“I think we need the combined knowledge and power of Sybil and Magda to find our way through this. I’ll call Sybil in the morning and ask if she’ll come. Alexis, send someone to bring her here, and Bhal, send Wilder to pick up Magda.”

“Yes, Principe,” Alexis and Bhal said in unison.

As they started to walk away, Bhal stopped and said, “Byron, if Anka is involved with the Dreds, we’re headed towards great darkness.”

Byron’s stomach twisted at the thought of Amelia, now pregnant, being expected to help fight this darkness. “We will not let Daisy and the Principessa be hurt in any way.”

“Aye,” Bhal said. “We’ll protect them with our lives and our souls.”

Chapter Seven

Daisy awakened slowly. Her head was pounding, but the terrible pain in her stomach had eased. She saw a bottle of water on the bedside table, with a packet of painkillers. Exactly what she needed.

She swallowed them quickly and went to get her phone from her bag. When she saw Angele’s notebook, she couldn’t resist taking it back to bed. The whole night, while she was socializing with her friends, all she wanted was to get upstairs and read more about Victorija and Angele, but was that wise now? After such a bad reaction to Victorija’s hunger?

But there was only one answer—she had to know. It was driven by this new hunger inside her to know and understand the woman who could have sparked such devotion in her ancestor Angele.

Daisy sat cross-legged on the bed and opened the notebook. She had a bookmark on the last page that she had been reading and turned to the next, but it was blank. She turned to the next, and the next, but there were no more entries in the book.

“This can’t be right.”

She felt panic and sadness about not being able to connect with Angele and Victorija. Daisy placed her hand on the blank pages and said, “I need to know more, please?”

In an instant, she was pulled into the vision of the notebook. She was in an elaborate walled garden this time, and Angele wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Daisy heard a voice behind her.

“I wondered when you’d arrive.”

She turned and saw a petite slightly grand-looking woman with a walking stick.

“Who are you?” Daisy asked.

“I’m the Grand Duchess Lucia, of the Debrek clan.”

She looked just how Daisy had imagined. “You’re Byron’s great-grandmother?”

“And Victorija’s grandmother. Shall we sit?” Lucia indicated a bench beside them.

“Where is Angele?” Daisy said.

“She didn’t make any more entries, Daisy.”

“God, that means—”

Lucia tapped her stick on the ground and nodded. “That is why I’m here to guide you through this memory, Daisy. Today Victorija becomes a born vampire.”