Before the wedding blood ritual, the vampire bride Celine was taken by her fiancé Adrien to St. John's Church for the so-called Sunlight Trial. Five years earlier, she had rushed into the dawn fire to save him, sustaining old wounds that made it impossible for her to remain exposed to sunlight for long—she could only move about during the day with the help of a sunlight-barrier potion. Yet at the most perilous moment in the White Stone Courtyard, her last vial of life-saving medicine was swapped by Adrien for a venom of verbena, a poison that burns vampire blood. More cruelly still, in order to protect the human girl Lia, Adrien not only forced Celine to swallow white hawthorn calming syrup, which blocks blood regeneration, but also seized the bone whistle left to her by her grandfather, ordered her sun-shielding cloak stripped away, and had her dragged into the verbena thickets. Celine was two months pregnant, yet he used her as a prop in his bid for another's favor. Not until the crows blotted out the sky and Henry arrived with the Raven family did all the truth come to light, preserved by the obsidian ring's recording. After the child was lost, Celine finally resolved to return to her true family—the Veil family, which controls the entire city's legal blood supply. She would no longer be the abandoned bride of the old quarter, but strike back as the sole heiress of the Veil family. Adrien lost his title, his potions, his family standing, and all dignity; Lia was stripped of her inheritance rights and exiled to the borderlands.
