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I was weary and hard-pressed and close to losing hope.

And then I remembered the cottage. Blazing with flames.

I lit up like a bonfire in the night and burned my way out of my father’s hell.

CHAPTER 8 - MORGAN

In what was becoming too much of a habit, I woke drenched in sweat and sat bolt upright.

Next to me, Draven was groggily waking. Fumbling with blankets, he reached out a hand to touch my hip.

“Morgan, what is it? Another nightmare?”

I didn’t answer. My eyes had already flown towards the pool of moonlight by the window where a man stood silently with his hands wrapped around his throat.

Draven’s gaze followed mine.

“Ulpheas!” He sounded angry. A man had intruded on our bed chamber. And for Ulpheas, this was not the first time. “What’s the meaning of this? What the hell are you doing here?”

The stitcher’s blue eyes were wide and panicked. Catching my breath, I spotted the tear tracks on his cheeks.

I knew this wasn’t what Draven thought. “Ulpheas,” I said, trying to keep the panic from my own voice. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

The courtier’s hands had not moved from around his throat.

As my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, I saw why.

From Ulpheas’s hands clutched around his neck, blood dripped down onto the collar of the fine silk suit he wore.

“Oh, gods. Ulpheas...”

Draven was already leaping out of bed and moving across the room, pulling the shirt he had been wearing the previous day from a chair.

“Don’t,” Draven shouted to the courtier. “Don’t move...”

But it was too late.

Ulpheas fell to the floor, his protective hands falling away from the gash at his throat.

Cursing, Draven tried to catch him as he fell.

I was already scrambling out of the bed to help, but as I stepped onto the floor, my feet slid in a pool of slippery blood and I nearly lost my footing. Clutching the bedpost, I stood, looking on helplessly as Draven crouched beside the courtier.

“Tell us who did this to you,” my mate demanded. “We will avenge you, Ulpheas. Tell us.”

Only a gurgling sound came from the dying courtier’s throat.

Powerless, we watched as the honey-haired young man’s eyes turned vacant and expressionless.

Draven touched the wound at Ulpheas’s throat. “An arrow wound. The gash was severe. He couldn’t have spoken even if he’d wanted to. His vocal cords were severed.”

The shirt Draven had been holding, hoping to stem the flow of blood from Ulpheas’s wound, lay discarded beside him.

We looked at one another over the body.

Was this my father’s doing? Had the fae high king seen so far into my mind that he had gotten to one of our stitchers already?

I opened my mouth to begin to tell Draven what had happened in my dream, but a banging at the door cut me off.