The palace is a graveyard of dreams and hope. It slowly lures you in with its mesmerizing beauty, giving silky promises of power and wealth. But as soon as you take a step into the mirage, the doors snap shut. Then you realize... The high palace walls are nothing more than a cage of bones. The peaceful lotus pool is simply a resting place for thousands of lost souls. And laughter and smiles are a weapon to kill you before you can even mutter a single word. When lucky, a remain or two may find its way out - a fragmented jade or two bloody teeth, a remembrance that this indeed was history. From her birth, she was chained by the invisible strings of fate. What was the palace but another prison? Her bargain was her freedom, and his bet was the future of the empire. He favored the land over her, so she chose herself over him. But when she finally had the chance to escape, she found that she couldn't. For her hands were spotted with crimson blood.

Rin is a Kitsune, or at least she was until a witch's spell turned her human. To regain her powers, Rin must make the lord's son fall in love with her before the next full moon. She thought it would be easy, her kind have been seducing humans for centuries. But Hikaru is different. He's handsome, intelligent, and kind -the opposite of everything she's assumed about humans. The plan is to seduce him and get back her powers, there's no room for love.

Ember Hawthorn was born with a hole in her heart, a defect that should have killed her according to the doctors. Inexplicably, the defect vanished over night and eighteen years later Ember is about to graduate high school and move onto college. However, that plan comes to a screeching stop the night she gets a flat tire and and she's greeted by something she thought didn't exist-vampires. In a matter of hours, Ember is thrown from her former life into the protection of the Robur Coven-the largest of the Twelve vampire covens and it's there she discovered just how she got entangled in the world of vampires. One saved her life eighteen years ago, a vampire by the name of Damon Lockwood.