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PROLOGUE

Memnon

I am trapped.

I have been for a very, very long time. My body and mind are bound by spells both suffocating and comforting. I cannot escape them, no matter how hard I try.

And how I have tried.

This is not as it should be. I know that. I remember that.

Someone did this to me.

Someone…but who?

The answer evades me.

My thoughts are…fragmented. Broken apart and scattered by the very wards that shroud me.

There was a life before this shadow of an existence. Sometimes I catch glimpses of it. The memory of the sun, the heavy weight of a sword in my hand, the feel of a woman—mywoman—beneath me.

Even when I cannot recall much of what I look like, I can see the slope of her shoulder and the curve of her smile and the mischief shining in her sharp blue eyes.

Her image…it cuts deeper than a wound.

Need her.

My queen. My wife.

Roxilana.

Need to leave this place. Need to find her.

Unless…

What if…what if she is truly gone?

Lost to me forever?

Terror eclipses my longing and clears some of the haze from my mind. I release what magic I can, funneling it through the few holes I’ve found in these spells.

Roxilana cannot be dead. So long as I exist, she must too. I have…taken pains to make this so.

I relax.

She will find me.

One day.

One day.

So I call to her, as I always have.

And I wait.

CHAPTER1

Selene