'Gift of Darkness' [Book 2 of the Forbidden Blood Chronicles] Prologue “It’s happening.” Talia raised her head to look at the figure standing by the door. It took her eyes a few seconds to adjust to the surrounding darkness; the light of the candles at the altar she was kneeling at didn’t all the way to the door. When she recognized Bree in her pearl-white dress of a full Sister, Talia smiled. The past eighteen years had not been kind to Bree. They had made her face darker and covered in lines; her thin lips had disappeared in the permanent frown she wore. Her eyes, once warm and playful, now watched everything with a sharp, mistrustful gleam. Time had not been kind to Talia either. She could hardly remember herself from before that fateful night, from before the Oracle died and left

