Finally, she allowed one visitor into her chamber.

Charles sat on the butterfly chair across from the bed and regarded his sister with a wary eye. He remained silent for a long time, taking in her matted hair, the dark circles under her eyes, the bluish color on her lips that meant she was dehydrated. The sangre azul was keeping her alive, but just barely.

“You did this to me,” Allegra rasped. “This is your fault.” It had to be the only explanation. Only Charles was powerful enough to have done it. There had to be a reason for what happened. It had to be Charles.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” he said, leaning forward. “Allegra. Look at you. What’s happened?”

“You poisoned his blood!” she accused him.

“I did no such thing. And if his blood was marked, you would be in the hospital, not here.” He stood up and opened the curtains to let light into the room. Allegra cowered from the sudden brightness. “Is that what happened? You took the human as a familiar?” He clenched his fists, and she could see the effort it took for him to say those words.

“Swear you had nothing to do with it,” she said. “Promise me.”

Charles shook his head. He looked sadder than she had ever seen him. “I would never harm anyone whom you cared for, and I would never stand in the way of your…happiness. I only wish you did not think so little of me.”

She closed her eyes and shuddered. He was telling the truth. And if Charles was telling the truth, then she had to face the truth. That her vision was a warning.

“What did you see, Allegra?”

She turned toward the wall and away from him. She couldn’t tell him. She wouldn’t. It was too horrible.

“What is scaring you so much?” he asked tenderly. Charles knelt by her bedside and clasped his hands.

Allegra closed her eyes and saw the terrifying vision again. She knew now what it meant. In the dream, she was not dead. She was asleep. She would sleep for years. A decade and more. She would wither and sleep, and her daughter would grow up without a mother. Her daughter would grow up alone, an orphan, another ward taken under Cordelia’s care.

As for Ben—what had happened to him? What did it mean that he was not in her second vision? Because she was sure he was the father of her child. Her baby had his kind blue eyes. He was there at the birth. Allegra’s heart was certain even if her head screamed at the impossibility. She would bring their child into the world. A Half-Blood. Abomination. A sin against the Code of the Vampires. A code she had helped establish and enforce. The vampires were not given the gift of creating life; that blessing was reserved to the human children of the Almighty. And yet it had happened…but how?

Somewhere in the depths of her soul and her blood, she knew the answer. It lay somewhere in her past…in a past life that she could not bear to remember.

What would happen to Ben? Would Charles kill him? Where was he? Why was he missing in the second vision?

She had never seen anything like this before. She did not have the gift of sight, like the Watcher.

Charles reached for her hand. “Whatever it is, whatever happened, whatever you saw, there is nothing to fear. You have nothing to fear from me. Ever,” he whispered. “You know that….”

“Charlie…” she sighed, opening her eyes.

“Charles.”

“Charles.” She looked at him, at his blue-gray eyes, shaded by his thick black hair. Finally, she told him what she believed, what she had felt for so long, and had kept bottled up inside. “I don’t deserve your love. Not anymore. Not since…”

He shook his head slowly. “Of course you do. You have been mine since time eternal. We belong together.” He tightened his grip on her hand, but it was a gentle strength, not a possessive one.

Then Allegra finally understood. There was a way to stop this. To stop the downward spiral she had witnessed. To stop the terrible future from happening. To keep Bendix alive. For in the second vision, she knew, she knew he was dead. She had to stop the tragedy that was sure to unfold if she continued to love her human familiar. For it was love she felt for Bendix, she knew that now, had recognized it for what it was. Not the mere bloodlust that kept a vampire connected to her familiar, but love. Her own blood, the immortal blue blood in her veins, had tried to stop her from feeling this way. Had conjured up a vision of the future, to show her what would happen, should this love hold.

Her love would ruin her. Would ruin everything. Would take his life and hers and leave their daughter alone and defenseless in the world.

She did not have to love Bendix. She did not have to end up comatose and useless. Her daughter—she felt a piercing sadness, as if she were missing a daughter who had yet to be born—her daughter would never exist. It would never happen.

