Empire of the Dawn

This dark fantasy novel is set in a world where the sun has been blotted from the sky for 27 years, an event known as daysdeath. Vampires have conquered much of the Elidaeni Empire, and the Endless Legion of the Forever King, Fabién Voss, threatens the imperial capital of Augustin. The story unfolds through parallel testimonies extracted from two prisoners held in the fortress of Sul Adair: Gabriel de León, a paleblood (half-human, half-vampire) warrior known as the Last Silversaint, and his vampire sister Celene Castia. Both are imprisoned by the vampire Empress Margot Chastain, who has convened a conclave of the Priorem, the ruling heads of the empire's five remaining vampire bloodlines. Her son, the Marquis Jean-François, must extract from the siblings the truth behind Dior Lachance, a young woman whose blood can heal any wound and burn vampires to ash. Gabriel strikes a bargain: He will tell his story in exchange for watching Celene die.

Gabriel's account begins after the Battle of Dún Maergenn, where he believes Dior was killed. Consumed by vengeance, he sets out carrying three vials of Dior's holy blood, intent on anointing a blade and driving it into Fabién's heart. His companions catch up to him: Aaron de Coste, his closest friend and now a fledgling vampire wracked by guilt; Baptiste Sa-Ismael, Aaron's mortal husband and a gifted blacksmith; and Lachlan á Craeg, Gabriel's former apprentice. Baptiste discovers that Ashdrinker, Gabriel's enchanted sword, is fracturing further. The group diverts to the Barony of León, Gabriel's ancestral homeland, where one of only two forges hot enough to repair enchanted starsteel is located.

In León, they encounter Gabriel's cousin Charlotte de León, a fanatical vampire hunter called the Ashen Lioness, and his elderly grandfather Baron Gerrard. Gabriel and Aaron uncover something sinister beneath the city's pious surface: The entire population has been enthralled by Ilon, the Father of Whispers, one of the original five vampires cursed by the Redeemer a millennium ago, who has ruled León in secret since its founding. In a coordinated strike, Gabriel, Aaron, Charlotte, and Gerrard destroy Ilon, though Gerrard dies in the fight. Gabriel inherits his mother Auriél's journal, whose pages reveal that his vampire father Wulfric spoke of a "blackened veil" that needed undoing years before daysdeath occurred. Charlotte assumes rule and musters León's army to march east.

Celene's parallel narrative begins with Dior's miraculous resurrection three days after her apparent death. Maryn, the Mother of Monsters, an ancien (an elder vampire of the oldest generation) of the Esani bloodline, reveals what she claims is the Esani prophecy's meaning: Dior must sit the Fivefold Throne bearing Ashdrinker, the Redeemer's Blade, to end daysdeath. Dior's Unbound (former vampire thralls freed by her blood), her duskdancer guardian Phoebe á Dúnnsair (duskdancers being shapeshifters who can assume animal forms), and her beloved Princess Reyne á Maergenn join the voyage to Augustin aboard the war galley Dawnseeker. During the journey, Celene trains Dior in sanguimancy, the blood magic of the Esani, while struggling against the chorus of consumed souls within her own mind.

At Augustin, Dior's forces join the city's defenders against the Endless Legion. When Kestrel Voss, the Iron Maiden and eldest of Fabién's children, strikes down Reyne, Dior transforms for the first time into a massive white wolf, revealing she inherited the duskdancer gift from her father. Fabién withdraws. Dior learns from Empress Isabella, ruler of Elidaen, that the Redeemer's Blade was given years ago to a champion: It is Ashdrinker, Gabriel's sword.

Gabriel's army reaches San Maximille, where Fabién has retreated. Phoebe arrives with news that Dior lives and urges Gabriel to bring Ashdrinker to Augustin. He refuses, and Phoebe steals the sword while he sleeps. Gabriel attacks anyway, but the assault is a trap. Fabién reveals Gabriel's daughter Patience, now a vampire raised as a Princess of Forever, and explains the Esani's true aim: not to end daysdeath but to trigger the Day of Judgment, literally ending the mortal world so that vampires' souls might face divine appraisal instead of automatic damnation. Fabién, the Redeemer's mortal half brother, opposes this because he would face certain damnation. Lachlan and Charlotte depart with León's army, though Gabriel secretly passes Charlotte a message asking her to return.

Gabriel infiltrates Augustin through the pumpworks. In the capital, Maryn has enthralled Phoebe, who delivers a fabricated account of Gabriel's surrender to Voss, and murdered Reyne to conceal the truth. Dior, believing Gabriel a traitor, agrees to marry Prince Philippe de Augustin. Celene, who has wrenched the truth from Wulfric's soul within her mind, confesses to Dior during the wedding feast that Maryn seeks to end the world rather than save it. Gabriel, disguised in stolen armor, strikes Maryn with a blade anointed in Dior's blood, and Dior uses her sanguimancy to hold the ancien's scattered form until Maryn is destroyed.

That same night, Fabién launches his assault on Augustin. Dior orders the canal water superheated and blessed, sending sanctified steam through the streets that burns the Dead by the thousands. Phoebe, Lachlan, and Charlotte fall in battle against Kestrel. Fabién kills Philippe, seizes Dior, and flees north toward Charbourg, the ruined city where the Redeemer was murdered.

Gabriel, Aaron, and Joaquin Marenn, a young Unbound soldier, pursue Fabién. At Charbourg, Gabriel discovers the source of daysdeath: five great fissures radiating from the ruined cathedral, created by a ritual Fabién performed using the blood of the eldest vampire of each bloodline. Inside the cathedral, Fabién nails Dior to a wheel and forces Gabriel to drink her blood from a stone bowl, a ritual meant to transform Gabriel into a true vampire. The ritual fails: The Redeemer's blood heals Gabriel rather than cursing him. Morgane, Fabién's daughter, taunts her father for being deceived by his infernal master, and Fabién kills her. Aaron and Baptiste die together in the ensuing battle, impaled on the same blade. Celene bites into Fabién's weakened flesh while Gabriel drives Ashdrinker, anointed with Dior's blood, through the Forever King's heart. The explosion kills Patience, who is flung into Dior's holy blood and burned. Gabriel, buried in rubble, is saved when Dior feeds him her blood, but the sangirè, the red madness that afflicts palebloods, overtakes him, and he drains her to death.

The final movement reveals that nearly everything the siblings told Jean-François was an orchestrated deception. Dior is not dead. Patience was never resurrected as a vampire. The siblings' mutual hatred was a performance designed to buy time while Dior, in duskdancer moth form, relayed messages between their cells. The thrall "Dario" is actually Joaquin in disguise. The entire conclave was the true trap: While the Priorem gathered at Sul Adair, the armies of the Moonsthrone (the Highland court allied with Dior), led by Dior, Phoebe, Lachlan, Aaron, and Charlotte, all very much alive, stormed the fortress through its slopway (sewage outlet). Dior, in her great white wolf form, destroys the assembled vampire leaders, spraying holy blood across them, tearing off Margot's head, and burning the rest to ash. Jean-François flees in his verminshape (dispersing into rats), but Gabriel and Celene imprison him in Celene's former cell.

With the eldest vampire of each bloodline dead, the curse of daysdeath begins to reverse. Celene holds her hand into feeble sunlight and smoke rises from her skin: The sun is growing stronger. Gabriel reconciles with his sister, accepts an invitation to be godfather to Lachlan and Charlotte's expected child, and stands alongside Dior and Reyne, also alive and reunited. He looks toward a horizon that, for the first time in 27 years, is not quite so dark as it was.