I bolted awake, breathing hard, my heart racing and my shirt damp with sweat.

I was lying in a large, comfortable bed in a spacious room, one wall of which was almost entirely window and looked out on the central courtyard. It was Soren's old room, Soren's old bed, and Soren himself slept at my side, lost in the death-like slumber into which he sometimes fell after taking my blood. Nothing would wake him until dawn, and for this I was grateful.

The last thing I wanted was to worry him with my nightmares.

Especially since I'd promised him I'd be fine staying here, in his father's home. Which was true. Mostly.

The house was beautiful—like an enchanted castle—and felt removed from the rest of the world. It was peaceful and safe, and I had good memories of the place.

I'd fallen in love with Soren here, after all.

Unfortunately, I had bad memories, too, and they were very bad indeed.

Almost exactly two years ago, something awful had happened in this house. Or, more specifically, in the caverns that lay directly below it.

My uncle had died, Soren had been wounded and almost died, and I'd come very close to being ritually murdered over my parents' bones.

It wasn't something I'd found easy to forget, although I'd at least stopped dreaming about it—until tonight, anyway.

Being back in this place had stirred the memories, reawakened old fears, and led to a nightmare that left me shaking and breathless. In it, Soren had chosen not to embrace his vampiric side, and had instead died in my arms.

Now, watching him as he lay at my side, made vulnerable by sleep, I felt a subtle, sharp ache in my chest.

I knew he worried about me, and that he wanted to protect me and keep me safe, but I wanted to protect him just as much. It wasn't always evident—he projected such self-assurance and strength, but there was something fragile about him, too; something beautiful and soft—his deepest heart, maybe—and it was something I wanted to shelter and defend.

Despite being a vampire, though, he was not immutable, and I knew the idea of inheriting his father's territory weighed on his mind. He was coming into his own now, and I wondered how, in years to come and with heavier burdens to bear, he might change.

Having caught my breath and calmed the nerves rattled by my dream, I leaned over him, brushed a stray lock of blond hair away from his face, and kissed his brow. Then I got up and went to the wide windows overlooking the inner courtyard, and stood looking out at the falls, which were lit with a silver sheen by the moon.

The black silhouette of a crow told me Al was out there, sleeping perched on the balcony rail, and Mormo was somewhere in the forest nearby—Volkir had assured me the woods were full of deer, and that there were no humans for miles around.

I didn't like the idea (I might be married to a vampire, but I was still a vegetarian, myself) but she had to eat, and we hadn't brought along any food.

Gazing across the courtyard, I could see the windows of the room on the opposite side, where I'd stayed the first time I was here, and outside of which I'd first encountered Al—as a pathetic, injured ball of feathers who'd just crashed headlong into a glass wall.

It had also been the first time I'd ever used magic, and it hadn't been a very pleasant experience for me.

I was grateful for Al nonetheless; I may have saved his life, but he'd returned the favor more than once.

As I watched, a gust of air carried a spume of mist upward on its breath, a ghostly veil dissipating in the dark, and my mind went again to the shadowy entrance of the caverns below.

Shivering, I turned away and took a deep breath. I'd made a decision when I'd agreed to come back here—a secret pact with myself. If I was ever going to really put my memories to rest, I needed to face my fears, and now was as good a time as any. It was something I needed to do alone, anyway.

Pulling on a pair of sweats, I slipped from the room and made my way down to the lower level.

At the bottom of the stairs, I turned left, heading away from the kitchen, and followed the long stone hallway to its end. There, set into the wall, was a door, and behind that, I knew, was another flight of stairs.

I stopped, swallowing the tang of fear at the back of my throat, and took a deep breath. It was just a cave, I told myself, and it was perfectly safe.

My hand shook anyway when I reached for the doorknob, and I more than half hoped it would be locked.

It was not.

I opened it and stepped through, shutting it softly at my back. Before me, a long narrow set of steps descended into the darkness below.

