Page 1 of Tempted By the Vampire Prince

Chapter 1

Veilleur

YVES

On nights when I don’t know what to do with myself, I sit on this balcony and gaze out at the sea and stars. They are the only company I’ve ever been fully comfortable with.

You see, the ocean was my first love. Our affair began long before the blood ritual that stopped my heart, when I was still a witch from a minor coven.

There was something about it that called to me, even while my mate was still alive. At night, I’d inevitably retreat from our bed to listen to the waves break against the shore. To me, it was like having a conversation with an old friend. Emmaline used to say she didn’t mind sharing me with the sea.

I turned a page in my astronomy journal and scribbled a note in the corner, trying and failing to distract myself from memories of the past. Ones I tried very hard to push down, but still haunted me, even out here.

I brought my wife and newborn son home to Valemer after her passing. One wrapped in blankets, the other in a white cedar coffin. Since then, I have not strayed far from this balcony. I’ve been waiting for a sign from the gods that it was time to step back into the world. To be the duke I once was, instead of this hollow version of myself.

“Papa!” my young son called from across the balcony, one eye pressed to the lens of his brand new telescope. “Look! It’s Maris’s star!”

I chuckled at the ridiculousness of his claim. “Maris’s star hasn’t been visible in a millennium.”

“Come see for yourself!” Adrien exclaimed.

Humoring him, I set down my journal and crossed the balcony to where he stood enthusiastically pointing at the sky. Music and laughter from the annual masquerade ball drifted through the night air. The dance was a time-honored tradition, held in celebration of the lost Goddess of the Tide. It was the first I had committed to attending in many years.

However, my son’s latest mischief had driven away yet another blood nanny. She left in a huff, informing me Adrien was “a child of uncommon will” who had “no respect for the natural order of things” and that she wished me “the very best of luck” in finding a new nanny.

When I said goodbye, I truthfully struggled to remember her name. She was the twentieth nanny in as many months. I had stopped trying to understand what exactly drove them away. Whether it was his refusal to follow their directions, his habit of vanishing from locked rooms, his tendency to correct them, or simply the relentless, exhausting force of being Adrien.

What I did know was that every woman who left took with her a small, unspoken verdict about my son that I resented deeply and yet couldn’t entirely argue with.

He was difficult. He was also eight years old and my whole world. I was going to fix this problem, even if it killed me, which was saying a lot for an immortal.

So, instead of being the duke, I stayed upstairs to be his father, against my council’s repeated and increasingly pointed requests. I’d placated them with the promise of coming down for one dance and to say hello to old friends.

But I hadn’t said when.

Adrien stepped aside so I could take a look at his so-called finding of Maris’s star. It was either a blessing or a curse that he held none of his mother’s features. In every way, he was my child—wavy dark brown hair, green eyes, and warm bronze skin that always appeared kissed by the Valemer sun, despite our preference for moonlight.

With a sigh, I bent to the telescope, expecting to see another ordinary star. Instead, my jaw dropped—a pale blue star burned in the sky beside Rosa’s red one.

“It can’t be,” I said, focusing the lens to get a better look. Adrien started to argue, but I cut him off. “Get my astronomy book,” I instructed him. “Open it to the page on Diana’s constellation.”

He raced away and came back, holding the book. He flipped to the page and opened it for me. “See, it’s right here!” He jabbed the page. “Two degrees west of Rosa’s star, inside Diana’s belt. The old charts mark it blue, second magnitude. Every single book I’ve read says it went dark a thousand years ago, but she’s back.” Adrien grinned, showcasing a single missing tooth. “She’s back!”

I had read a dozen books on the subject over the years, and felt accomplished for it. Adrien had read them all before his last birthday and could recite them word for word. A fact that was enormously useful on nights like this and enormously inconvenient every other day of the week.

I took the book and held it up to the sky, unable to believe my eyes. He’d found Maris’s star. I smiled down at him. It was moments like these, when he put his focus on something extraordinary, that he shined.

Now, if I could only get him to stop terrorizing the nannies.

“You have a captain’s eye,” I commended him, setting a hand on his shoulder. But Adrien just shoved past me and returned to his telescope, taking a seat on a small stool to marvel at his discovery.

I wrung my hands together, watching him for a moment, proud and somehow, inexplicably, at a loss. He was so bright. So wonderful. Yet, utterly without manners. “You certainly have a captain’s ego,” I added, trying to lighten the mood.

Without turning to address me, he said, “Stop comparing me to a captain. I don’t want to sail. You know that.”

The sting of disappointment hit me right in the chest. I didn’t know what to do with an heir who would one day be Sea Lord of the Fleet and duke of the busiest shipping port in the Unified Territories, but who wanted nothing to do with the ocean. Somehow, I had to convince him to go out on a tall ship so he could see the beauty of sailing. Once he was out to sea, he was sure to fall in love with it the way I did.

I returned to my own telescope, staring out at the black space between stars. In times like these, I found myself saying a silent prayer to the moon goddess of my youth, Diana, begging her to send my mate back so she could help me raise this child.