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CHAPTER ONE

T he cold bit into me like a thousand gnawing ants claiming pieces of my soul, one tiny nip at a time, carrying it away to feast upon in the darkness and leaving me emptier with every torturous step.

Hours had passed since the women who had been my only family in this world had been brutally cut from me, their lives a broken bargaining piece that they’d bartered for my own.

A poor deal if ever I’d seen one.

I wasn’t worth one of them, let alone both.

And yet the purity of their love for me had bought the continuation of my wretched life.

With every ragged breath that passed between my lips and every wretched thump of my withered heart I yearned to toss it away, to take my blade and follow them into death.

But I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. What kind of gratitude would that be?

To repay their sacrifice with a selfish and all too easy release from this wicked existence?

With every step I took across the snow-covered landscape, my boots slipping on frozen stone, my wounds blazing in agony, I hissed their names into the night. For them, I would keep walking. For them, I wouldn’t submit.

Dalia.

Moraine.

Dalia.

Moraine.

Their blood still painted me like a horrific artwork. A piece which reflected all the pain of my soul out into the wilds of this war-torn world.

There was no justice in their deaths, no reasoning that I could give to such a cruel and sudden departure from life.

They had been warriors worthy of their names spreading far and wide in legend and warning, not simply etched into the heart of a loveless creature like me, the world forgetting them too soon, every person in The Waning Lands leaving them behind just as all other fallen warriors were sacrificed to history.

A number on a page of a book all too long and all too heavy.

This pain was carving me apart, this loss impossible to bear and still I pushed forwards, their names offering me some semblance of strength, refusing to let me give in.

Dalia.

Moraine.

Dalia.

Moraine.

Snow fell from the sky at a steady beat, fat flakes tumbling to the ground in a storm so thick that I could barely make out the lights of Wrathbane ahead of me through the blizzard.

Ice had formed in the blood that covered me, my pale pink hair frozen and whitened where the frigid wind tore through it.

I had no magic to protect me from it, not even a drop that might propel me into the sky and hurl me to my destination faster.

I couldn’t feel my feet, or my fingers, and every breath of the frozen air sliced its way into my lungs as if nature wanted to echo the agony of my soul and tattoo it into my flesh.

I barely had the energy left to shiver and I knew in my soul that hypothermia had to be setting in.

The frostbite may have already claimed my toes.

But I had sworn an oath to Stormfell. On all I was and all I might once have dreamed of being, I had sworn to protect it and its people.

I had sworn to serve my kingdom and my prince and I’d done so with my sisters at my side.

Cayde might have made a traitor of my flesh, but he would never be able to make a traitor of my heart.

I lived and breathed for Stormfell. I would make it to the castle of Wrathbane and warn them of what he knew, of his plot, his false identity.

Even if those words were the last to fall from my frozen lips, I would speak them.

But I didn’t intend to let death have me yet.

I planned on nothing more or less than delivering that lying, manipulative bastard to it first. Because he had manipulated me.

Every word from his lips had dripped a truth which I had been too fucking foolish to see.

But now in the light of his betrayal they were all replaying through my mind, the taint of my own arrogance and foolishness torn from them so that I could see them for the plain truths they were.

He had told me I was perfect. And I had been – the perfect tool for him to wield in his bid to get closer to the prince.

For the love of the stars, I had found him alone in my room, he had asked me openly if he might read a letter Dragor had sent me and had then so conveniently knocked the entire contents of my desk flying to the floor.

It had been done in a move disguised as lust but had so simply hidden any signs of his interference with my belongings too.

Each moment with him could be cast in a far more sinister light, each word that had fallen from his poisonous tongue a clue to the reality I had been so hopelessly oblivious to.

Tears froze against my cheeks, the pain of them branding my flesh with the weight of my own stupidity. What it had cost me bore down on me immeasurably.

Dalia.

Moraine.

Dalia.

Moraine.

