NEW EXCERPT AND PRE-ORDER! Dark Master's Redemption: Vampire Master's of Italy #4

Hello, my lovely readers!

I am thrilled to announce that the pre-order for Dark Master’s Redemption: Vampire Masters of Italy #4 is NOW OPEN!

Mark your calendars—the release date is Friday, June 28, 2024.

This next book is high-stakes and packed with magic, battles, and a love that defies all odds. Remember, for the best experience, this series should be read in order.

To give you a taste of what's to come, I'm excited to share the first chapter with you below! Please beware of spoilers, though, if you have not yet read Light Fae’s Love!

Sending endless thanks for your support. Enjoy chapter one, and get ready for the heat!

XO Ava

SPOILER ALERT!

IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BOOK THREE, there are spoilers ahead!

CHAPTER 1 – COLD

Snow blows everywhere in the night, and I can see nothing.

       Dark like the night’s endless chill, a maelstrom devours this terrible midnight. My heart is dark along with it; everything inside me is echoed by this torturous storm as I fight through the howling gale. The rim of the Twilight Realm sky provides only the barest light. It’s only enough to know this bitter plain of snow and ice goes on and on.

      Endless, like the woe inside my heart.

      Before me, the Lady Eiseth Pendragon, Mistress of Britain, pushes on through the gale. Marching with her head down, she’s hardly visible as she fights through the hurricane winds in her draping Arthurian gown and silver armor, stalwart to the end.

      My bound Summer Fae lover Lucca Bellari struggles through the snow beside me, his white Victorian suit encrusted with ice like a ghost. Only Curio Silverfrost, Head Concierge of the Red Letter Hotel Florence, whistles like wintery sleigh bells as he walks behind us. A Dark Winter Fae, Curio is perfectly at ease in the bitter snow that engulfs us.

      As I feel ready to die in this cruel, devouring cold.

      It feels like we’ve been walking for decades, since our failed attempt to return a Vampire Revenant before the Vampire Council of Rome tonight. Though it’s only been maybe an hour since we crossed from Florence to Siberia via a portal Eiseth made, I clutch Lucca’s arm, shivering to my bones.

      The screaming wind rips through my white and black Vampire couture; as Eiseth gestures ahead through the storm’s fury, I see something. Just a shimmer in the darkness, that bare glimmer stretches far into the blizzard, in both directions as we come to it. Eiseth moves forward and sets her fingertips to that ephemeral nothingness.

      Making it blossom with dark and light magic at her touch.

      “This is it! We’re here!” Eiseth says, as oil-slick rainbows curl outward from her fingers across the barrier. As they spread in a vast wave to either side and straight up, those rainbows reveal a transparent wall now—rising hundreds of feet into the howling snow.

      Eiseth sets her palm to that shimmering surface, then closes her eyes. Lucca and I are nearing hypothermia now as we huddle close and do a Summer Fae heating breath to keep warm.

      Eiseth concentrates, drawing an enormous breath. As I hear ancient angelic harmonies cascade off of her, I know it’s the Music of the Spheres, something I didn’t know she could create. But at the Music’s rise, that sheen of dark and light rainbows shimmers away.

      Creating a portal into a calm, full moon night.

      Eiseth leads us through the barrier, and it closes behind us. We’ve entered a place where there is no snowstorm; barren ice stretches all around us now, vast.

      A high moon and stars shine on planes of ice so jagged they could only be a glacier. As we walk upon that glacier now, peaks of ice thrust up to the midnight sky all around.

      We’re still in the Twilight Realm; I know it because a glowing, blue-white nimbus is still present at the rim of the sky. But we’ve come through the barrier now, as something else is revealed in this incredible plane of ice.

      A towering wall rises before us in the night, with a rim of white frost shining off of its black structure. I see it’s a fortress, massive and ancient, as it stretches endlessly across the glacier.

