PROLOGUE
 

Every Dark Shadow​​

A world away, a man shambled out of a dark corner wiping his mouth. The dead body stayed, shackled to his chamber walls—what remained of it, anyway, gutted to an ashen shell, drained of flesh and bone and sinew and its humming magic. Outside the castle, a bell tolled midnight. The sound rang across the courtyard and inside the open windows, echoing off gilded walls and archways, into the siphoner’s ears. Dropping his pricking blade, slick with blood, he stooped to accept the magic he’d stolen. Power seeped like salve into his tissues, rounding and tightening, smoothing a half-century of wear set in his thick creases. Under a crown, the shock of his white hair colored a deep blue-black, his spine cracked and straightened, and from a feeble old man rose a virile ruler, time reversed or never passed at all. The man was Osiris Lestat, and he felt no remorse.

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