Page 1 of Filthy Rich Vampires: For Eternity

EXTENDED PROLOGUE

THEA

“Nooo!” The moan slipped from me. I reached out as I threw myself forward, struggling against the two strong hands hauling me back onto the throne. My eyes darted wildly over to find it was Lysander! Betrayal barreled down my spine, and I bucked off his grasp. “What are you doing? Let go.”

“Not yet,” he said. His mouth flattened to a grim line, and he nodded in the other direction where a hooded woman knelt by my side, watching.

I turned my attention to her. “Please. You have to let me go.” A sob cracked my words. “My mate.”

I needed to reach him if only to touch him. If only to quiet the pounding in my chest that demanded to be near him. It was the only way to soothe my ravaged soul. But it also might help me find his voice again–the one I’d heard calling through that strange silent world of light and shadow. I needed to know if he was still there. I needed to know if I could still hear him.

Tears threatened to blind me, and I turned my agony toward the stranger, allowing it to show and praying she had a shred of sympathy inside her.

“Guiliano will survive,” she said with a thick accent.

Guiliano. It took me a second to realize she meant Julian. I’d never heard him called that, but it was clear she knew him. The name must be a remnant from a past life. I didn’t really care. Not now. Not with my mate bloodied on the floor at my feet.

“I need to go to him,” I pleaded.

“You need your power,” she said softly. “The throne will help. It’s a conduit to the Rio Oscuro’s magic. Give it a few more minutes to heal you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded. They made it sound like they’d plugged me into a magical charging station. But I wasn’t who mattered now. Each moment I felt the memory of his voice slipping further and further away. “I need to get to Julian. I heard him!”

“You heard him?” Lysander asked slowly. I turned to see his eyes skip from the strange woman to his brother’s body.

“Yes,” I said, losing patience. “I was somewhere”—how the hell was I supposed to explain the limbo I’d been in?—“somewhere else. There was music and light and shadows. I could hear him. I could feel him. He’s still alive.”

He had to be. I’d been wrong before—out of my mind, thanks to Willem’s magical interference. I didn’t know what was going on, but Julian was here. He was close. I felt it in my bones, felt it in my blood.

“Light and shadows?” Lysander muttered, and I tensed, expecting ridicule. Instead, he murmured something under his breath, “When light falls and shadows burn, the dreamers will awaken the storm—”

“As above, so below, magic to magic, darkness to darkness, true love to true magic,” the woman whispered.

“I can’t remember the rest,” Lysander said, his eyes wide and watchful and entirely focused on her. “Do you know the grimoire it came from? What it means?”

“I’ve studied it extensively,” she looked down, a faint flush coloring her cheeks.

They were…flirting. A strange urge to break both their necks flashed through me, but I resisted. I didn’t have time for that mess or for them to continue their cryptic conversation. “You said he would survive. How?”

The woman paused before answering me. “You. You can heal him.”

“I tried. I tried to give him my blood, but he wouldn’t drink.” I fought the rawness rising in my throat like the ache growing inside me. That couldn’t be it. I hadn’t already failed him.

“Not your blood. Your magic,” she told me. “You will need strength to summon the song of the living and call him back from limbo.”

“Limbo?” I repeated. It couldn’t be. I heaved a breath. “That’s where I was?”

She nodded. “Did you hear the music of life and death there?”

But Lysander said in an incredulous voice, “You were in limbo?”

I ignored him and twisted my hands around the carved arms of the chair. I’d heard music there, but I’d had no idea what it was. I definitely had no idea how to channel it.

“Yes, you do,” she said as though reading my thoughts. “It will be easier, though, if you call your sisters here first. Their magic will boost your own.”

“My sisters? I don’t…” I shook my head.

“Le Regine are your sisters,” she explained. “They have been—”

---