For fans of One Dark Window and The Serpent and the Wings of Night comes a dark, delicious gothic fantasy about a woman who vows to vanquish the creatures of the dark haunting their villages. But the blood coursing through her veins holds a secret... When Amalie stabs Theo Vallon in the heart with an ash spike, she finally proves her uncle Vampires do exist, and she will be the one to vanquish them. When Theo attacks her alone late that night, she comes face to face with her deadly mistake. He can’t die, at least not in the way the legends proclaimed, and her life will be payment for her naivety. Instead, Theo offers her a bargain. The truth about her bloodline for help only she can offer him. He swears they both want the same thing. His death. But the curse of the Shadow won’t release its claws that easily, and creatures of the dark are better known for seduction than honesty. Amalie can’t relinquish her chance to avenge her mother’s death and rid the region of the vampire’s dark plague, but as her blood surges toward the darkness she was created to satisfy, she realizes she may have traipsed willingly into the spider’s den. And she may not want to retreat.

They say guardians and vampires once lived together in harmony. But history is written by the victors… When Aurelia is taken by the head vampire Alain, her life is bound to the whims of a cruel master, and the guardians, living in indentured servitude, can't protect her. She alone possesses a power the vampires covet, and Alain is determined to keep it for himself. Assigned to guard her, Theo is caught between his duty to his kind and his growing feelings for her. The first true feelings he's had since being cursed. As Aurelia begins to challenge Alain’s rule from the shadows, Theo discovers her true intentions and Aurelia gives him an impossible help her spearhead the guardian exodus and betray his own, or maintain his loyalty to the darkness and lose her forever. But for Theo there is only one objective. Keep Aurelia safe. Make Aurelia his. Aurelia can’t give Alain her power and lose her chance to free the guardians. But as she and Theo draw closer, the lines between friend and foe begin to blur. Aurelia has to trust someone. But that someone is wrong.