The Darkangel Trilogy is a series of novels by American author Meredith Ann Pierce published between 1982 and 1990.

It is set in the distant future, when the Moon has long since been terraformed into a lush paradise complete with its own animals, plants, and races.

In 1984, the novel won the Jane Tinkham Broughton Fellowship in Writing for Children from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, 1984.

She is to continue her existence as a slave, but now she has thirteen mistresses, the vampyre's brides, who have all been reduced to wraiths by the stealing of their blood, hearts, and souls.

Wandering in the garden of Irrylath, the vampyre's keep, Aeriel comes upon a duarough, a tiny man who turns to stone in sunlight, but becomes flesh in shadow.

He is a mage, and he gives her a rhyme and sends her on a quest, for if the darkangel (the vampyre) can be destroyed before he takes his fourteenth and last wife, then the power of the White Witch (his 'mother') will be checked for a time.

And so, Aeriel flees the castle and begins a quest that takes her wandering far into the desert to find the hoof of a starhorse, the traditional guardian of the realm that the vampyre has usurped.

He leaves, only to return empty-handed because none of the brides are more beautiful than Aeriel has become, having been physically changed by her journeys in the desert.

She gives up her life to save him, cutting out her heart to replace his, which the White Witch covered in lead.

The duarough, Talb, who witnesses this, takes the former vampyre's (now reverted to his human name of Irrylath) heart, removes the lead, and places it into Aeriel, saving her life and making them one.

Her new quest is to find the lons, the traditional guardians of the world's kingdoms created by the Old One, Ravenna, in ancient times.

For a time, Aeriel gets drugged and held prisoner in a castle when a nameless lord asks for her hand in marriage, due to her resemblance to his past lover, and she refuses him.

Aeriel eventually reaches Terrain, the land where she was raised as a slave, to seek the advice of the sibyl of Orm.

A pin in her skull, placed there by an agent of the Witch, forces her to avoid thinking, which causes extreme pain.

Ravenna heals Aeriel, who remembers how she was overpowered by the Witch's bird, who put the pin in her head.

She had left camp alone after witnessing a scene between Irrylath and another woman, who was trying to convince him that Aeriel was like the Witch (a sorceress seeking to control him) and that he should love her instead.

She has built a chariot to take her to Oceanus; she needs to feed on souls to gain the strength to go and plans to capture Aeriel's friends after the battle.