      There is no opening, no door nor windows in that gargantuan, black wall of ice. It’s three hundred feet straight up if it’s an inch; as we approach, I gaze up at the fortress’ towering heights. This isn’t just any fortress, however. This is a citadel—the Siberian ice citadel of Novakitsk where Master Vasily Ilyov rules.

      An ancient Dark Fae citadel—hidden from the world by magic.

      But this ancient city is protected to the nines, I know. Even as we near, horrible monstrosities like undead dragon wraiths hurtle out from towering battlements with ear-splitting shrieks.

      As they dive towards us, each bigger than a house and cruelly boned in their jagged awfulness, halos of terrible violet-blue light manifest around them. They open their wraith-maws; that light concentrates as they come for us.

      Even as they focus those massive flows of magic at us, shrieking to attack, however, Curio whistles a three-note tune that rings through the thin air like sleigh bells.

      The creatures pull up; they veer out of their dives, away from us. As they touch down now, settling beside us in two long rows like they welcome a dignitary home, a massive portcullis is revealed in the black ice wall.

      It carves right out of the ice as we all watch, snow skirling away on the midnight breeze. Ancient Fae-runes glow a furious blue-white across the fortress now, blazing in the black wall as they show us a doorway.

      Those doors part, grinding open as they pivot out towards us. They slam open with a massive boom, revealing a dark hallway of ice behind.

      Lit by sorcerous blue-white torches in brackets of ice, that black hallway is forbidding. But as Curio takes the lead, moving to one of the wraith-beasts and scratching its dead, bony chin, I hear it whistle an approving sound like a hawk.

      As Curio moves forward, the ice beneath his feet polishes smooth like a promenade, etching with glowing white-blue sigils. Where he passes, the fortress carves with the most beautiful whorls and designs now, entire tableaux of tall Fae spearmen and axe-warriors riding fell wraith-beasts into battle over vast, icy planes.

      It’s Winter Fae magic, I know as our group nears that gargantuan doorway. More intensely beautiful scenes and script carve along both walls now as we approach the high portcullis and open doors. It’s haunting and lovely, as we face the silent black ice citadel under the high moon.

      Though Curio throws out an arm now—his palm slapping to Eiseth’s breastplate and stopping our group from going any further.

      “Wait.”

      Eiseth glances at him as I huddle against Lucca in the biting cold.

      “The entrance is right there. What are we waiting for?” Lucca gestures at the doorway with a scowl now.

      “For my father. And his traps.” Curio is terse as he holds his ground, giving us an eyeball to make sure we stay put rather than enter the citadel just yet. As Lucca lifts a challenging eyebrow, Curio gives him a dire look. Scooping up a handful of snow at our feet, Curio tosses it out before us.

      Power bursts in a shockwave through the air, as the snow is zapped into nothing. All at once, the towering reaches of the black ice wall are no longer empty. As the high, sleek cliffs shine dark beneath the moon, niches and guard-towers are carved out of all that ice. It’s the same magic that carved the beautiful scenes beneath Curio’s feet and upon the walls—except these are filled with guards now as thousands of sentinels stand tall in those niches.

      Massive, ice-armored behemoths, those sentinels are made of the fortress itself as higher niches carve away to reveal actual Dark Fae guards standing above them. The Dark Fae guards raise their hands as one to create a seething cloak of blue-white magic that cascades down the wall of the fortress now, blazing in the night.

      That magic rushes out, and the towering ice-sentinels come alive. A grinding chunk comes as the enormous sentinels heave massive ice-lances up into their fists, hefting huge ice-shields to boot.

      They step out onto promontories that carve out of the wall for them, poised to hurl those incredible lances right at us. As the cloak of seething ice-magic protects the Dark Fae in their high niches, the sentinels’ lances glow a caustic blue-white, covered in ancient Fae runes.

      That I’m certain will kill us the moment they strike.

      “Fuck.” Lucca’s low growl says it all as Curio stands tall beneath the ice citadel’s terrible protection, watching his father’s warriors and the mighty sentinels they control.

