I have endured centuries of solitude in these shadowed stone corridors, my possessive dominance a shield against the loneliness that threatens to consume me. Willa Quill is the virgin who must become my bride, her yielding innocence the salvation I crave yet refuse to admit I need, the blood ritual promising to bond her mortal body to my eternal claim.

Every night she comes to the narrow corridor beneath the blood moon and stops short of touching me. She denies the surrender she both fears and desires, and her terror and my hunger want the same ending. The registry waits with the quill across it. Her fate is sealed the moment she chooses to touch me.