There was a way out of it. She could bond with Charles. She could take her rightful place at his side as his Gabrielle once more. In that moment, she accepted it, the weight of it—their history, the safety of the Coven, their legacy; she was their Queen and their Savior. She felt, for a moment, like her old self again. She had been running so fast in the other direction, she had forgotten there was nowhere in the universe she could run to that could keep her from what she had to do. Her duty.

She decided right then she would never see Bendix again. To protect him, to protect herself, she had to say good-bye. It was over. She would always love him, but she would do nothing to act on this love. In time, she would forget. She had all the time in the world.

Charles was still holding her hand.

She had been wrong to dismiss Charles, to push him away, to cringe at his touch. She saw that now. His eternal love was not a burden, it was a gift. She owned his heart. It was a responsibility she could live up to. She would keep it safe.

She touched his cheek tenderly. Michael.

It was all she had to send, and he understood.

R I N G

O F F I R E

Florence

December

ONE

Something Blue

Schuyler Van Alen never thought of herself as the bridal type, so she was bemused to find herself the center of attention at the elegant dress shop she visited that morning. If at first she had felt intimidated and out of place in the hushed store, with marble floors and muted lighting, the friendly saleswomen soon put her at ease. They were more than eager to help once she told them what she was looking for. Everyone loved a wedding, and Florence was one of the most romantic places in the world to have one.

They had only been in the city a few days but Schuyler already knew her way around, using the towering marble basilica of the Duomo and the arches of the Ponte Vecchio as guideposts to figure out where she was in the city. She felt as if she had stepped onto a movie set. Florence was not just beautiful, but cinematic, with sweeping vistas thrumming with grandeur, and since it was November, the twisting streets were cold and relatively empty of art-loving tourists, which lent it a slightly melancholy air.

All week, Jack had been mysterious and tight-lipped, and he had hurried away that morning without telling her where he was going. Schuyler let him keep his secrets; she had her own surprise to plan. Even if theirs would be a simple ceremony, a world away from the grand occasion at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City that Mimi’s bonding planner had orchestrated, Schuyler still felt the intense and incredibly feminine need to make it special. She could not get bonded without a proper bonding dress. Her bank accounts were still untouchable—the Committee had seen to that—but Jack would not begrudge her the cost of a dress, she knew.

“What is your dream dress?” the doting saleslady asked in imperious Italian, glancing at Schuyler’s outfit with a critical eye, taking in the old Converse sneakers, faded jeans, and wrinkled men’s Oxford button-down. “Romantic? Classic? Bohemian? Sexy?” Without waiting for an answer, the dowager snapped her fingers, and soon an army of clerks marched a succession of wedding gowns into the dressing room, each more beautiful and more intricate than the last.

As a child, Schuyler had never spun sugarplum dreams about her wedding, had never staged ornate romantic fantasies that included the exchange of vows with a giggly girlfriend pretending to be the teenage heartthrob of the day. Weddings required elaborate preparation and grandiose plans. It was a day that promised to transform an ordinary girl into a princess, and Schuyler had never had particularly royal ambitions.

She tried on the first dress, with a lushly embroidered bodice and a ten-foot train. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she remembered all those Upper East Side bondings her grandmother had dragged her to. They were always the same: cookie-cutter brides in their exquisite lace gowns or oceans of tulle, the grooms interchangeable, dashing and confident in black tie. The ceremony itself, she realized now, was not dissimilar from a common Red Blood union with their long-winded speeches, the mandatory reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (Love is patient, love is kind, weddings are boring), the exchange of vows and rings. Afterward, if the family still kept up with the ways of the Old Coven, the receptions were tasteful and restrained, the elegant crowd jitterbugging to the Lester Lanin Orchestra; if they were distinctly New Coven types, the parties would be bombastic and flashy, with nightclub singers and a camera crew documenting the whole bedazzled, glittering mess.