      No one has made a move yet; though the giant ice-sentinels are ready to strike, they wait now, the Dark Fae guards far above holding their position with hands elevated. Though they’re ready to make those ice-guards move with their terrible, coordinated magic, Curio doesn’t blink at our welcome. Steel comes into Curio’s eyes now as his winter-white power flares beneath the chill Siberian moon.

      Roaring up the ice wall to pummel the guards far above.

      “I am a Prince of the Dark Winter Fae come home. What is this welcome you give me, Defenders of Novakitsk?”

      Curio’s voice is in my mind and my ears all at once, thundering through me in a terrible shockwave as he speaks. As it barrels through me like an avalanche of ice roaring down a mountain, I clap my hands to my ears. A grinding, bone-shredding agony fills me from the sudden power in Curio’s magic. I’ve never felt him do anything like it; as Lucca grunts in pain beside me, Eiseth grits her teeth. Still, Curio seethes up at the guards who waylay us.

      Giving them what-for with his massive power.

      They say nothing, only hold their standoff at the fortress’ door. Curio lifts his hand, whispering his wintery power through the air before us now. I see fractals of ice shimmer upon the invisible power barrier that bars our way. It wavers in the air with a chill mirage, but holds fast.

      As Curio scowls—setting his hands on his hips and lifting his chin in defiance.

      “Well, friends. Welcome to my home,” Curio says with a sour chuckle as he turns towards us. Ungodly Dark Winter Fae power still shines in his blue-white eyes, something I’ve never seen from him before, though he snorts entirely like himself at our hostile welcome. “We’re going to have to wait a moment, I’m afraid.”

      “Wait for what?” Lucca snarls as he gives a deep shiver. I second it. Beyond chilled, I can barely feel my fingers and toes, despite the heating breaths Lucca and I have been doing for the past hour. I shiver like I just might shake apart now as Lucca wraps his arms around me, briskly rubbing my shoulders with his hands in my thin Vampire couture to warm me up.

      But he’s just as cold as I am; both of us were born Summer Fae in Italy and are not made for the far north ice and snow.

      Not to mention Novakitsk’s deeply cold shoulder.

      A presence swirls into being before us, then. In a whirl of ice and snow, a man coalesces from that brisk vortex of power. Tall and so thin he’s almost gaunt, Vasily Ilyov, the Master of Novakitsk, stares us down with his wintery white-blue eyes. Though we’ve met before, I can see now how his eyes are just the same as Curio’s. Master Ilyov’s gaze is penetrating, though, and terrifying in its judgement as his regard slowly sweeps us, standing in our thin Vampire couture on his doorstep.

      Dressed in laced black leathers and black leather boots like one might wear hunting in the Dark Ages, the Master of Novakitsk has a white ice-cat pelt slung around his shoulders. His long, silver-white hair is braided half back from his temples in Fae fashion tonight, the rest flowing freely over his shoulders. His hair is so long, it whispers around his hips in the night wind. He does not release the power barrier before us, as fractals of ice spread across it from the other side, from Master Ilyov’s incredible might.

      Only watches us with his icy, intense stare—like we’re intruders he must keep out.

      “Father. Nice to see you.” Curio’s smile is the coldest I’ve ever seen as his eyes burn, frigid upon his father.

      “Curiosity.” Master Ilyov pins his son with an equally cold stare, giving him tit for tat. My eyebrows lift in shock, however; I never knew Curio’s name was a moniker. It’s not the time to wonder about Curio’s past, however, as father and son stare each other down across the barrier.

      Each of them, frozen with pure hate.

      “Your welcome leaves something to be desired, father.” Curio jests now, though his eyes still hold pure wrath as they pin his father. “You’d think we were midnight marauders come to sack the citadel, rather than allies and friends. And your own flesh and blood.”

      “You bring something dangerous here, my son. I could not, in good conscience, let you in. With all the innocent souls we protect in this place,” Master Ilyov says, as his gaze bores into his progeny.

