Lara glanced up, her breath catching in her throat as it always did at the sight of her aunts, imprisoned not only by the ice, but caught in a powerful shape that was not their true form. She couldn't shift yet, but she felt she was getting close. The aunts had embedded the knowledge deep in her mind so that she wouldn't ever forget the process, but she hadn't worked up the courage to actually shift. And the aunts had forbidden her to try where Razvan or Xavier would feel the surge of power.

The red dragon had her great eye pressed against the ice. As Lara watched, the lid slowly closed and then opened again over the round orb. The small acknowledgment gave her the strength to look directly at the man who stood in the center of the room, a frown on his face. Razvan-her father-glared at her, beckoning with a long finger.

The lines in his face had deepened since the last time she'd seen him and that had only been a couple of days earlier. His hair had darkened from the coppery red to deeper brown, now streaked with gray. His eyes were sunken and beneath them were darker circles. The moment his gaze fell on her, he began to breathe harder, the air coming out in great puffs of excitement. In one hand he held a ritual ceremony knife and Lara's heart began to pound.

He has the knife.

Teeth tearing at her flesh was bad enough, but the sharp blade slicing, metal against skin and tissue, invading her body and bringing with it the screams of past victims, screams she couldn't drown out for weeks afterward. The pleas for mercy haunted her dreams and clung like ice to her veins so that she felt she was going insane until time finally melted them away.