had come with an empty hand, and now she knew it. Then the great doors opened. Renfield came in, dragging the empty cup. He had heard. His red eyes moved from Alexis to the Mother. "The short version," he said. "You want her help. She won't give it. And I'm the reason." "Tyler—" "There's a vault under this chapel," Renfield said. He kept his voice plain, but he watched the Mother as he spoke. "Magic doesn't work inside it. Only I can open it. She told me that herself. She wanted me to know." The Mother's face did not move, but she went still. Alexis understood. The witch had given her brother a secret weapon against Dracula, in private, to keep her own hands clean. And now Renfield was spending it in the open. "You lied to Dracula to keep him from killing me," Renfield went on. "You need me alive to open that door. So we're not trading secrets, Mother. We already share one." For a long moment no one spoke. Then the Mother crossed the stone toward the altar. She pressed her fingers to a seam in the floor. "There is a way," she said quietly. "It cannot be done here. It cannot be done with magic. It can only be done down there." She looked at Alexis. "Bring your brother to the vault. I will tell you what breaking the bond will cost. Then you decide if you still want it." Alexis had her yes. But the Mother's face told her the price would be worse than silence.

The Mother had promised to name the price in the vault below the chapel. But the vault could wait one more hour. First Alexis needed to know what she was walking into. She found Tyler where he stored old records, in a side chamber of the great library castle, its domes glowing orange against the night sky. He crouched between two shelves, sorting brittle scrolls by candlelight. "You came here," Alexis said. "Not the throne hall." "No cup to fill for an hour." Tyler set a scroll down. His hunched back made every movement slow. "So I read. Old habit from before." His red eyes found hers. "You want to know the price before you agree. That's why you're here and not down there." "She said it would be severe. She didn't say what it was." Alexis knelt so they were level. "I won't sign my name to something I can't see. Not even for you." "Smart." He almost smiled. "You spent your whole life reading people. Read her." He pushed a scroll toward her. "I found this three nights ago. Strigoi Vii binding law. She wrote it herself." Alexis unrolled the brittle page. The witch's hand was cramped and old. She read it twice. Her stomach dropped. "A binding can only be broken by feeding it a life," she said slowly. "The one who breaks the bond pays with their own." "That's the price." Tyler's voice stayed flat. "You free me. You die. She won't say it out loud in the vault because she wants you to guess wrong. She wants you to think you can bargain it down." Alexis stared at the page. She had come to the library for a fact, and the fact was a wall. If she broke Tyler's curse, her own life ended. That was the severe price. That was what the Mother would offer her down in the dark. "Then I don't agree to her terms," Alexis said. "Not blind. Not now." "Good." Tyler exhaled. "I don't want a real meal that badly." "I'm not giving up." She rolled the scroll and slid it into her coat. "I'm changing the question. She said a life must pay. She never said it must be mine." Tyler went still. "That's a dark road." "It's the only one that doesn't end with you kneeling and me gone." Alexis stood. The candle threw her shadow up the shelves. "I know every ruler in the mortal world. I know their sins. Somewhere out there is a life the world won't miss." She now knew the true cost. She would not pay it with herself, and she would not agree to the Mother's terms as offered. But finding another life to feed the binding meant hunting one down. The empty hand was gone. In its place was a worse plan.

