

After I was reborn, I was the one who changed the name on my blood bond with Prince Mortlock. I wrote in “Isabella”—the other vampire he’d always cherished, always protected. When Isabella wanted the ruby necklace, the one that marked the Prince's Mate, I let her have it. The wedding dress Mortlock had prepared for me? I gave that to Isabella, too. I did it all because in my past life, I got my wish. I became Mortlock’s mate, but I lived every moment in Isabella’s shadow. In the end, during a battle with vampire hunters, Mortlock ran to a wounded Isabella first. I was the one left to take a silver stake through the heart. So this time, I decided to let them be. To stay far away from Mortlock. But this time, the cold, distant Prince wept and begged me to be his mate again.

The second princess Aella of Therasia was exiled to the North by her father. She awakened the Azure Phoenix Flame Power in Blackstone Gorge, which inherently restrains the Wights. Fighting alongside Northern Lord Reyne, she rose from an outcast princess to Supreme Queen of Ancient Valyria. When the southern nobles who once wronged her saw her again at the Sacred Court, Aella, robed in black and gold and wearing the Thorned Dragon-Nest Crown, looked down on all as a queen.