PRE-ORDER NOW OPEN! Dark Fae's Destiny: Vampire Masters of Italy #5 is coming Friday, September 6th!
/Hey Vampire Masters of Italy fans!
I know you’ve been waiting to sink your teeth into the fifth and final book in the newly completed Vampire Masters of Italy series… and the wait is almost over.
Dark Fae’s Destiny: Vampire Masters of Italy #5 is coming to Amazon and Kindle Unlimited on Friday, September 6th!
Who doesn’t love an exclusive pre-release excerpt? Enjoy Chapter 1 of Dark Fae’s Destiny below, but please beware of spoilers if you have not yet read Dark Master’s Redemption.
Enjoy chapter one, and get ready for ALL THE FEELS!
XO Ava
SPOILER ALERT
IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BOOK FOUR, there are spoilers ahead!
Chapter 1 – GoodBYE
Quinn, Lucca, and I stand on the grand black and white promenade in Livorno, ready to say goodbye. The moon shines above us in the Twilight Realm; beneath a sky full of stars, the waves crash upon the rocky shore.
The singing of countless Sirens fills the night. Because the person we honor this evening was one of them when he died. Returned from his un-death as a Vampire-Siren just a week ago, Arturos Morregain met his true death with a living heart, and blood beating through his veins. His kin welcome him now.
As we commit his body to the ocean beneath the stars.
Dressed in draping silk and seaweed fronds, with long strings of pearls over our chic clothing, we wear our finest for him tonight. My Dark Fae Master Quindici DaPonti, my Dark once-Summer Fae Prince Lucca Bellari, and I all hold hands now as we bow our heads for our fallen friend.
Laid out on a bier of seaweed, pearls, and thousands of seashells stacked intricately to make a low bed, Arturos is dressed similarly for his final send-off. A beautiful crown of seashells and pearls, woven with silver, seaweed, and gold graces his brow.
A massive pearl shines, luminous between his brows. His dark lashes will never open again, but it’s as if I can see his beautiful darkwater eyes shining with that pearl beneath the stars.
The Siren music crests; far out in the ocean, I see a deep wave of Night magic with watery tentacles roil. The Vampire-Siren Queen Luliana Ouros waits in the deeps to take Arturos out to sea.
Coiling through the water in her tremendous Siren-Dragon form, the Queen of the Dark Haven of the Deep is unique in her power. Though she is long dead, she can still become her dragon. Her scales and watery fins glimmer opal and black in the night, the same colors seething through her watery Night power as she waits for our ceremony.
Quinn, Lucca, and I can’t dive beneath the sea like she can to visit the place she’s picked out for Arturos’ tomb. Thus, we say our goodbyes here on the shore before she takes him to those endless deeps.
To lay entombed in a pearlescent shell of her magic beneath the sea.
Forever.
“We say goodbye to a dear friend tonight,” Quinn begins now, taking up our informal eulogy as the Siren song crests. “He was like a brother to me, really, though we never shared blood of any kind. Infuriating, upright, loyal; Arturos was everything I could have ever wished for in family. He strayed from his loyalty because of a deep loneliness in his heart, then gave his everything to make amends. Now, he shall be with his true family, evermore beneath the sea. Though his found family above the waves will miss him dearly.”
We listen to the Siren-song surge, far out in the waves that crash upon the rocks. Arturos had been a Vampire, but he died a Siren; his people wait with Luliana now to take him home to have their own ceremony for him.
As Quinn finishes, he takes one draping string of pearls and seaweed off from his neck, placing it upon Arturos. Clasped in his dead hands, Arturos’ heart is with him. Though torn from his chest in a terrible strike from the Gold Eyes, it has been saved to be entombed with him. Quinn wraps his pearl garland lovingly around that heart now.
Kissing his fingertips, he places them upon that beautiful organ which has forever ceased to beat.
“I didn’t know him long.” Lucca takes over our eulogy now as Quinn says goodbye. “But it was clear Arturos was a prince of his kind. Strong, thoughtful, bold, he never shied away from danger, always running towards it to save an ally or a friend. Long have the Morregains been Kings and Queens of the seas; now we return a lost monarch to them, as kingly a man as anyone could ever hope for. I forgive him his faults, and the loneliness that drove him to side with our enemy. Because he showed his true colors in the end. He died a savior, for all of us.”
As the Siren-song in the waves crests again, full of sadness, boldness, and woe, Lucca repeats Quinn’s gesture with a garland of pearls from his neck. He doesn’t kiss his fingers, but gives Arturos’ shoulder a squeeze like warriors do when welcoming their brethren home.
As Lucca finishes, I know it’s my turn. I don’t know what to say, even though I’ve rehearsed countless options for this moment in the past few days.
“I loved Arturos,” I say now, baring my deepest, truth-telling heart as a low hum of the Music of the Spheres chimes inside me, moving all around me in the darkness. “Like Lucca, we didn’t know each other long… but something about him touched my heart right from the first. I could say he was noble, brave, etcetera. But what I really want to say is… I loved him and he loved me. Though we were never meant for each other.”
