Morana has come to know that her sense of time is warped. During her time in Aurelia's realm, Earth has seen only twenty rotations around the sun. To her kind, she is but a full century old. It seems the Realm of Light is ahead of them by years to hours on Earth. 

Meaning no one even considered her missing. Vampires are immortal. A vampire is presumed missing or dead only when the last sighting is between two hundred and two hundred fifty years old, but most are reported even later than that. 

Finding out that the Covenant believes she is but a mere hundred is both a blessing and a burden. She didn't plan on having to hide her age, but she'll have to now. There's no way to explain it without explaining the existence of the Realm of Light, and if she explained it, then she would expose Aurelia to danger. Morana will just have to endure people still underestimating her based on her age. It's nothing new, but it's still very annoying. 

"There is a possibility that when Aurum is well enough, he will come for us," the Queen within warns. "The gates can't be predicted but can be summoned with the right conditions and magicks. As you know, that is hardly possible, but then you weren't a raving tyrannical lunatic who could threaten his way to get what he wants. He might manage to persuade the right people." 

With a mental reply, Morana reassures her, "It would actually be preferable for him to come to me. Here in my world, I outmatch him."

"You are certainly getting stronger, dear one. Yet, I know your full recovery will take a long time to complete. I fear for you and your plans to try and save me." 

The Queen hesitates as she adds, "You should just let me go and move on."

Morana contemplates the idea briefly and dismisses it with an eye-roll.

"Honey, that wouldn't save me from him anyway. And it goes without saying that I will never let you go to save my own ass. You trained me too well as your personal guard."

"I also trained Aurum, so that logic is flawed," she grumbles.

Mora chuckles as she replies, "True, but you live alongside my soul for now. You know I won't abandon you."

"I know. As I also know, you're anxious about your aunt's reaction when she gets the notice that you accepted your invitation to the winter's Ascension Ceremony."

Aurelia is right on the mark. Mora's journey to reclaim the sun will likely start with a small but serious talk with Legion Commander Adalynn Zima. Commander of the war dogs loyal to the House of Winter, the Fangs of the North. 

Her aunt's most probable reaction will be a mixture of pride and profound skepticism. Maybe she'll even threaten to kill her here and now.

As if she willed it into existence, the frosted cabin door swings open abruptly, and an armored female vampire enters. Her gleaming black matte plates are shaped custom to her slim but agile body. She removes her helmet to reveal a face of true, fair beauty.  

"What have you done?" The Commander's voice shakes angrily.

It seems this will be a tad more distressing than she initially thought. Mora tries to settle her heart, but her aunt's panicking eyes rock it.

"I sent back my response to the committee, and in two seasons, I will be participating in the Ascension."

"You're but a cent! A brat like you going off to claim her place just like that, what are you made of, child?"

Mora can hear that bit of pride she knew Adalynn wouldn't be able to hold back. The anger, though, is a touch louder.

"I will not withdraw my acceptance." 

Mora knows Adalynn will order her to do so, as will many in Winter's Keep.

"Mora," her aunt drops to a softer tone, "explain to me why now. You owe me that much."

That's why she loves this woman just as much if not more, than her mother—possibly closer to more. She already knows that Morana has made up her mind and won't be changing it for her sake so easily.

Looking at her aunt sweetly, she replies, "I can win now. Not only survive, but win."

Adalynn doesn't know what to say, but she quiets the worry in her bones and sighs heavily. Her child doesn't lie to her. Morana honestly believes such things.

The young vampire in front of her is the only child she has ever had and the only child she will ever want. After caring for Morana for so long, she greatly fears having a child of her own. To grow attached to one so profoundly and simply lose them one day to their dark world is such a cheap trade. That type of sorrow is why this one is with Adalynn in the first place. 

Her sister, Journee Jouvempes, is Mora's biological mother, and she has known the stab of losing children two dozen times over. When she had Morana- the last daughter of her dear husband's line- something snapped within Journee, and the child was given to Adalynn at the age of two.

Yes, she will not bring a child into this world to be another sacrifice for the dark. In fact, if there's still a way to keep Mora from being foolish enough to leave and participate in the Ascension, she must find it fast.