On and on I forced my broken body, the light of Wrathbane dancing and flickering endlessly out of reach. The moment my boot landed on the hard cobbles of the road outside the wall which ringed the city, I froze and stared down at it.

Wind wielders kept the roads of our kingdom clear of snow in the winter by imbuing rune-marked stones with air magic which blew the flakes aside whenever they attempted to settle.

The dark river of stone which welcomed me now had never been something I’d offered much attention to but here, in this moment, it felt like the first real thing I had seen in years.

“You there!” a male voice barked, though all I seemed capable of doing was staring down at my boot in disbelief. “The roads are closed at this time of night. What business have you approaching the city walls at this hour?”

Still, I said nothing.

Another guard barked some kind of threat then heavy bootsteps pounded towards me.

The guard’s shadow fell over me, his desire to know who I was and what business I had here coiling from him, kindling the stunted fragments of my magic as I latched onto them without consciously meaning to.

As he reached for me, I snapped my head up, my grey gaze piercing his dark eyes and he sucked in a sharp breath.

“By the light of the moon,” he murmured. “Never have my eyes beheld a beauty such as-”

“Deliver me to Prince Dragor,” I snarled, my voice as brittle as a dead branch clinging to a fallen tree. “Now.”

His mouth opened and closed, his pupils dilating while he stared at me and he dropped to his knees before me.

“Let me give you my cloak, my shirt, my boots,” he urged, fumbling with the fastenings of his thick furs. “Let me be of assistance to you, my mistress, my goddess, my starstruck sky-”

I grunted in annoyance, taking hold of his desperate desire to help me and tugging on it hard, stealing his magic for my own.

He cried out, ripping his clothes from his body and hurling them at me in desperation as his desire swelled beyond control and he stripped himself bare in the middle of the storm-swept road.

I ignored both him and the first guard who was babbling now as well as begging me to fuck him and offering me every gold coin in his family vault for the pleasure.

His lust fed my power too and I shoved past both of them, hammering my fist against the barred gates beyond them.

A female guard wrenched them wide, her magic ripping the air from my lungs as she did so. I bared my teeth menacingly and stalked straight for her, ignoring the vice which her power had banded around my chest.

“Are you…the Sky Witch?” she breathed as I stepped beneath the light of the torch bracketed against the wall, the pink in my hair showing up more clearly in the warm glow.

Her magic fell away, releasing me and she cringed back, not even bothering to draw her sword while she waved off a cluster of guards who were closing in on the gate too, no doubt roused to action by the arrival of a stranger in the night.

“Did Cayde Avior pass this way before me?” I barked.

“No other has entered the city since the gates closed six hours ago,” the guard assured me. “We have strict rules to never allow any-”

“Good,” I replied, some small relief finding me with the knowledge that he hadn’t beaten me here, but it was little comfort in the light of all else.

“If he or any other Fae approach tonight you will not allow them entrance,” I snarled.

“On pain of death, you keep that gate barred to all until further notice. And send word to every other gate on the wall too.”

“Yes ma’am,” she agreed, and I was glad she didn’t question my authority to make any such command because, in all truth, I had none.

My reputation was great enough that most Fae forgot I was nothing but a heavily-bloodied Sinfair and my word only carried the weight Prince Dragor granted it. I held no true title.

I wasted no more time with them, hurling myself into the air without another word. A shield of air magic blocked entry to the city above the wall which ringed it but now that I was inside, I could use the power I had stolen from the guards to launch me to my destination.

The world blurred as I hurtled through the dark sky, snow buffeting my cheeks, my gaze fixed on the brightness of the castle of Wrathbane at the heart of the city.

I spotted the squat tower that held the prince’s private quarters and dropped from the sky as the last of my magic sputtered out.

I slammed onto the narrow balcony outside a span of wide windows, a cry of pain breaking from my lips as I hit the frozen stone harder than intended, my body carving a hole into the snow piled atop it.

I rolled onto my back, gasping through the pain which lanced up my spine, my fingers closing on snow as I found myself staring up into the storm.

