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June 30, 2023

Early Draft -- The Bloodstained Shade: Januarius

An early version of a few key moments

[Note from Cass: Spoilers ahead if you haven't read Shade yet!

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[This is from the Spring 2021 draft, but this sequence hung on until the final batch of revisions. You may recognize bits and pieces that got reworked, but in this early version, we see both Vibia and Latona for the New Year. This scene accomplishes several things that needed doing, but, in the end, they were happening at the wrong time! I needed Latona to get to her realization about building a mages' collegium much earlier in the story, and then I decided to hold off Latona and Vibia finding out about Scaeva until much later -- though I didn't withhold him from the reader. That gave me a different opportunity, to show more of him and Corinna working together, and it also made his reveal to Latona and Vibia during the Lemuralia sequence a point of greater dramatic tension.

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