From the pages of a journal found in Ilona's quarters at Castle Volkihar

My mother was a shield maiden and Chieftain's wife, but I myself was born of her shame--a bastard, forced upon my mother one of the many men who raped her the night they slaughtered her husband, and most of the coastland people over whom he ruled. My mother was forced into slavery, but I myself was born into it, knowing only this miserable life for more than forty years until the vampires came and slaughtered my masters.

On that dark night, I went from being a slave to something infinitely worse than I ever dared imagine. I was taken to a Castle on an island in the Sea of Ghosts, where for more than a month I was fed upon, and raped by the vampires who took me--the brute, Orthjolf being first among them to do so despite there having been younger, fairer maidens to be had. I fought them at every turn--perhaps that's why they continued...

Until a week ago, I had all but resigned myself to being little more than a source of food and amusement for the vampires here. Why the one they call Blood-Raven intervened on my behalf, I will never know, but from this day until my last, I owe him everything. At first when he bit me, I believed it was meant as a mercy killing and welcomed such, and yet somehow his bite did not kill me as I hoped it would. He took me in his arms as if I were weightless, spiriting me from my dungeon cell, and carrying me to a tower in some far away part of the Castle I had never seen before.

There in his rooms, my savior offered me the first real choice I had ever been allowed to make for myself in forty years. I could choose to lie there in his bed as the blood flowed from me until death, or... I could take his blood, and become like him--never touched by sickness, old age, or even death, and most of all, never be a slave to anyone again. I accepted this gift without reservation and even offered to become his concubine in payment for it. Thorvaldr, as I would soon discover, was a man of far greater honor than any I had come to know in my mortal life.

One full week has passed since I became a vampire, and each night I feed, I feel myself becoming stronger than I ever was as a mortal--even when I was much younger. Last night, I was brought before the Lord of the Volkihar himself--a man called Harkon, and Sire of most of this Court. Even as a vampire, his presence as I knelt before him and swore myself to his service sent a chill down my spine, the likes of which I have never felt before. Thorvaldr tells me that long ago, Harkon received his dark gift from the Daedric Prince, Molag Bal himself, and that save for perhaps Valerica, he was the most powerful vampire in all of Skyrim. I must endeavor to earn his trust, lest I find myself discarded like so many other fledgling vampires before me...

Other than Thorvaldr, the elf, Vingalmo has been the only one of Lord Harkon's Court to treat me with anything but disdain. I enjoy our conversations immensely, and he has offered to teach me more than just the blood magic Thorvaldr has been showing me. He says that because we are immortal, we can become more powerful than any mage of Winterhold, as we have eternity to perfect our craft. I dare not ask his age, but I am certain he is older than Thorvaldr by many centuries. He gave me something tonight--a gift I had not expected from an elf of all things. It was an amulet of Talos, the God my mother worshiped. I hope that in time, we can be good friends despite the racial differences, of which Orthjolf so often reminds us.

PRESENT TIME

TO BE CONTINUED...