Quinn glances over and squeezes my hand, then threads his fingers through mine. Through our Dark Fae bonds to one another, I can feel how much he loved Arturos also, though they were never lovers in truth.
But Arturos and I could have been lovers; I feel that knowledge move through me now as those ephemeral harmonies of the Music stir me, and my Animante Dark Fae aura curls around me.
Dark, oilslick rainbows with shimmers of silver and gold light, my power mourns for Arturos as much as I do. My Fae wings unfurl from my spine, cascading across the promenade and the sandy rocks nearby.
“I want to let him go.” I gaze at his beautiful face, so somber yet still so impossibly handsome, even in death. “I want to set him free. And myself, somehow… though I don’t know how.”
“Just say goodbye, from your heart.” Quinn’s voice is quiet to not break the sad peace of the moment. “Just say goodbye, Ariana… he will hear it. Wherever he is.”
As Quinn speaks, I know he is right.
My deepest truth-reading power sings, knowing this is how the final tale of mortals goes.
“Goodbye,” I whisper, as waves crash all around me from the ocean and the singing of the Sirens sweeps my ears. My soul is filled with their song and our loss; blinking my lashes, I cry as my heart seizes for Arturos.
It’s a beautiful moment; tender and sad. As Quinn squeezes my hand again, and Lucca does also on my other side, I know we’re finally ready. We stand back from the lovely bier of shells, pearls, and seaweed, and let Luliana sweep the ocean in. She does it in a slow, gentle tide; as Arturos floats up from the bier, her dark waters roll out, claiming him.
The Siren-song goes with him. As Arturos’ last wave rolls out, I feel more than see dozens of Sirens shift into their massive water-dragons, then slip beneath the seas to follow Luliana. They’ll have their own ceremony beneath the waves, to honor a man who might have once been their king. But it leaves the shore empty now beneath the full moon.
As the waves splash and crash naturally now, devoid of any Siren presence.
We listen for a long while, silent. As if the Siren-song and the simple ceremony have laved our souls, Quinn, Lucca, and I heave a deep breath now, finished saying goodbye.
We’re about to turn from the shore and head to our car to drive back to the Red Letter Hotel Florence here in the Twilight Realm when a small, white, defiant flower pops up through a crack in the black and white stone causeway.
Another comes next to it, then another next to that. Suddenly, the entire causeway and the rocks before us blossom with endless flowers and vines in the night.
I know the touch of Arturos’ Sire the Wanderer, as I see that heady cascade of night-blooming flowers surge in a riot all around us. They have devoured the ornate stone railing of the quay; Quinn, Lucca, and I are brushing flowers off our attire now as we step out from ropes of vines to not be overtaken.
It’s only then I see the Wanderer, standing beside us beneath the moonlight. Clad only in her night-blooming flowers and vines, she stares up at the sky as her willowy frame hovers above the ground, her feet standing only upon her gossamer flower petals, rather than the earth.
She shines beneath the moon like a goddess. I know that is nearly what she is, as her long moon-white hair shimmers, moving in a wind of her ancient magic.
For her power came from a true Ascendant who was her father, and another who was her mother, after they Fell to earth. I don’t know quite what that makes her, but the progeny of celestials carries an unfathomable power that runs through her veins; though for millennia, she’s been masquerading as a Vampire.
She glances at us; the light of endless stars is in her gaze, along with the moon. She looks back up at it, then out over the water.
Heaving a sigh.
“I never meant for him to feel so alone,” the Wanderer says as she watches where Arturos went, the Vampiric progeny of her quasi-celestial Bloodline. “He never wished to be a Vampire; though I would have made him something else, this was what he became when I saved him from certain death all those years ago. Even back then, he was sad in his heart. He never recovered from the pain he had endured in his living youth. Evermore he blamed me… though he was never anything towards me but kind.”
“He was the son of kings. That comes with its own sadness, along with nobility.” Quinn’s voice is soft as he watches the water, though I can feel a thrill of astonishment move all through him now that the Wanderer has come to us.
The very person we need to talk to—that we had no clue how to summon.
“Nobility never interested me.” The Wanderer turns her head, pinning Quinn with her shining dark eyes. “Arturos’ true heart did. Which he of the Golden Orbs has forevermore slain.”
“The Gold Eyes is your father. The Descendant Staphylogenes.” I watch her. “Why did you not tell us?”
“The Golden Orbs is many things,” she says, sad but sharp now as her ethereal eyes penetrate mine. “But there is one thing he has not; he has not a heart. And to me, that is the greatest tragedy of all. Because of the ruination that now drives him.”
“Ruination?” Lucca is gentle, trying not to offend her or make her whisper away. “Does he mean to ruin this world with his plans for us?”
