The walk down the hallway of the third floor's West wing felt like a lifetime. I was finally going to see it... I was going to see my destiny in ink.

The thoughts of this important moment never strayed from the foreground of my mind. It was truly happening. I had been living under the biggest conspiracy in our universe, safely hidden behind hundreds of years of secrecy and forethought. And now I would finally be able to seek the reason that I was special, that I had been chosen.

Avalon walked alongside of me, completely relaxed as he meandered with his hands in his pockets. He seemed distracted, not paying attention as Thaddeus led us down to the end of the corridor. The second-to-the-last door on the left was opened, warm light flooding into the hall. But my brother's steps were slow and uneven, and it caused me to bump him with my elbow.

Hurry up, I thought, annoyed.

As Thaddeus began to move towards the doorway, he held his hand out to me. "Right this way, Eris."

I smiled and nodded, turning into the room. My eyes widened as I took in the space, not expecting what waited for us.

The walls were all painted dark blue, freehanded stars scribbled across their surfaces in the forms of accurate constellations. It reminded me of home. Multiple glass cabinets lined the walls, their chambers hosting antiquities and archaic paper. A map made out the opposite wall, pinned into place with a few tacks. It was covered in more tiny pins with black markers across each country and region. I noticed it had the same depictions of both modern and ancient countries' boundaries. They scaled across all of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. A few red markers made up other small areas, focused almost entirely in only Europe, the Middle East, and Eastern Asia.

My green eyes shifted to the legend on the corner of the map, written with a marker. Black: Shadow Stalker. Red...

Red: Dracula.

Movement caught my attention, and I turned to see Grand Elder Seren stand from his desk that was framed by three large windows. Moonlight draped the rug behind his desk and the wooden floors.

"Hello, poppet," Seren greeted, his British accent similar to our father's.

"Evening," Avalon and I replied. I noticed Avalon had come back to life with his mind on the present. I wanted him there to witness me reading the scroll. He was the only one who always knew what to say. And I trusted his judgement more than anyone else's.

"Thanks for letting us see it," my brother added.

I nodded heavily in agreement.

"I'm not surprised at all by the request," Seren said. "I had a feeling you would want to see this for yourselves."

I nodded again, unable to put words together in a cohesive sentence. "Thank you," I said at last.

The grand elder gestured me forward, and I quickly stepped closer to his desk. On the wooden surface, two pieces of glass were sandwiched on either side of a yellow parchment. A rip traced down the middle in uneven jags, like it had been torn hurriedly. The edges were charred with age and the writing across its surface was faded from black to soft grey. I blinked a few times as the letters became clearer to my eyes, able to read the tiny print.

My eyes shot to the far bottom of the artifact, seeing it there. I had only ever seen Dracula's signature one other time, from the map of his territories that my father still owned. And now I saw it again. His entire title was carefully inscribed at the bottom of the document. Count Vladimir Dracula Dex.

"Oh my gods," I whispered. It was real.

"'But the battle could be prevented by a single vampire. This immortal creature will be called the Dark Child by both great covens of both religions. The Dark Child will appear in a time of fear, bearing glory in one hand and justice in the opposite,'" Seren read the words aloud. "'The Dark Child will restore the Children of the Darkness's great gods to their temples once more. Twice royal, wise, and beloved, the Dark Child shall reign as a living emblem of truth to the Children of Darkness. This child will come from a son of Dracula,'" he finished.

I looked up at him as he read, quickly glancing back at the parchment to follow along over each and every word. I wanted to see it for myself as the words hung in the air.

"'The Blood Warrior shall find the Dark Child in the waiting hands of the Red Rose. Clothed in crimson and noble in blood, the Rose is a symbol of righteousness and peace, born into the Night by the blood of an Elder. ...She is the Faire light to show the way to the Dark Child,'" I read silently.

"Mum's maiden name was Faire," I whispered out loud, glancing at Avalon.

He nodded.

"She was royalty?" I asked, my tone still hushed as if she might hear me from downstairs.

