Chapter 31 Taken!

• The night descended thick and cruel, shrouding Elyndor in a silence that felt like the breath before a scream. The moon hung red and swollen — a hunter’s moon — its reflection quivering in the palace’s silver spires.
• From the edge of the forest that bordered the kingdom, thousands of eyes began to gleam.Not of wolves.Not of men.But of vampires.
• Hundreds of them — pale, sharp, and silent — moved like smoke through the trees, their armor absorbing what little light the night offered. The air itself seemed to shrink away from them. At their head rode Lord Varic, commander of the Blood Guard, his lips parted just enough to reveal the faint glimmer of fangs.