The child before her doesn't look a bit like Adalynn or even her older sister, Journee. Morana is all her father. She has luminous black hair with a natural blue hue that reflects in the moonlight and is paired with green-lagoon eyes that gleam an even deeper green when she's fueled by bloodlust. On a typical day, though, they go pleasantly well with the nonchalant, mildly amused expression she wears almost always as a default.

In the early years of her youth, Mora walked the grounds of the North, watching the men and women train for battles that have never happened nor are ever likely to. She would stare in awe of their strength and power. During those times, the Commander of the North had her work cut out for her. When her young niece walked about, she had to keep dozens of men and women in check. Stupid aching hearts, they'd forget their place so easily at the sight of her. One day, if Fate is kind, Morana will be Commander of them all. The Fangs of the North will have another Lady of War to answer to. 

Strong but slender in form, Morana's hips swayed with their weight. During mock combat, she was as graceful as the Blood Wariths of the Styx, and such grace is only given to someone who could one day lead. Her adoptive daughter is beautiful indeed, but you wouldn't know it if you looked at her now.

She has come back in such a terrible way. Adalynn doesn't show it, but the state of starvation Mora is in scares her deeply. 

Three months ago, on a moonless night, unannounced, she came from the East. Skin-thin to the bone, badly wounded, and half beaten to shit. On that same night, Morana made Adalynn promise not to tell anyone of her state nor of the ghastly wound to her side that has since become a grave-looking scar.

Vampires don't scar. Not unless a powerful magick sears flesh and no magick exists that foolish enough to strike a creature of the night. Especially a vampire. She has tried to pry the information from Mora, but the girl offered nothing, and it's not like Adalynn could torture family.

She has turned to other avenues to get the information she wants, but it will take time to find the truth. Meanwhile, this half-life before her is on her way to death's door again, and she's at the end of her rope.

Adalynn lets out a sigh of regret, knowing her words may hurt her child, yet they must be spoken.

"You may believe in your strength, but look at yourself. Please look," the Commander implores.

"I do not know where you have been and what you have done, but by the loss of light in your eyes, I know you still haven't fully come home."

Morana can't help but flinch at the truth in her aunt's words. She stares quietly at the hearth to her left and tries to ignore the screams and clashing of swords in her ears.

With a visibly strained swallow, she turns back to the Commander and says, "Perhaps the best of me has not fully come around, yes, but that part of me never wins anything anyway."

Morana's eyes suddenly turn a vibrant blue due to her smoldering impatience. Commander Zima hasn't seen them this way for a while. They can shift colors depending on what magick she's wielding, and her niece, more often than not, used to hone her elemental water magick with the silvered-eyed Darien Locke almost every night. But even in the past, her niece had never held such an air of dominance as she does now. 

"I only need the worst of me." Her child smiles as the hearth's fire freezes to death and the cabin creaks with oncoming frost.

Adalynn knows of Mora's fickle relationship with their bloodborne affinity for creating and manipulating ice. Their bloodlines are the only ones who could. Anyone could learn to wield the element of water if the element accepts them, but something about their ancestral bloodline made it possible to hear the element and turn it cold enough to freeze forever. Since young, Mora has been one of the most powerful ice wielders born to the House and the most dangerous to oneself.  

The Commander steps down. She doesn't want to push Mora into a more agitated state. The magick is too great, threatening her child's life whenever she unleashes it.

"The worst of you?" Adalynn laughs lightly and continues, "My child, you have no worse. At best, you could crush a cockroach without remorse." 

The Commander's face softens as she continues intervening in her niece's decision to participate in the ceremony. "I'm telling you, child, please think it over. You have until "roll call" to withdraw."

Her fair-haired aunt leaves with her air of authority following swiftly behind her. Once she's far away enough, Morana lets go of the burst of power she's been holding back for a while. It firmly permeates the space around her and floods throughout her entire being. Mora's skin turns ashen, and her eyes illuminate in bright blue as her unsatisfied desire to communicate explodes into a wave of winter magick. Everything inside the cabin turns to frost as she calms herself back to normal.

She knows her aunt is trying to protect her, so that's not why Morana exploded just now. No, she exploded because the dark in her won't stop growing darker. When her aunt called out that she wasn't herself, Morana nearly broke. She can't even talk about it, and yet the pain of it all is relentless.  

