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“You were everything I never knew I wanted. You were chaos. You were desperation. You were the most mysterious secret I’d ever come across. Everything about you drew me in—your innocence, your vulnerability, hell, even your tragic life. You were the most captivating creature I’d ever met.”

My throat works at his words. There’s a gravity not just towhathe’s saying but that he’s saying it at all. I asked for a secret, and he gave me a revelation, something I can hold close to my heart late at night.

“Seven years apart,” he continues, “and the woman you became was a world away from the girl I met.” He tilts my head so he can look me in the eye. “That only made me want you more. You were both old and new, familiar and exotic, within reach and forbidden. And I wanted you so badly, for so long, I was sure it would kill me.

“And when I look at you even now—especiallynow—I see one simple truth.” He stops speaking.

I sit up a little. “What truth?”

In the darkness, I see him staring back down at me. “You are magic, love.”

Chapter 6

There’s blood everywhere. In my hair, on my skin, splattered around where I lie. I push my torso off the ground, glancing around.

No.

Not this place.

Not again.

I take in the rotting leaves that cover the floor, the dead vines that climb up the walls of the long room, and the chair of bones that looms large among it all.

Karnon’s throne room.

“Pretty, pretty bird.”

My blood runs cold at the voice at my back.

It can’t be. The Fauna king is dead.

“Do you like your wings?”

But that voice… A shiver ripples down my spine. Karnon’s voice is deep and rough, just like I remember it.

Leaves crunch under his feet as he comes around to my front. First I see his twisting antlers then his strange, mad eyes and wild hair. God, itishim.

“Now you’re a beast like the rest of us.”

I pinch my eyes shut. He’sdead.

“You’ll never be free,” he says…only, Karnon’s voice is no longer his own. It’s another voice I know all too well.

My eyes snap open, and I stare at my stepfather. The same man I accidently killed eight years ago. Why have these ghosts come back to haunt me?

I only have seconds to gape at him before the room darkens.

The air shifts to my left, stirring my hair. I glance over, but I cannot see anything, the darkness is so complete.

On the nape of my neck, I feel someone’s breath, so close that they must be leaning over me, but when I spin around and reach out, my hand only grasps air.

In the dark, there’s a faint echo of laughter, which raises the gooseflesh along my arm.

Responding to my fear, my siren comes out, making my skin glow softly.

“Who’s there?” I call out.

A woman’s voice rings out, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. “Secrets are meant for one soul to keep.”