Nicolas DeSilva has always known the peril of distance. It is not the miles that undo him, but the void they carve within. Allyra, his third Immoless, the one who slipped every tether he laid, taught him that truth with brutal clarity. She was no fragile tribute to be chained and forgotten, no fleeting fancy to be devoured and discarded. She was the anomaly, the vessel who carried his blood, his Evro’s essence, and the sovereign promise he had engineered across centuries. To let her roam unchecked was to invite annihilation, not of her body, but of the fragile order he imposed upon his fractured self.
In the shadowed corridors of Corax, where clocks ticked in discordant rebellion and mirrors whispered half-truths, Nicolas first felt the gnaw of that absence. He had watched her through raven eyes, through the Ad Sex Speculum’s unblinking gaze, her black and red hair trailing like a banner of defiance as she boiled vampires on The Sombre’s deck. Distance then was a game, a prelude to the hunt. He let her believe in freedom, in the illusion of escape, because the chase sweetened her blood, made her pulse race with the fear he craved. But when she veered toward Sihr, toward Elyas and the mariposa’s wings, the game soured. Distance became threat, a chasm where his control frayed and Webster’s logic warred with Chester’s primal howl.
He rode Zimba then, the grinning beast pounding the earth, his cane raised to summon storms that mirrored the tempest within. Kane’s forest, the Twin Lakes, the Varjoleto’s primal heart, all blurred as he pursued her shadow. She swam with serpentine grace, Kevin coiled about her throat, her body a fusion of demon and Immortalis blood he had so carefully diluted. He could have drowned her with a thought, crushed her beneath waves laced with his will. But distance had already wounded him, the mere possibility of her slipping beyond his grasp a blade twisting in his core. He pulled her from the sea instead, fed her Baer blood to staunch the loss, and chained her to his side with contracts etched in Irkalla’s ink.
Corax became her cage, gilded with his affections, lined with whips and whispers. He marked her flesh with his name, watched her writhe under the lash, her cries a symphony that drowned Webster’s cautions. Chester revelled in her, the Long-Faced Demon claiming what Nicolas rationed, their shared sensations a feedback loop of ecstasy and agony. Yet even in her surrender, distance lingered. Her eyes, those hazel depths flecked with Orochi’s green, held secrets. She spoke of love, of seeing the monster and choosing him still, but he knew the truth: love was possession, and possession demanded vigilance.
The Spine-Cracker waited in Webster’s lair, its golden cylinder a promise of eternal compliance. He had dreamed of it, the inhibitor dripping slow as her will dissolved, her body his without the flicker of defiance. But Harlon’s words echoed, the old ghoul’s truth a splinter under his skin. “She is the only friend you have ever had.” Behmor, Baal, Kane, even the alters, all circled her like moths to flame, drawn by the stability she unwittingly provided. To break her would break them all, shatter the fragile empire he had built from blood and deception.
So he kept her close, closer than breath, closer than blood. In the banqueting hall, amid the chaos of teapot spectacles and inmate lotteries, he watched her command the stage, her laughter a blade against his restraint. When she danced with Orochi, scales gleaming under the dusk, he felt the pull, the urge to chain her anew. But distance was worse, the void of her absence a madness he could not endure. She was his, by contract, by conquest, by the sovereign blood he had poured into her veins. And in that possession, he found the only peace his fractured soul had ever known.
Immortalis Book One August 2026