A Beast of Nine Horns

"Ours is borrowed blood. And in the end, all debts come due."

Tamara didn't choose to fall in love with a hemomancer. But now, having turned her back on humanity, she'll follow her to the end of the world.

After surviving the chaos at the Sanguine Accord's base in Sherbrooke and reuniting with her best friend Coral, Tamara hoped things would go back to normal. Then again, what would normal even mean for a girl now perfectly comfortable hanging out with bloodfiends? Under the care of the magnanimous Lady Descoteaux of the Hyacinth, the two soon learn of the bewildering secrets lurking beneath the rise and fall of the hemomancers, and of a looming calamity that threatens to bring an end to everything.

Meanwhile at the Center for Scourge Control, Director Falk rallies her loyal to hold a crumbling world together. Between the scourge outbreak in Balsam, the civil war brewing in New England, and Lady Descoteaux's machinations for the fabled hemoclasm, she's got her work cut out for her. With the help of the Lockwood family, her psychomancer Nissa, and a legendary assassin brought out of retirement, she challenges Lady Descoteaux to a deadly chess game for the fate of the world.

And standing in the center of this game that she wants no part of, damn her luck, stands Coral, a girl who only ever wanted to be loved and accepted. With the fate of the two races who spurned her resting cold and metallic in her hands, will Coral accept her role as a Vessel to Kakrinolas and bring an end to the story of the hemomancers? Or, given the power to choose for the first time, will she instead walk away from the battle and carve a path of her own?

Book III of the Into Vermilion trilogy.