“I do not know.” It’s a simple answer as she looks at him next. A deep wind stirs from her power as she takes in Lucca, watching him like he’s done something interesting. She glances at Quinn, then at me again—holding our gazes a long moment before speaking once more.
“My father was not always the way he is now,” she says, finally using the term that connects her to her sire, though the way she says it is as if a vast bitterness lies upon her tongue. “For once he was glorious and golden, the power of the sun to my mother’s luminous rainbows, pouring forth upon the earth. I was the only child of their loins after they Fell to earth and became incarnate. I carried not the sun but the moon in my veins, however; it made my father hate me. To him, I was impure, tainted by the creation of the body I had entered. He sought a way to fix me, to make me glorious like him and golden, with the beautiful daylight rainbows of my mother.”
We listen to the Wanderer’s tale, enrapt as it comes spilling out. Quinn, Lucca, and I don’t hardly dare breathe for fear she’ll cease speaking and leave in the way she does.
Wandering away forever and never giving us what we seek.
A way to end her father, the Descendant Staphylogenes—at last.
“He tormented me.” She is fierce now as she gazes at us—and I see the side of her power that is brutal and cold, Night in its manifestation, as it boils around us, pushing up flowers in a riot. “He used the Music of the Spheres to batter me day and night, trying to hone and shape me to his desires. For he wished I become as he was, and my mother, and be beautiful in the Light with them. But I would not. My mortal body had already taken its chosen shape upon this earth; I was not a Descended Ascendant like them, but a mortal child, though I was borne of their angelic loins. My chosen form would not change, nor would my powers. And when the Music could not change me, wielded from my father’s new mortal shape, he undertook a desperate measure. He ripped his beating heart from his chest and committed it to the land, to use the entire earth and all the vast beauty it contained to heal me. I was not broken, however, and I did not need to be healed. Thus, in his final, desperate measure to change me, he instead changed himself. He tore himself asunder that day. And he became the black, tormented, heartless creature he is now… though it took many millennia for him to change shape permanently.”
“Into his smoke-dark Revenant with the gold eyes,” I say as I watch the Wanderer, amazed and horrified by her story.
“Indeed.” She glances at me, her gaze devouring me, deep. “For the beautiful heart that was given to him as a mortal in his human shape when he Fell was something he did not treasure. He did not know its power; celestials have heart and will, love, mind, and soul all wrapped up together in their endless ways. He lost that all-encompassing, endless Light when he tore his heart from his body and committed it to the land, to use the earth’s power to alter me to his wishes. Only then did my mother see what I saw in him. That he had been altered from his sublime, celestial state the moment he Fell to earth and began to delve so deep into the debauchery of the flesh. Which I have forevermore resisted…”
“By wandering.” I understand now, as my deepest truth-reading power sings within me. “That’s why you never stay in one place, why you never form relationships and get close to people, much less let them get close to you. You’re afraid of becoming like him; of losing your celestial nature by getting too close to energies that are physical and of the flesh. That’s why you never became close with those you Sired. Or anyone else, for that matter.”
“I wander,” The Wanderer says simply as she gazes at me. “I take in the endless moon and stars, and remember the people I came from. Distant through they are.”
“And eschew your physicality,” Lucca says as he releases a growl now. “Making all those you Sire, like Arturos, think you don’t care about them. Because you don’t. Because you never let yourself get close enough to love them.”
She sighs, and it’s the saddest sound. Where I think she might lash out in ire at Lucca for his harsh words, she doesn’t. She only stares out at the water where Arturos went.
As a single, shimmering tear drips down her cheek.
“I must go,” she says, turning away.
“Wait.” Daring to reach out, Quinn snags her by the wrist.
The look she gives him could shatter daggers.
“Tell us how to stop your father,” Quinn says as he stares her down. He doesn’t relinquish his grip on her wrist, though her fierce power makes night-blooming flowers push up all through the skin of his hand now as he winces.
“You do not stop him,” she says as she stares at Quinn, then Lucca, and me. “You cannot stop him.”
“Tell us how to free ourselves from him, then.” Quinn pushes as he pins her with his gaze. His Mentale Dark Fae energy rises in a black tidal wave all around him in the darkness. Flickers of gold and crimson fire blister the Wanderer’s white flowers from his hand and wrist, burning them off his body as soon as they grow.
She seems impressed by it. Staring at his unmaking of her flowers, she watches the phenomenon of someone resisting her power. Then she glances at me.
Pinning me with her dark gaze beneath the starlight.
“The weakness of my father’s heart lies beneath your feet. Ask my mother how to find it, for I cannot; she has gone back to the city of sunlight, water, and stone that she loved much when she was still in physical form, before my father twisted her into his darkness. The rainbows upon the water call to her; the endless stars in the vast night sky call to me. Farewell.”
With that, she waves a hand—causing all her beautiful vines and flowers upon the shore to die. As they wither to desiccated ropes and dead leaves upon the quay, she takes us all in one last moment.
Then wanders away, surrounded by a wind of magic and darkness in the night.
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