At First Blush (The Immortelle #2) (Note: This book can is an independent title and can be read separately from the rest of the series.) Dawn Fitzpatrick began her life as such a normal child. She spent her summers at her family's holiday home on the beach, and her winters at home with her family in the big city of Auckland. Then one day, when she was five years of age, something happened that would change her life forever. While she was playing at the edge of the ocean one, bright, sunny day, she met a mysterious young boy named Cijal. He was a year older than her, but he was shy and furtive, and with very good reason. Cijal was not human. Although they did not even speak the same language, Dawn was fascinated by the strange boy that lived in the sea. They found friendship together, and spent their summers playing in the sand, and forming the kind of bond that no amount of dissimilarities could possibly break. Then, at the age of twelve, a terrible tragedy within Dawn's family separates her forever from her childhood sweetheart. She can't get over it, she can't forget it, and she cannot move on. She never had a chance to say goodbye. Finally, her eighteenth birthday comes, and she is free of the shackles of childhood - free to choose her own path. She goes in search of him, hoping to recapture the one last happy memory of her childhood. There is just one problem: Cijal is from a completely different world. He is a Nereidis, a member of a powerful, super-human race of amphibians that live secretly beneath the ocean's waves. She has no choice but to look for him. In her heart, she desperately needs to see him again. But how can an ordinary human being hope to find an amphibian that has the entire ocean to hide in? And if she does find him, then how could they possibly construct a life together? *** About The World of the Immortelle Earth seems like such a simple place in the modern age. Science has explained away the mysteries of the universe. There are no surprises. Most people laugh off the idea of secret societies and conspiracy theories as the work of fools and madmen. The problem is that the madmen are right. The world is secretly ruled a select group of violent and ruthless immortals that call themselves the Immortelle. These men and women were mortal once, until a mysterious elixir to unlocked the greatest potential hidden within their own genetic codes. The exact nature of that power is determined by their own biological origins, but they are ancient, powerful and bow to no mortal. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but in the world of the Immortelle nothing is ever as black or white as it seems.