Avalon nodded again. "Yeah, she was an heir to the King of England's throne. That's the other bloodline beyond Dracula's."

My eyes retraced the words again. She had never told me. I continued further past the ripped away section.

"'But there will be another who will vie for the title of Monarch to the vampires. This child shall be of the Bright One's disciples, strong and fearsome and ruthless. The Dark Child and the Bright One shall meet on the field of Battle in a time of the New Millennium,'" I continued to read silently.

My eyes slowed as I read the final sentence. "'And the Gods shall decide the Victor of their Children of Darkness to endure a dynasty of Night...'"

"Who is the Bright One?" I asked after the shock loosened its grip on my throat.

"That is the ancient name coined for the Moon Goddess. However, we don't know whom this new disciple could be. We assume they are the leader of the Moon Worshippers, but we have never heard a name to associate it with," Seren explained with a casual shrug. He didn't seem to have near the level of worry I possessed.

There could be someone else out there who could harm us.

"Do Moon Worshippers know about this?" I asked, trying to put force behind my words. But I could barely whisper the question.

Seren nodded again. "We know that they have interests in finding whomever Shadow Stalkers are declaring as our Dark Child. And we believe they know that it involves Draculan heirs," he explained. "And since your father is the last of the original fledgling bloodline, it narrows their suspicions as to whom they're looking for."

I inhaled another breath and then exhaled, trying to stay calm. It was real, right in front of me. Moon Worshippers knew my family existed. Dracula and all of the Shadow Stalkers thought that the words before me were real; they wanted Avalon or I to save them. And that scared me more than just the perceived idea of the prophecy.

They expected me to fix the entire supernatural world...

"Pretty cool, right?" Avalon asked from behind me. But I didn't agree. That was not the word I would've chosen to describe our new reality. "I didn't even believe it was real until Dad showed it to me," he added.

"But... Why wouldn't he tell me?" I answered softly.

My brother sighed from beside me. "Because he didn't want you to worry, or be afraid," he replied. "I had nightmares for a long time after the enemy attacked our old home, back before you were born. Mum and I had to flee England. Dad followed a week later."

I stared up at him as my mouth fell open. How could I have never heard the words coming out of his mouth? It didn't sound real. "What?" I whispered.

He nodded again. "I was seven. They attacked us twice within weeks of each other. The first time, we won and they dropped back. And a couple weeks later, they attacked again. Dad got captured. Nathaniel Bartholomeu made Mum and I leave England to go somewhere safe."

"It was to save your lives," Thaddeus answered him. "The last thing we needed was either your mother or you to get harmed. That plan was our doing."

Avalon sighed, glancing at the parchment in front of us. "Yeah, but they proved their point. They wanted to reach for us and almost did. And they've done it again now, twice. I don't know about the rest of the Grand Tribunal, but enough is enough."

Seren nodded in agreement, his expression turning somber. I suddenly worried that there was no happy ending in sight. "And that is why we must finally assemble our allies. But this cannot be achieved without political backing across all of our covens. Otherwise, we remain as foreign bodies unto one another with nothing more in common than the Goddess of the Night."

"We'll have to unite them," Thaddeus said calmly. "And the only person who can is the Dark Child."

I swallowed the lump in my throat, trying not to make a sound. Finally, I nodded as my teeth threatened to rattle my jaw in fear.

An hour later, I sighed as I continued to walk the perimeter of the tapestry carpet within the library. I had taken off my ballet flats so I could balance better on the perfect edge of the crimson material, my eyes concentrating on nothing but the contrast between the rug and the hard wooden floor that made up the rest of the room. I had decent balance after years of practicing dance at my mother's bidding—a young lady of society should know how to waltz, apparently—and minor gymnastic training proposed by my father, but sometimes I would fall just enough to see how quickly I could catch myself.

The constant thought of how hard the path was before me kept lingering in the back of my mind, pressuring its way to the forefront each night when I wasn't occupied with playing politician for the Americans and the visiting diplomats.

Doubt pressured that I would never fulfill the destiny put down before me.

What if I can't?

