Ember and Stryx are the main characters in the first story of what I think of as my flagship series. Pretty much all the rest of my work stems from side characters introduced in Vampires & Strygoi Witches.

I made Ember a woman who knew nothing about Other World stuff so I could use her point of view to introduce readers to the entire Draga-verse as she learned about it.

Stryx, on the other hand, has lived in a world full of magic and mages for a thousand years, so his scenes were a way to expand on what Ember learns.

It was fun to play them against one another. I hate it when a perfectly capable, intelligent, and Independent woman meets a male character and suddenly she’s all doe-eyed and spineless, willing to accept him making all the decisions and shunting her into a safe place while he does all the fighting.

Seriously, the number of stories where there is dialogue like, “I can’t bring my A-game if you’re there, so stay here while I battle the big bad” and the women are okay with staying back and fretting while the menfolk fight astounds me. Have you met Ember? 🙂 That doesn’t work for her at all.

To let Ember avoid that fate, I wrote her as someone equally able to fight once she figured things out — she’s channeling War magic after all. Stryx is still a strong vampire who wants to protect his witch, but he has to come to terms with the circumstances being he has do that by her side, not by sidelining her — or she might set him on fire. Well, actually, she’s more likely to shove her sword someplace extremely uncomfortable, but you get the point. 🙂

As a bit of fun trivia, the song I use at the end of the story is a real Mesopotamian lullaby. I have no idea what spoken Mesopotamian sounds like, but the words Ember uses to coax Stryx into taking the final step into trusting her as completely as he wants her to trust him seemed perfect.