THERE was blood dripping from the ceiling.

    Hellmouth Prison was rather well known for this sensation. No one could quite say why the walls and the ceilings weeped blood and even if her mother had assured her that it likely wasn't real blood, it didn't help unnerve Adrian Montano one bit. She wondered, if perhaps, most of her nerves were coming from the fact that she was facing her father for the first time since his trial. She hadn't truly wanted to come see him, but her mother insisted that she should.

Adrian stared into the seemingly depthless void that was her father's cell. She couldn't even make out the shadow of his figure as the guards unlocked the door for her. One of them made a move to step into the room before her, but she held up a hand and gave a small shake of the head. This was something that she was determined to do alone.

"I will knock when I'm ready to leave," she said coolly.

The guard seemed hesitant, his eyes flickering between her and his companion. She simply stared at him, gaze blank and unwavering. She wasn't sure what it was in her that made him break, but after a long moment, he nodded and took a step back. Her lips curled into a small, thankful smile that fell as soon as she stepped into the cell and the door creaked shut behind her.

"You can stop hiding now."

"Darling," Ambrose Montano purred, stepping into the center of the room, "what a pleasant surprise."

Despite the nausea that clawed at her insides from the mere sight of him, her face remained neutral. She would never let him know how much he disgusted her.

"Mother forbid the others from seeing you," she told him, cocking her head slightly.

Ambrose laughed, clearly unsurprised by this news. Odessa Montano was many things, but at the end of the day, she would always protect her children. Even from her husband. Adrian was different, though. She was their child, but also their most prized possession and more than anything, a honed weapon.

"And did she forbid you, as well?" He asked, leaning forward with an eager look on his face.

He was thinner than he had been at the trial that had taken months previously. The most startling change had to be the beard that he had allowed to grow. For most of Adrian's life, her father had kept a clean shaven face, as he insisted that it made him seem more presentable. She supposed he no longer had anyone to seem presentable for. A flicker of sadness ran through her, only to be quashed when the light caught in his blue-grey eyes, highlighting the crazed gleam in them.

She had been wrong. The beard was not the most notable change after all.

A steel wall slammed down in her mind; one that would protect her true feelings from anything that was said or done in this cell. She would not carry this version of her father with her. He would remain locked away in this cell for an eternity; he would rot away and his already crumbling sanity would follow along.

"We both know that she has long since given up on telling me what to do," Adrian replied easily.

"Ah yes," Ambrose agreed with a small shake of his head, his grin spreading even wider, "I suppose she prefers to have you order around the others while she chases glory and greatness?"

Adrian's temper lunged on it's leash at that statement.

She sneered at him. "Like you did?"

Ambrose blinked at her, as if her words genuinely confused him. It made her want to scream, truly. Ever since the day that his crimes had been exposed, he had turned into someone she could hardly recognize. The man she knew him as was both intelligent and valiant; this was not that same man, not even a shell of that man remained.

"You think I did what I did because I wanted to be great or glorious?" His voice was extremely soft as he asked this and Adrian recoiled from it. "I was doing the right thing."

"No!" Adrian snarled, her mask of composure slipping away completely. "Don't stand there and feed me the same lies that you fed the court. You were only thinking of you. Not me, or mother, or the kids."

"I did everything for you," he protested and a wounded expression crossed over his face, "I only want a better world for you, Adrian. We deserve more than what we were given."

"Were we not enough for you, father?" She hissed out, stepping closer to him. "Me, and mother, and Lydia and Coralie and Ruven? Was your family not good enough that you had to try to take more than the Goddess gave you?"

One moment, her father seemed small and pathetic, the next he was lunging at her, a snarl of his own rising on his lips. She smirked and took a step back, completely out of his reach with the way that he was chained to the wall.

"You think your Goddess is so benevolent? Then why, my dear daughter, did she make it so we must hide in the shadows?"

A bitter smile spread across her face and a truly icy laugh drifted through the room. "Don't you understand, father?"

"What?" Ambrose snapped at her, lips curling away from his teeth as he bared them at her. "What could I possibly not understand?"

"You wished to stand in the light so badly that you've condemned yourself to a life of shadows and darkness," she said quietly, reaching out to cup his face, blood smearing across his cheek, "You will never see the sun again. The Goddess will never look upon you again. Nor will I. I hope you rot down here, slowly and miserably, because that is what you deserve."

Adrian turned and walked briskly towards the door, rapping at it with one fist.

Ambrose was feral once more, snarling and shouting at her back. His words were garbled, practically nonsense, but as she was stepping over the threshold, she froze. She whirled on him, her anger palpable enough that one of the guards reached for her arm, resigned to the duty of protecting the prisoners. Even from teenage girls who were prepared to lunge at a parent.

"What did you just say?" she demanded, straining against the grip on her arm. "What did you just say to me?"

Ambrose had gone still, placated by the fact that she was not leaving just yet. His face had gone carefully blank, the smudge of blood on his cheek standing out rather starkly against the paleness of his skin.

