title: Crossing the Vale
author: Perth, Hargrove
description: Isabella has been hiding behind a shade for centuries, a spell that has concealed her identity for the last 500 years. A blood oath to avenge her father will not allow her to rest until the vow is completed. She's living in vampire infested London where she works as a bartender at a VAC sanctioned job in a blood rave - a place where vampires can find willing blood slaves to lessen their thirst. Listening to the fangers, as she calls them, discuss what's happening in the vampire precincts lets Isabella learn things humans shouldn't know. When the fanger community starts talking about the crowning of a new Vale, a vampire prince, she knows trouble is coming. The Selection will be held, a sorting ground for the new Vale to choose one woman to be his immortal bride, but it's at the expense of hundreds of other women who will end up as blood slaves at the Tower. An unexpected alliance with a fanger just might give Isabella access to the interior workings of the Selection and a chance at fulfilling her blood oath, but only if she can hold the shade long enough to get close to the queen, Vale Cristiana, who's desperate to find the witch who cursed her before her time runs out.