But her plans are dashed to bits when, upon discovery, her brother refuses to offer her safe quarter--and abandons the young noblewoman in the teeming port of Varna, just as panic is descending upon the city. For death has come to this place, spawning stories told in hushed, frightened whispers in the night--a being of strange, alluring power and dark sensuality who has chosen Fenice, offering her more freedom than she could know in a hundred lifetimes.

Subjugation is the price this mesmirizing creature demands fro the exquisite renegade's eternal pleasure, as Fenice follows her Dark Lord to his mountain domain, where she is to live...and die. But another is waiting there already, lurking in the shadows of the imposing castle keep: a lovely and crazed consort already corrupted by Dracula's terrible passion...a once-mortal girl named Kelene, late of a distant realm called Greece who could prove to be Fenice's staunchest ally and sister, or her most fearsome adversary.