Epilogue
A wail echoed through the greenhouse, belonging to a little girl of five. Her silver hair, gleaming like her mother’s, was partially hidden beneath a frilly bonnet. She sat sprawled on the ground, her dress fanned around her, tears streaming down her face.
A boy hurried over to her. “What’s wrong, Ceres?”
“Alex…”
With gray eyes and hair as dark as midnight, Alexander de Winter looked like a miniature of Vlad. The de Winter children were a perfect mirror of their parents: the son took after their father, and the daughter, their mother.
Alex knelt beside his sobbing sister, who instinctively reached out to him. He scooped her up with practiced ease, his movements fluid and comforting. Gently, he wiped the tears from her plump cheeks.
“What happened?”