They were carved directly from the stone of the earth, and were slightly curved, so that I could only see a dozen or so before the rest were lost to view around the bend.

The passage was lit with the same glowing crystal orbs as the rest of the house, set in little sconces in nooks along the wall. They had about the same brightness as a candle, and they didn't do much to dispel the creepy 'descending into a vampire's basement where I'm not sure he wants me to be,' vibe.

I hadn't gone very far when my nerves started to catch up with me.

I'd loved caves as a kid, but after my parents died in a cave-diving accident, such places had lost their appeal. I'd developed a bad fear of underground places, and of water as well.

The latter phobia I'd managed to overcome easily enough, but the former still held a place in my mind, and even knowing that the cavern I was headed for was enormous—more cathedral than cave—I still felt the weirdly uncomfortable tingle in my hands and the roof of my mouth that always warned me when panic crept near.

I stopped, closed my eyes, took a few more deep breaths, and told myself that I was fine. No one was forcing me to do this, and I could turn back and leave whenever I wanted to. I wasn't trapped, and there was no danger here—this time.

Well, aside from the danger of losing my shit and falling down the stairs.

With my fear once more in check, I continued and reached the bottom at last. There, another door opened onto a suspended walkway of grated metal fixed to the cavern walls. It formed a ring with spiral stairs leading down to the floor below. Across from me, on the opposite side of the walkway, another door was set directly into the rock—Volkir's 'safe-room,' Soren had once told me, and in which I'd been held prisoner by a murderous cult for a brief time.

The metal catwalk creaked and groaned with each step, and I wondered exactly how long ago it had been built, and if it could still pass a safety inspection—or, for that matter, if it ever had. Slowly, I made my way around it towards the door, aware that my breath was too shallow and too quick, and that there was a good fifty-foot drop beneath my feet to the floor below.

I kept my eyes fixed on my goal, even while wondering why it was so important to me that I see it. The room had been a place of fear and discomfort, where I'd been poisoned and left to await my fate, but it hadn't been the site of the worst horrors. I suppose it was a place to start, and if I could handle that, then maybe the rest wouldn't be so bad.

Having reached the door, I stared at its blank metal surface. There was a tiny window at about eye level for a tall man, covered with a sliding panel. I'd have been content enough with a peek through that but, when I opened it and stood on my tiptoes to look in, the interior of the cell was too dark. Maybe a vampire would have been able to make something out in the gloom, but I could not.

The door was held shut with several heavy bolts, and I slid them back one by one, but when I pulled on the handle, it still wouldn't budge. Then I noticed the key hanging on a hook on the wall and took it down.

I'd just inserted it into the keyhole and turned it in the lock when a shout at my back nearly made me jump out of my skin.

"Get away from that, damn you!"

I spun to see Volkir striding towards me, a terrifying look on his face. His eyes gleamed, and his teeth—much longer and sharper than Soren's—were fully extended. I backed away from him, breath snagging in my throat, and bumped into the railing at my back.

"I—I'm sorry," I stammered. "I just wanted to see—"

"Give me that key!" he demanded, his tone snapping with anger such as I'd never heard from him before. Shaking, I held it out and he snatched it from me, fixed me with his furious gaze, and then turned and placed it in the keyhole. He twisted it with care, and I heard the tumblers click back into place.

Then he placed his hands against the door, hung his head, and sagged with relief.

Feeling wretched for having overstepped—it was his home, after all, and I had no right to go snooping about where I wasn't invited—I moved towards him and touched my hand to his arm.

"Volkir, I—"

A loud bang silenced me. It came from the other side of the door, as something hit it with enough force to shake a few flakes of stone loose from the wall.

"Get back, you fool!" he snarled, and shoved me—not hard, by vampire standards, but hard enough to send me reeling into the rail. I caught myself against it, but I'd been right about that safety inspection.

It broke, and with my eyes locked with Volkir's in a mutual look of horror, I tumbled over the side.