If only I could tell you why it really hurts. Morana thinks to herself as she feels her mother's aura vanish completely into the wilderness around the cabin.

Adalynn raised her from year two until thirty. For a steady enough time, it was just the two of them: the Lady of War and the Little Fang. 

Morana knew no one had the heart to tell her that her own mother didn't want to raise her and that her father was too busy to take on the charge alone. Yet she could tell by how Adalynn held both her parents in high regard that there was more to Mora's situation than anyone let on. It wasn't as simple as child abandonment, although that didn't mean her heart hurt any less by their constant absence.

Even when she was welcomed back to Winter's Keep, her parents hardly made any time for her. Her father, Leith Jouvempes, kept busy training Mathias, her brother, to train for his Ascension. He spoke to her during dinner about things that she had no care for, and he'd lecture her about the things she did care for and how dangerous they were, but nothing beyond that. Morana can't say she loved him, but she can't say she hated him either. Maybe they would be in a better place by now if he were still alive, relationship-wise. As for her mother, the only thing Journee ever did was supervise her from a distance. 

Morana wasn't allowed outside for a long time, but from the gecko, her mother dragged her around the manor to lessons that had nothing to do with war or battles but everything to do with the vampire empire as a whole. The lessons were quite interesting in their own way, but they were so unlike the combat lessons that Adalynn would give. Morana used to relive them in her mind as the lessons of the manor became stagnant, causing many lecturers to nag or even become enraged with her lack of enthusiasm. 

It was all too much, and she couldn't help but crawl into her bed every night, desperately keeping in the storm within her.

They didn't talk to her; they didn't care about the rumors or gossip surrounding her; they didn't care that she had power to spare but nowhere to let it out. How could her own blood turn her into a shadow when they all shined like heroes to her?

Her father was Leith Jouvempes, for crying out loud. He was only the greatest general of their second age, and it didn't matter that his House was in decline; everyone still greeted him with great respect and admiration. Even his best friend, Alec Mavronéri, the head of the House of the Styx, the House in the highest regard, bowed low to him whenever they met. 

Her mother, Journee, is called the Madam of the Keep, and no one disobeys her. Sure, the heads of their House were officially her maternal grandparents, and they were a whole different level of regal, but everyone regarded Journee as another head of the family. The halls would speak volumes about their Madam of the Keep and her strength. They would talk about how she never batted an eye, no matter how many children she lost to Ascension. They would talk about how she always confidently swayed next to her husband, no matter how many women submitted their request to marry Leith. Journee was a woman of resilience and elegance. 

She was one that could endure. 

Then there was Mathias, who was shaping up to be the next best thing for their House—as deadly as his father's blood and as elegant as his mother's. Whispers throughout the manor would say that he would be the savior of them all come his Ascension. 

Yes, there was no doubt they were all brilliant. And it wasn't fair. 

So Morana snapped at the whole household during dinner one night. 

She exploded in an icy tone, "I want to return to the North! Where I'm liked and respected as part of this Coven!" 

She slightly paused to gather a better thought and then said, "Fuck it! I felt like a member of the fucking House with Aunt Adalynn. I want to go back and learn to fight while baring my fa-"

SLAP!

She remembers being utterly shocked by her father's slap, especially his hurt and panicked expression, which mirrored her mother's outright fearful one. Morana stood rubbing her cheek, not knowing how to respond, but she stilled her heart before it could fathom tears. 

To her surprise, Mathias's expression was the only one to soften in understanding, and she could tell he was holding back the right words. But their father also noticed and cast one look his way, making Mathias look back down at his plate relatively fast. 

In a seething hiss, Leith said, "You should be grateful. Mathias is learning to fight and win for your and our House's sake. He will win, and you will not know of such darkness for many more years." He then sent Mora to her room.

After the drama, she thought everything would stay the same or become more rotten still, but instead, it served to break some irritable formalities, thankfully.

For one, Mathias didn't act rigid around her anymore. Whenever he got the chance, he showed her he was the brother she always wanted. He would sneak her out of the manor and into the woods to catch deer and pheasants with Lily, who is now serving as his Wife of Endearment. The three of them became thicker than thieves, and one thing finally mirrored her home with the Commander: simple camaraderie.

Her mother tried her best to make amends afterward—ultimately shocking Morana.