      His gaze flicks to me, then, and I feel a deep thrust inside my mind. It’s Master Ilyov’s massive Dark Winter Fae magic, which he can use to read minds in an instant and compel others to do his will even faster than that.

      Before I know it, I’m rolled by that fast, ice-cold lance of power. I’m reaching inside my dress, pulling out the small Florentine Box I stashed in my couture as we came through Eiseth’s portal tonight.

      Compelled by Master Ilyov’s power to show Ilyov Quinn’s cage so he can see the box and the Vampire Revenant that roils within.

      Quinn—lost to his own worst darkness.

      “Quindici DaPonti. What have you done?” Master Vasily Ilyov says as he sees the box. Quinn’s Revenant seems to sleep until Ilyov speaks; in a whirl of wrath and darkness, furious red eyes pierce out from the box now, vicious beneath the bright light of the moon.

      Ilyov’s narrow gaze pins the box for a very long time. It’s so long, my heart pounds in my throat as our one hope of salvation evaluates Quinn’s Revenant.

      Then he pins me with his formidable, wintery gaze—no compassion anywhere in him.

      “He is almost gone,” Master Ilyov says now as he regards me, then Lucca. “You both would do better to turn around, Animante and Courante Dark Fae, and cut ties with him, seeking a new Dark Master elsewhere. He has gone deep into his Revenant to escape the horrors of his past. Some undying lives are too brutal, and some Master Vampires have endured too much. To go Revenant is a blessing for them, to escape what has gone before. Though Quinn is a Mentale Dark Fae, he is like a Master Vampire. And the result of his tortured inner darkness swamping him… is the same.”

      “Is there nothing that can be done for him?” Something dies inside me at Master Ilyov’s words. I had such hope from seeing Quinn’s flashes of gold and crimson Summer Fae Light inside his box earlier tonight, along with his dark onyx eyes, when he asked for my help.

      I feel empty now as Master Ilyov’s pronouncement hits me like a death-knell. Woe takes me as I dive into the endless void that lives deep inside my Dark Fae power.

      Terrible black rainbows boil from me, dark as death in the moonlight as they surge around me like a never-ending sea. It’s Lucca who holds the Light for us, and hope, as he steps solidly behind me now.

      Though his Light is exhausted from everything that’s happened tonight, I feel his luminous power flare all through my veins as he wraps his arms around me. As his Light blazes all around us now, startling in its intensity, his auric wings emerge from his spine like sunlight searing through the darkness. Cuddling me, he calms my empty annihilation, even as we both still shiver from the cold.

      Stalwart in the face of utter darkness—and keeping hold of the Light.

      “We will not abandon Quinn,” Lucca says, as he holds me, insistent. “We will do everything in our power to get him back. I don’t care how far gone he is. He’s ours. And we will reclaim him. With everything I am, I swear it.”

      “A brave heart.” Master Ilyov’s gaze is piercing as he takes in Lucca’s power in the night, then Lucca himself. “I can see why your Light is the balance to Quinn’s Night, both so strong in your powers that I could barely sense you were Dark Fae at all. For you have formed the Ascendant’s Triad—a triune bond, with a Cuorante Dark Fae that holds but a single whisper of Night, and a Mentale Dark Fae that holds but a single blaze of Light. Such extremes can hold only the strongest Animante—like geysers, they catapult her to the endless stars with their power. And her power is supreme, the Ascendant Animante, vaulted between them. But she is still sleeping, isn’t she?” Ilyov studies me now as something thoughtful comes into his gaze. “Sleeping like a dreaming knight who has yet to awake … and understand how she can truly fight the empty dream that assails her.”

      Those cryptic words hang in the crystalline air, as Master Ilyov’s pale blue eyes pierce my very soul. It’s not lost on me how accurately he’s described the strange Vision of a Knight painting by Raphael that I evaluated on the very same day I first met both Quinn and Lucca.