"Eris, if you keep walking in circles, you're going to cause permanent damage to the floors in the shape of your path," Avalon said from behind me. He had taken up residence at the table within the library, sorting through some of his grimoires while doing research for a new spell.

"It's a rectangle, technically speaking," I answered, not letting his jab deter me from my mind-numbing activity as I worked through my thoughts.

"Let's not split hairs," he warned with a chuckle. "What's on your mind?"

"Everything," I said, in all honesty.

"That seems like a waste of time... Anything in particular?"

I sighed and finally stopped when I reached the opposite corner before I looked up at him. "Just...everything," I said again, unable to pinpoint which specific part of my troubled anxiety was at the top of the list.

My older brother paused from looking down at his spell book and studied me instead. He quirked his mouth to one side in the same way our mother did and his brow furrowed, looking identical to our father.

"I don't know if I can do this," I articulated finally. "Maybe I'm not the right person for this. And now that I'm here, and I'm seeing and hearing it firsthand... I don't know if I can do it."

Avalon sighed slightly, leaning back in his chair. He had opted for a graphic t-shirt and jeans as his attire for the night, looking more casual now that our political obligations of putting on a good front for the gatherings had ended. He closed the tome that was in front of him and slid it off to one side of the wooden surface. "I've got an idea."

My left eyebrow rose in suspicious curiosity. His ideas usually ended up getting us in trouble. "I doubt you can find anything that will help my dilemma in one of your spell books, Big Brother," I said slowly, moving towards him as he waved me over.

"Not what I was referring to," he said with a smirk. He waited for me to sit down in the chair opposite him before leaning over to another book on the top of a collection of grimoires. He opened it and retrieved a set of tarot cards from inside the cutout compartment within the fake tome. He placed them in front of me. "Cut the deck."

"I'm not going to believe a psychic reading."

"Then humor me. Cut the deck."

I sighed, not in the mood for one of his games. But if he thought it would appease my worries, then I would indulge him. I leaned forward and pulled the top section of the deck off of the bottom and sat them side-by-side. I watched as he replaced the bottom stack atop the new one before cutting and reordering them twice more. I withheld the need to exhale noisily again.

"Patience," Avalon warned, as if he had known my restraint. He then slid the cards across the wood in a perfect half-circle, face down. "How about a three-card draw?"

"So, we're playing poker like Dad now?" I asked sarcastically.

"No, not exactly," he laughed. "Pick one card."

"Any of them?" I asked, glancing up from the deck.

He nodded. "Just grab whichever one speaks to you."

Wanting to groan, I leaned forward, running my hand slowly across the air above the half-circle, hoping some sort of electric intuition would know which card to choose. I wasn't sure if it was pure superstition or dumb luck, but when a small shock seemed to spring across my palm, I reached down to pick up the card I assumed it came from. I slid it forward from the deck and retreated my hand so Avalon could pick it up.

He flipped the card over with practiced precision. "The Temperance card," he named, and I looked down at the dark-haired angel on its face. "It means balance and harmony, a traveler's card for a journey," he continued in description to the illustration. "Pick another."

I made a face as I held my hand back out above the deck. I didn't know which one I wanted. The air in my lungs began to burn as I concentrated on a sign.

"Take a breath. This isn't supposed to be hard," my brother said from the other side of the table. "Go with your instincts."

I breathed in deeply, looking down at the cards again. When I felt a tingle hit the back of my neck, I chose the card beneath my fingers. Again, I let Avalon flip it right-side up.

"The Seven of Cups, means a good-versus-evil struggle, but also that you must seek out the truth amongst the fiction you may hear. One more."

For the third time, I chose a card. "Nine of Pentacles," I named, taking in the drawing of a woman amongst nine roses that were adorned with witch symbols of the five-pointed star.

"That's a good sign," Avalon said.

"How so?"

"This one means that there's success ahead of you at the end of your journey, your wishes fulfilled," my brother said with a grin. "That's a good fortune, Eris. Nothing to be overly worried about. 'Everything' can always wait until tomorrow night and let you solve what you can tonight."