"Grief is a terrible thing. We have had many children, and most of them are not with mm- I mean us anymore. One day, when you have children of your own, you will understand me better, but for now, could you trust me enough to believe me when I say I don't hate you or feel ill towards you? I will be honest. I can't say that I love you either."

Needless to say, the confession of not being loved by her mother stabbed her right in the soul. Yet, she couldn't take that without taking the rest of what she said. So she didn't love her but didn't hate her? How could that be?

Intrigued by that alone, she merely nodded in understanding and decided to let time reveal the true answer. Either way, she had Adalynn, which would always be more than enough.

As for her father, he decided to assign Mora a guard because her mother stopped tracking her every moment following the event. For some reason, he just couldn't allow her to be without a shadow. He chose Darien Locke, a war hero whose age was roughly four hundred at the time. One of the last silver-eyed witches, her father saved him and his two sisters after their House was deemed deconsecrated. 

Looking at the frozen hearth in the darkness of her cold cabin, she lets her mind settle on his eyes, which used to fill her mind with all sorts of daydreams. Thinking about them now, she can't help but chuckle at her innocence. 

His voice always seemed to seep into her bones and trap her in a daze. Even though he got in the way of her small, playful antics, he was something mystic to her that snared and kept her distracted from her mission of becoming a strong Commander like Adalynn. She ended up being the one who followed him everywhere.

Darien's line once held a House of its own, but it fell into utter ruin after the last war of the third age. Being so, the House of Winter allowed them quarters in the Keep. His family was now no more than employed house servants, but Darien still held his status of power because he was one of the last warriors with a confirmed kill count to his name, along with Mora's father.

When they met, he towered over her, and his bewitching eyes sparked in her a riddling current that, to this day, she has trouble forgetting. The man was athletically built, dark-toned, and stoned-faced, but she could tell by his laughing lines that he had true charm when he wasn't so serious. Although, as she knows best, Darien is always serious.

"You fell in love with him," speaks Aurelia in her mind.

"I did, yes. It was easy to," Mora playful smiles, reminiscing about it, "my first crush. I was foolish enough to confess to him, and he turned me down quicker than you could say fool."

Throughout their years together, Darien became a confidant. Someone who understood her down to her very true face. He was the only one to somewhat continue her military training, but even then, he only taught her to harness magicks.

The "Professor," as she called him, was not the gentleness of teachers, but that's kind of what she liked. He was and still is one of the most knowledgeable mages alive. That's saying something, as she has now come to know many more throughout her journeys.

Journeys that he beckoned her not to take. His rejection of her had been recent, and he must have thought she was leaving because of it, but she hadn't the time back then to reassure him that wasn't the case. And, perhaps, a part of her did want him to feel wretched about it.

"Did you ever tell Aurum about him?"

"I can't recall." 

She gave up hope and, therefore, forsook all her memories of this Earth during her time in the Realm of Light. 

"With every day that passed, I gradually forgot the faces of friends and family here."

"Yet the moment the gate opened, and you stepped back into this world, this Darien was the first one you thought of," the Queen innocently states.

Morana laughs as she snaps her fingers to wick a flame magically to life and then flicks it onto the wood. The flame starts slowly, but soon enough, the wood shifts from its growth. 

She recalls that all her teachers- from Earth or otherwise -taught her to wield Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire. They taught her to cast illusions over the minds of others and exorcise things that don't belong in the mortal realm. 

Yes, she now knows a lot more than she did before, but she still has room to grow. 

"I left without his blessing, and when it got tough, I somewhat resented the fact that I didn't listen to him, but if I had," the flames of the hearth spark louder as she continues, "I never would have amassed the great knowledge and power I have now."

"Against Aurum, I may see a flaw, but you are right about this Ascension. It will be nothing more than sport to you." Aurelia's encouragement is very much needed and welcomed.

With her friend warming her from within and the fire still raging, she walks over to the bed at the corner of the cabin and leisurely falls asleep.

She did not know that her House had been alerted to her acceptance of the ceremony. She did not know that Mathias and her mother—both devastated by the news—were starting to plot how to set their plan in motion—a plan that her late father and Darien also played a part in planning for when the time came. 

The time when the last daughter of the Blood Fiends faces certain death in her fight for her nobility. 

But they don't know how very wrong they are because nothing is ever certain.