Carcassonne, France, 1421

At first, Ysanne Moreau wasn't sure what had woken her.

She scrubbed sleep from her eyes and pushed tangles of blonde hair off her face, debating burrowing back into the warmth of her bed.

Something was wrong, though.

Something had woken her.

Then she realised.

The house was too quiet.

There was no sound of her baby brother crying. But Joachim always cried. For the whole four days of his life so far, he'd done nothing but cry.

Now, silence.

Ysanne's heart turned cold.

It was a silence she knew only too well.

She climbed out of bed and made her way to her parents' room, pausing outside their door. It swung open before she could knock, and the solid shape of her father filled the doorway. He was breathing hard, his fists clenched at his sides, and Ysanne wondered if this would be the time that his rage spilled over and he finally struck her.

"Joachim . . ." She couldn't find words beyond his name.

Pierre Moreau's face darkened. He pushed past her, knocking her against the door-frame.

Ysanne looked into the room.

Victoire Moreau sat in bed, her hair twisted into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, her face utterly blank. At the foot of the bed was a small bundle, wrapped in a woollen blanket, and any hope that Ysanne might have clung to slipped through her fingers.

Another brother dead.

"What happened?" she said, creeping into the room.

Her mother didn't respond.

The first time, she'd lost a baby, Victoire had wept. She'd wept for the second and third and the fourth, but by the fifth the tears had stopped coming. Now, on this seventh death, her eyes were empty.

"Mother?" Ysanne touched her hand, but Victoire didn't respond. Her skin was cold. A slow blink was the only sign that she still lived.

Ysanne looked at the blanket-wrapped bundle. She should be used to losing siblings by now, but the pain of it was a shard of glass in her heart. She blinked back tears.

She climbed onto the bed and tried to hug her mother, but Victoire was as stiff and unyielding as wood.

Pierre strode back into the room, and scooped Joachim's body into his arms. He looked as though he was about to say something, then his eyes landed on Ysanne's, and she was sure she saw a flash of something that could only be described as hate.

Ysanne shrank back.

She'd always known that her father had been disappointed that his firstborn was female. He wanted a son, a hearty, strong boy to follow in his father's footsteps and carry on the family name. Instead he'd got Ysanne. He'd never been cruel to her, but he also hadn't masked his relief when, after two miscarriages, Victoire finally delivered a boy. Named after his father, baby Pierre hadn't survived his first birthday.

And so it had continued, throughout the fifteen years of Ysanne's life. Victoire birthed sons, but none of them survived, and every time one of them died, Pierre grew colder and harder towards his daughter, looking at her with undisguised anger, as if it was somehow her fault that she was stronger than her brothers.

Now, pinned under the weight of her father's glare, Ysanne realised something.

Victoire wasn't getting any younger, and her body was worn out from birthing child after child after child. Pierre was running out of time to secure his cherished male heir. If he could have sacrificed Ysanne's life in order to save Joachim's, she was quite sure he would do it without a second's hesitation.

Tears burned her eyes, and for an absurd moment she wanted to apologise for the crime of being born female, for the crime of being the only Moreau child to survive infancy.

Pierre's gaze slid to his blank-faced wife. Did he resent her too? Ysanne wondered. Did he blame her for failing to provide him with a viable heir?

"We'll just have to try again," Pierre said, and marched out of the room with the tiny body.

Soon, he would lie in the cold ground with the five brothers who had gone before him. Two sisters lay there too, bright little girls with sunshine smiles and blonde hair like Ysanne's, but Pierre hadn't cared much about the deaths of his daughters.

Ysanne wanted to call after him, to protest. Victoire was still recovering from Joachim's birth, moving stiffly and slowly whenever she got out of bed, blood continuing to spot the sheets and her undergarments – she wasn't ready to lie with Pierre again, let alone be ready to try and carry another baby.

But the words stuck in her throat.

"I'm sorry," she said instead, twining her fingers with Victoire's. Her mother continued to stare at the wall, no sign that she was even aware Ysanne was in the room with her.

I'm still here, Ysanne wanted to cry. You still have a child – you have me.

But she said nothing.

Pierre didn't return, and after a while, Ysanne couldn't bear to stay in that silent, still bedroom anymore.

She dressed quickly and left the house, going out into the city.

Carcassonne sat in the valley of the Aude river, an ancient walled city with slate roofs that caught the summer sun. Mountains and vineyards surrounded it, and Ysanne breathed in the familiar smell of pine and herbs and flowers, still trying to fight back the tears.

It wasn't her fault, but she felt like it was.

All her father's friends had sons; they must pity Pierre with his one useless daughter.

Ysanne buried her fists in the folds of her skirt so no one could see them shaking.

None of this was fair.

She hadn't asked to be born a girl, and why couldn't girls carry on the family name anyway? After all, they were the ones who actually grew, carried, and birthed those much sought after sons. Pierre was desperate for the strength of a son, but blind to the strength of his daughter.

No one ever comforted Ysanne about the loss of another sibling.

No one ever made her feel good enough just as she was.

She strode down the side of the Canal du Midi, and the grief inside her sharpened into anger.

She could learn to ride a horse and swing a sword, if only her father would teach her. She longed to learn to read. She wanted people to listen to her when she spoke, rather than dismissing her because of her sex.

Awareness prickled on the back of her neck, and she glanced behind her.

Richart Glasson stood a short distance away, watching her under his eyelashes. When their gazes met, he quickly looked away, and despite everything, Ysanne smiled. Richart was older than her, recently having turned eighteen, but whenever they had spoken he hadn't treated her as a child or as inferior in any other way. At fifteen, Ysanne was well aware of the duties she would be expected to carry out as someone's wife one day, and none of them involved intelligent conversation.

But Richart actually seemed to like talking to her.

He never made her feel as though being female was something she should be ashamed of.

The image of Joachim's small body, and the hatred in Pierre's eyes flashed back into Ysanne's head, and she turned away. She couldn't even face Richart right now.

She walked to the very edge of the city, to the fortified, ancient walls, and gazed out over the valley. Wind fluttered her hair, and she took another deep inhale of that pine-and-flowers smell.

"I'm sorry I didn't get to know you better, Joachim," she whispered. A small yellow wildflower had poked its head between cracks in the stone underfoot; Ysanne bent and plucked it.

"You'll always be my baby brother," she whispered, pulling off each petal and holding them in the palm of her hand, before blowing them over the edge of the wall and watching as they danced away in the wind that breathed over the valley.

"Goodnight, little brother. Sleep easy now."

On Friday, we're going to start Ysanne's journey towards becoming a vampire. See you then :)