"Only that you should enjoy your last year at Raelore, mon chou," his words were drawn out and honeyed, and for one moment, she could picture the father she had known. The image was shattered as he followed this up with, "It might very well be the last year in which Raelore remains."

Adrian finally broke free from the guard and paced across the cell before he could stop her. She grabbed her father by his arms, a buzzing in her head forming. She couldn't discern if it was the guards speaking to her or rather her magic roaring, demanding that she simply end this now.

"Raelore has never fallen," she spat at Ambrose, "and it never will."

"What is given can easily be taken," Ambrose breathed out, his eyes feverishly bright, "and what is taken can be given again. Raelore knows this and soon you will too."

Before the guards seized her once more, Ambrose managed to grab Adrian's hand, and the feel of paper being pressed there had her eyes widening. She didn't bother fighting the two guards that hauled her from the cell. She allowed them to escort her through the bleeding hall and to the exit, where they deposited her in the grass before slamming the door behind her.

Adrian clenched her fist around the slip of paper as she made her way to the car that her mother had sent for her. She waited until she was firmly buckled in and the car was pulling away from the prison that she allowed herself to look at the paper.

She tensed as she read the two words scrawled across there.

Spring Equinox.

*

Once, Adrian had loved her father more than anyone else. It didn't seem to matter that he continuously tried to hone her into a finely made weapon. She had convinced herself that he was making her into what she was for her own sake, that she would need this darkness inside of her to make it in this world. There was nothing further from the truth.

The Montano's were a long line of powerful witches and when Adrian had come into the world with a warrior's wail, a halo of magic around her head, Ambrose had known that she would be the way to maintain their family's legacy. She'd never cared much for that sort of thing, however. All she had ever wanted was to impress her father, to make him proud of her.

When she had returned from Raelore Academy at the beginning of the winter break, laughing with her siblings and cousin, to find that there were Guardians walking her father to an armored car, she had come undone. She'd fallen to her knees and wailed as loudly as she had the day of her birth, her sisters attempting to hold her. At first, she thought that there must have been a mistake. Her father held a seat on the High Coven, there was talk of him being voted into the Convocation in a few years time.

When she learned the truth, she had spent an entire evening with her head over a toilet, throwing up hard enough that her mother had considered taking her to a healer.

She'd pulled herself together rather quickly after that. If she pulled her mother away from her siblings as Lydia sobbed into Ruven's chest, what kind of daughter would she be? What kind of sister would she be?

She'd come to terms with her new reality rapidly and painfully, the jagged pieces of who she had once been and who she would have to become, cutting her to shreds.

Odessa Montano hadn't allowed Adrian's younger siblings to attend the trials, insisting that it would be too traumatizing for them. Adrian had agreed, and even offered to remain in the Paris townhouse with them, but Odessa had stared at her with this awfully raw gaze. There was a silent plea in the gaze that Adrian could not ignore, no matter how much she wanted to.

Adrian sat at her mother's side throughout the entire affair, allowing Odessa to sob into her shoulder and grip her hand tight enough to crush bone. She listened, and watched, as her father, Ambrose Montano, was charged and convicted of his crimes.

Charged with treason to the Convocation, to his people, and the Goddess for his involvement with the Given. Adrian had winced at the mention of the Given, having known from a young age who they were and what they stood for. She had hated them since she could first grasp what the knowledge of the word meant. The Mother Goddess, who had breathed life into them, created them to bring balance to the universe and protect the humans. She trusted Her new children to keep watch over the realm and ensure that the humans never tilted the scales too far in one direction.

Her only request was that they did so in the shadows. They had come to be known as the Unseen, perfectly content with the blessings they'd been given, even if it meant remaining in secret. There were some, however, that could not stand this perceived slight against them. They believed that they deserved more, that they were superior over the humans. That they should reveal themselves and claim the realm for themselves.

There had been a few uprisings for them over the course of history, but they had always been defeated rather swiftly.

To learn that her father was a part of a group that she despised so much...

Whatever grief she had felt on the matter she kept to herself. Her younger siblings needed her more and her mother didn't seem to want to stay around long enough to hold them herself. Adrian's cousin, Victoria, did what she could to help, but it was clear she was also feeling the effects of her uncle's betrayal. Overnight, Adrian had become the unofficial head of her family, shouldering more responsibility than she was built for.

She did it all without a single complaint, though.

Even if she spent several nights laying awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling, struggling to catch her breath, she would continue to rise to the occasion. If only so her siblings never had to learn the full truth. If only so they would never have to feel as alone as she did.

No matter how badly Adrian wanted to crumble, to shatter beneath the pressure that had been placed on her, she would remain standing.

She resolved to return to Raelore and forget about her father. She wouldn't allow that man to ruin her last year at her favorite place in the world. The rambling of a mad man had very little consequence to her.

Even if a sinking pit in her stomach spoke to the fact that there might be more behind his words.