Six nights until Dracula's next feast. Alexis had a plan and hated it. She needed one life to feed the binding that held Tyler. Not her own. Not his. A stranger's. But the court watched every death in Walachia. A missing noble drew questions. A missing servant drew questions too. She needed a life the court would not count. So she went to find the one person who knew what going uncounted felt like. Tyler crouched in his side chamber of the great library castle, sorting rats into a wooden bowl by size. His mohawk hung limp over pale, welted skin. He did not look up. "You found someone to kill." "I'm trying," Alexis said. "Every name I know has a keeper. A guard, a wife, a king who'd notice." She sat on the cold stone. "I need a life nobody misses." Tyler dropped a rat in the bowl. "You're describing me." "No." "I'm not on any list. Dracula counts his wine, not his cupbearer." His red eyes met hers. "Feed me to the binding. You go free. I go free." "That's not free. That's you dead." Her voice cracked. "I did all of this to save your life, not spend it." "You saved a life like this." He held up his thin, welted arm. "I eat spiders. I'll never sit at our table again. I'll never marry. Do you remember what we were before he watched her turn me? I'd have courted some aristocrat's daughter. Had children. A house with a fire." He set the arm down. "He took all of it. You keep trying to give me back a life I don't have anymore." Alexis said nothing. The candle flame bent in a draft. "You want a name off your own list," Tyler said. "I have one. A man you plant beside. A minor minister you turned. No family. No title anyone guards. He signs papers and drinks alone. If he vanishes, his king will hire another by morning." Alexis knew the man at once. She had spent two years making him useful. He trusted her. "He's mine," she said. "He tells me everything." "Then he's the one. Nobody counts him but you." Tyler almost smiled. "You spent your life reading people. You already knew." She had. She had been circling the answer for two nights, afraid to look at it. A man she had befriended. A man who thought she was his ally. That was the life the world would not miss. "I'll do it," Alexis said. She stood. Her hands were steady, which frightened her more than shaking would have. "Six nights. I bring him to Walachia. I feed the binding. You walk out of here." Tyler picked up another rat. "You'll hate yourself." "I already do." She left him with his bowl. She had a target now. She also had the face of a friend she was going to kill.

Alexis had a life to spend, but she did not know how to spend it. A binding rite needed tools. Which tools, she had never learned. She knew the target. She knew the cost. She did not know the ritual. A wrong step and the minister's death would buy nothing. Tyler would stay welted and broken. So she went to the one vampire in Walachia who could learn a secret without seeming to want it. She found Carmilla on the steps of the rune-carved tower, its glass domes glowing above them. Carmilla stood with a pale, silver-haired lord, the two of them a matched blade of black and gold. She dismissed him with a glance. Alexis had let this woman close over many nights. That was the danger. Carmilla read hunger the way Alexis read men. "You need something," Carmilla said. "You never climb these steps for me." "I need to know how a binding rite is prepared. The tools. The order." Carmilla's eyes moved once, top to bottom. "For your brother." Not a question. "The Mother teaches only in her vault. You won't go to her." "No." "Then you want me to steal it." Carmilla stepped down one stair. "I know the witches who keep the old rites. Death-work isn't written now. It's folded into moon-charged stone. Whoever holds the stone holds the rite." Alexis had not known that. The knowledge chilled her. "Then get me the stone." "I get you nothing for free." Carmilla's nails brushed Alexis's jaw, light as a moth. "When I raise my clan in Styria, I will want a spy who owes me. You. This is the debt." Alexis weighed it. A debt to Carmilla was a leash. But a wrong rite was a grave, and Tyler's with it. "Done," she said. They walked the cobbled street together, past a knot of four court vampires trading gossip in leather and lace. Carmilla nodded, unhurried, a countess out for air. She led Alexis to a shuttered rowhouse and knocked twice. A stooped witch opened, saw Carmilla's face, and could not shut the door. Whatever Carmilla poured into her voice, the woman softened under it and turned inside. Carmilla came out with a smooth gray stone in her palm. She pressed it into Alexis's hand. "The rite lives in this. Bowl of iron. Salt in a broken ring. The minister's blood drawn while his heart still beats, not after. Speak nothing until the stone goes dark. Miss the order and the life burns off for nothing." Alexis closed her fist around the stone. She had the rite. She had the tools. The last thing between her and Tyler's freedom was the killing itself. "You're mine now," Carmilla said. "Remember that." Alexis walked away with the stone warm against her skin and a new master waiting on the other side of the man she was about to murder.