"That makes me feel a little better... What's yours?"

My brother chuckled and shrugged. "I don't usually draw cards for my own future," he said after a moment. I could see the touch of a blush on his cheeks.

"Well, if we're going to do it for me and it's good, then we may as well find out yours, don't you think?" I needled playfully.

"Fine," Avalon said with a harsh scoff. He was nervous. He picked up the cards and gently shuffled them to one deck again. He sat it down and gestured for me to cut it once more. When I did, he shuffled and then spread them back across the wood in the opposite direction, the curve now pointing towards him rather than me.

"What's card number one?" I asked.

He inhaled a short breath and closed his eyes. I watched as he concentrated, making me want to giggle. He took his magic so seriously. I waited as he slowly reached out and took a card. He flipped it face-up as his eyes opened.

"Six of Swords," I said, reading the name at the bottom of the card.

"It means a physical and spiritual journey, usually the long journey of a family," he explained as he stared at the illustration of a man in a rowboat with a woman and child in the front, paddling into the distance. Swords stuck out of the water like cattails.

"Sounds good so far," I said encouragingly as he found his second card. "Three of Wands," I named.

"It's an optimistic journey," he said, sounding relieved. "And that anyone who is a loved one should be told so by the end of this journey, preferably before it's over."

"Are those leaves on them?" I asked, looking closer at the drawing of three tall poles around a man, budding flowers or foliage showing on each of them.

"Means continued growth and accomplishment," Avalon explained with a smile. "The family continues to grow, no matter the ending," he added.

"A-a-a-and who are you going with on this journey?" I added, watching him go to select his third and final card. "Hopefully, your more-adult self."

Avalon smirked as he chose the one he wanted and flipped it, holding onto it. I watched as his blue eyes flashed with panic and then became empty, as if he was suddenly lost in thought. His mouth remained slack as he continued to take in the card.

"Enough with the suspense," I said cautiously, not understanding his reaction.

My big brother slowly laid it down onto the table with the other two. "Death," he said slowly, looking confused and surprised. "It's the sign of the Scorpio, and it means death to a lifecycle or habit in someone's life," he added.

"Scorpio? You're a Capricorn," I stated, confused.

"I know. Guess it means the person I'm taking on this journey, or who's taking me on theirs," he said, giving a minor shrug. He didn't look up at me, continuing to stare at the cards. I watched as his mind seemed to distance itself from our physical bodies, going somewhere I couldn't imagine. I had seen the thousand-yard stare a few times in my lifetime.

"Like who?" I asked, wondering if he was tapping into his own incredible superpower.

He didn't answer me, lost down the rabbit hole. I let him follow where it took him, knowing he would tell me everything when he returned. Avalon had been deemed prophetic before I was born, often having extreme bouts of intuition that had come true more than once in his thirty-three years on the planet. As I grew up, I came to trust that intuition when he had it. Our father had always put stock in his son's visions, and I wanted to do the same.

Finally, Avalon seemed to fall back into his own body and he took a deep breath as he withdrew his hand from the card.

"Well?" I asked, my head tipping to one side to study his face.

"Nothing," he said slowly.

"I doubt that," I stated, frowning. "What did you see?"

"Nothing," he said again. "Just that my journey isn't quite the same as yours," he added, but I knew he was omitting details.

"I'm sure it isn't something worth worrying over," I said, trying to snap him out of it. He still seemed lost in his chair within whatever events he had seen. I sighed heavily. "I need fresh air. Why don't we go for a walk out back?"

Avalon nodded shallowly before quickly turning the cards back over and then reshuffled the deck until they were back in one stack again. He put them away and got to his feet as I went to retrieve my ballet flats. "Yeah, that sounds good," he said, talking how he usually did.

"Good," I answered as I slipped my heel into my second shoe. I waited for him to join me before we headed out of the library and to the back entrance next to the dining room. I noticed his far-away demeanor again, as if he were still a long ways away from our current reality. He concentrated on something else other than our conversation, or my worries. And I was certain his card reading had something to do with it.