The flakes of snow appeared like a thousand stars all spinning in the sky above me, laughing at my demise.

For the thousandth time in my cursed life, I wondered what I’d done to earn such disdain from the celestial beings who toyed so flippantly with my soul.

Doors flew open with a bang, magic coiling around me in a fist which threatened to crush my bones with its might. I was propelled into the darkened room, an indignant cry escaping a female throat as I was pinned to the rug before the low burning flames in the fireplace.

“Vesper?” Dragor hissed, his normally infallible composure slipping as he let his surprise show in his tone.

His magic released me and I pushed myself to my knees, dimly taking in the breadth of his bedchamber, the naked woman who scowled at me from the towering four-poster bed.

Everything was chillingly white, from the stone walls to the furniture, to the rug I was now staining with the blood of my most beloved friends.

I blinked as Dragor came into focus before me, his pants hanging low on his hips, the laces undone, his chest and feet bare.

His white hair was mussed from sleep or perhaps from fucking the woman who was now yelling a demand for me to be punished for my impertinence, for daring to arrive here in this manner, for-

I didn’t find out what else she desired me to be punished for as Dragor lifted a single, commanding finger in her direction and his prissy little wife fell silent.

“Moraine and Dalia are dead,” I choked out as he cut me a look, his desire to know why I was here slamming into me with enough force that I didn’t waste time waiting for him to ask.

“Cayde…he was never even Cayde at all, he was here to assassinate you and I thought he might have come here ahead of me. He betrayed us. He’s from Avanis. ”

Dragor strode for me, his fist grasping my throat as he heaved me to my feet and loomed over me, his nose practically touching mine as he stared into my grey eyes with his ice blues.

“Out,” he snarled and it took me a moment to realise he was commanding his wife from the room.

Perhaps she was smarter than I would have liked to believe because she stood and strode through the exit to his chambers without a word, naked as the dawn and only sparing one, hateful glance my way before the door snapped shut behind her and we were left alone.

“Speak,” Dragor hissed, relaxing his grip on my throat so I could do so, but staying well within my personal space as I fought to get the words to obey.

“The worst of it first then every detail after. I’ll have it from your tongue then I’ll have it from your mind via Cyclops too so spare me none of it. ”

My death echoed in that demand, the fullness of the truth spelling out my treason for him to see, but I wouldn’t balk from it.

I had placed all of Stormfell at risk by taking Cayde into my confidence, my body, my trust. I wouldn’t attempt to spare myself a moment of the punishment I was owed in penance.

“At Never Keep,” I breathed, rooting myself in this moment and forcing the words to spill freely.

“I discovered a room filled with archways. Archways which create paths between space itself, making traversing the continent as simple as stepping from one room to the next. I travelled from there to here and Cayde followed me. He knows and he killed-”

“He lives with this knowledge?” Dragor demanded, his cold eyes giving away nothing, making it unclear whether he had known of this or not. “You left him breathing.”

“I placed a curse on him,” I spat, hating that I hadn’t done more. “But yes…he escaped me.”

“What else?”

“Vampires attacked us,” I touched the jagged bite wound on my throat and Dragor’s eyes moved to look at it but before he could comment on it, I went on. “And there was a Dragon,” I whispered, still hardly believing it myself. “It escaped too.”

“How did this come to pass?” Dragor barked.

“I…” My gaze bounced between his pale eyes, searching his handsome features for some pity or even fury, anything to let me know what was happening within his dark mind. “He seduced me,” I admitted. “It’s my fault.”

Dragor’s pupils dilated at my words, his spine straightening as he looked me over slowly, his lip curling just enough to betray his rage at my admission.

“I see,” he growled in a low, dangerous tone which told me plainly that he was weighing my fate in his grasp, but I had no way of knowing what he might choose to do with it.

I had offered my allegiance to Stormfell and to him above even that so I parted my lips and in my bloodstained, frozen, grief-ridden state, I gave him the truth. Every, rotten, piece of it.