For a long breath that seemed to stretch across centuries, nothing moved.
The word still echoed in the hall, not in sound but in the minds of every vampire present.
Princess.
Then came another silence, deeper than before, heavier than stone.
Every head turned.
Every single pair of eyes, from the oldest elder whose hair had long turned silver to the youngest fledgling barely past his first century, locked onto Cornelia.
Fear and awe rose together like twin flames.
She stood at the center of the hall, beneath the massive crystal chandelier, its pale light cascading over her dark hair and pale skin. For a heartbeat she looked exactly as she always had, the Baron's daughter, composed, graceful, quiet.
But now that they knew, that image shattered.
"She… she carries Princess blood…"
"Impossible…"
"It has not appeared in our family for how long?"
"Generations… perhaps longer…"