      I have a moment to wonder if he knows about that painting, and if all of it relates to the Gold Eyes and his unknown agenda with my trio’s power—but then Ilyov waves his hand. The barrier before him dissipates, leaving only a shimmering swirl of ice crystals blowing away upon the midnight breeze. As its vast spread of magic flashes out, Master Ilyov inclines his head to me.

      Pinning me yet again with his intimidating, ice cold stare.

      “Welcome to Novakitsk, Ascendant’s Triad,” he says as he watches me. “Bring the caged Revenant third of your trio inside my domain. And we shall see what can be done with Quinn, who never learned that those who seek ultimate power pay ultimate prices.”

      At that, Master Vasily Ilyov opens his hand, gesturing our group into the incredible ice fortress. At Curio’s nod it’s safe, we move forward—though the cold look he gives his father as they pass could freeze diamonds.

      Master Ilyov is stalwart, emotionless under his son’s chill rage. As I tuck Quinn’s Florentine Box back inside my gown and take Lucca’s hand, I wonder what bad blood exists between them—and why Curio thought he could help us win his father’s favor, if they hate each other so much.

      As we finally enter the hidden city of the Dark Fae to get our beloved Master back, the ancient doors of ice grind closed. Master Ilyov does not accompany us, but watches us enter the fortress until the closing of the doors nearly shuts him out—then whirls away on a wind of snow, disappearing elsewhere.

      The towering doors of ice boom shut, sealing us inside the black hallway. As sorcerous blue-white torches light in glittering ice sconces all along the walls now, illuminating our way through the long darkness, I notice the temperature inside the vast hallway is many degrees warmer than it was outside.

      It’s so warm now from all those torches giving off a wonderful, radiating heat that I’m nearly done shivering. As Curio sets out, leading us down the long tunnel, I stand taller beneath Lucca’s arm. I realize we’re walking not into darkness but towards light, as the color of the ice walls fades from black to charcoal, then to a far lighter grey, then to a vivid blue-white.

      Brilliant light shines throughout the tunnel now from both the torches and ancient magic, as Winter Fae images and ornate script write themselves into being upon every wall. From a forbidding tunnel, the long hall has become almost impossibly ornate; vast icy vaults and hallways branch off our main tunnel now, each more lovely than the last.

      Staircases of ice curl up on every side as enormous ice chandeliers hang down from the vaults above. Everything chimes with a delicate sound now, like icicles falling in a light wind. What I thought was going to be a terrible, forbidding place has achieved a mystical wonder as we reach a blazing brightness at the end of the tunnel. As we step out into the moonlight, I see we’ve come out from beneath the enormous outer wall of the fortress.

      And into a city of such splendor, that it makes my heart beam.

      Before us and all around, pinnacles of ice soar into lofty buildings beneath the bright, full moon. Made of such beautifully-wrought ice that it looks like a Tolkien elvish city, frozen on the glacier in the deep night, this ice does not hold death, but life.

      All around, Dark Fae of many varieties pass beneath the high moon, not just Dark Winter Fae. As they go about their business in the massive, ancient city, glowing blue-white globes accompany them, lighting their way.

      Fountains burble in the night, crystal-blue water jetting up from diamond-bright ice, sculpted into fantastical animals and towering, regal Fae. Trees and flowers grow everywhere beneath the moonlight; like nothing I’ve ever seen, their strange silver-green or blue-white leaves chime in the night, or shiver under the full moon as they tremble in the breeze.

      Trailing vines climb the buildings and drape across lofty bridges of ice; they glow blue, with little silver berries that white night-birds swoop down to pluck. Luminous blue-white moths with big, fuzzy wings drift by; I even see white arctic foxes yipping as they play beside a fountain.

      It’s a paradise, here in the far north. And all of it is somehow cold enough to keep the structures frozen, yet warm enough to feel like an early spring night rather than the deathly frigid temperatures we encountered outside on the glacier.

      Magic is everywhere, shimmering with white soap-bubble rainbows and dark, black oilslick ones. It’s almost exactly like my magic, I realize as I take it all in with wonder.

      A city of Dark Fae.

      Alive and well in the world.

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