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“Not yet, your majesty,” Esme Hawthorn says, regaining some of her composure. “That usually doesn’t happen until the demon representative comes through the veil.”

I’m agitated, restless, searching. The Goddess hasn’t shown her to me yet, but still I know she’s here.

Where is she?

“Well,” I say, unable to keep the edge of irritation from my voice. “I’m here.”

Esme raises a hand and motions toward the crowd. A handful of women step forward. They all vary in appearance, but one thing about them is consistent.

Magick—pure, powerful magick—rolls off them all in waves.

I study each in turn, waiting for one to show signs she’s my bride. My soul, however, remains mute to them all, still aching and reaching desperately for the one I can’t find.

“None of them are her,” I say to Esme. “Why are they called forward?”

Her brow furrows, and she waves them away. “They are some of the strongest witches in our coven,” she says as the women melt back into the crowd. “It must be another. We shouldn’t have too long to wait.”

Scarcely have Esme’s words left her when the wind shifts, washing me anew in my mate’s scent.

It’s then that I see her.

How could I have missed her before? Wreathed in pale white starlight and the flickering glow of the torches, she stands apart from most of the rest, beneath the canopy of a great, gnarled oak.

My mate. My bride. The one the Goddess has sent me.

Her body is a tapestry of lush, rounded curves and enticing hollows. Full and tempting, looking at her is almost more than I can bear. Worried that I’ll get too lost in fantasies of what I’d like to do to that decadent body, I concentrate instead on her face, and immediately find myself even more adrift. Dark mahogany hair, bright green eyes, freckled pale skin that grows flushed under my perusal, and a heart-shaped face scrunched up with some all-too-human emotion I can’t name.

She’s beautiful. Perfect. Andmine.

“Allie.”

Esme Hawthorn sounds aghast, but I don’t pause for even a moment to consider why. There’s nothing, nothing but her, nothing butAllieand my soul-deep need to go to her.

The crowd parts in front of me, and I make my way to my bride.

As I approach, the telltale glow seeps from her irises outward, spreading from her eyes, across her face and further still, until her entire body is glowing faintly. She’s a beacon, drawing me nearer with each passing moment.

“Hello, my queen,” I say to her when we’re mere feet apart, and watch as a full-body shudder moves through her.

Fear? Is that what she’s feeling? Her scent grows different somehow, the crisp familiarity of it turning sharper and almost sweet with emotion.

It’s not unpleasant to me, her fear, but it’s also not something I want her to be feeling, not right now at least. The sweetness of her fear is the first thing to check me, the first inkling that all may not be right with my bride.

Esme is quick to join us, stepping between Allie and me with her face clouded in concern.

“Your majesty, this is my daughter. Allison Hawthorn. Allie, as we call her.”

Ah. She must be a powerful witch in her own right if she’s the daughter of this coven’s High Priestess.

Why was she not called forward with the others?

All around, the scent of witchmagick hangs heavy. I can pick out hundreds of threads of it in varying scents of copper, sulfur, and iron. If I concentrate, I can follow each one back to the witch it comes from, and I quickly try to sort through them all to find the one I’m looking for.

Only my bride, my Allie, doesn’t seem to exude any power at all.

An icy dread starts to unfurl in the bottom of my stomach.

Chapter 3