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prologue

Lanterns glowed golden at the edges of the ceiling of the Seelie prince’s bedroom, dim but bright enough to illuminate the woman kneeling in front of the large bed. The prince lay there, almost completely motionless, chest rising and falling steadily but slowly. His heart was becoming weaker still.

After all, he should have been buried long ago, three weeks after he first fell ill, but he hadn’t. Five seasons had turned, and he still breathed.

The queen sat on his bed, touched his face, felt the pain only a mother could feel, she told herself. And secretly she felt proud for it, proud that she felt, that she had the capacity to hurt. It had surprised her in the beginning, and she still expected it to fade away, but it hadn’t.

Possibly because her son was still alive even if the fact made no sense—and that gave her hope.

The woman on her knees in front of the bed continued to whisper under her breath, and one of her companions who was with her tonight stayed close, drinking his wine, watching her, while the queen’s brother sat on the other side of the room with a book in his hands. He’d been sure that the answer to his nephew’s mysterious disease was written in the pages of a book somewhere since the beginning, and he had yet to give up trying to find it.

The Seelie queen kissed her son’s cold forehead and stood to go to the table near where her brother sat to pour herself a glass. The kneeling woman still whispered—the seer who hadn’t served anybody anything since she was found and brought to the queen as a gift.

The queen was days away from ordering her beheading. A seer who could not see—what a joke, she thought, but hadn’t said so yet out loud. Something stopped her, but she wasn’t sure what.

“Your poor eyes,” she told her brother as she sipped the wine. It tasted sweet and sour, exactly like she liked. And what she liked, she always got—she was queen, after all. “Why do you insist on tormenting yourself, brother?”

He raised a brow. “Because there has to be an explanation, a record of Lyall’s disease somewhere—and I will find it.”

The queen pushed her blonde braid behind her back. “It’s not a disease, Helid—he was poisoned and you know it.”

Her brother closed the book and put it on the edge of the table. “Poisons kill, my Queen. They do not let a fae live so long in never-ending sleep.”

The queen thought about it as she looked over at the bed, at her son, once beautiful, radiant, now a hollow shell of himself. She’d seen dead men look more alive than him, yet his chest moved, and that was still all that mattered.

What when it didn’t, though?

“There are no signs of poison on him. We’ve had the best healers and alchemists and sorcerers. It’s a disease,” her brother continued, while the seer continued to wave her wrinkled hands over her golden bowl full of water that turned almost as white as milk when she began her readings.

Or rather when she tried to read the future or the past, as she had almost every day since the prince fell ill.

Then her companion, a fae twice her size who had enough strength to carry her about the queen’s palace with ease, turned to her and bowed his head deeply.

“My Queen, if we may have a drop of blood,” he said. “For better sight.”

The queen hated the sight of blood in particular, and when she nodded, she turned her head away because she didn’t want to see him walk over to her sleeping son, take his middle finger and prick it with his small knife. Then he’d return and let a single drop of the prince’s blood fall into the bowl, where the milky white would consume it completely, use it to try to see better all the things connected with her son’s life.

The future king of the Seelie Court. One of the mightiest fae kings to have ever existed in the land of Verenthia— that’s what he was supposed to be. That’s what she had groomed him to be since he first learned how to walk.

And now this . Now he’d been reduced to a living corpse, and despite having all the resources necessary and alliances that still held—if only by a string—with the other three fae Courts of Verenthia, they still were unable to find a cure.

“Hope is not lost yet,” her brother said when the queen walked to the windows that made up most of the wall behind her. She didn’t want to see yet another failure of the seer, and she was getting really tired of having to give away her son’s blood over and over in vain. It was the blood of a fae king, and these people, it seemed to her, had no regard and no respect for it.

How long until she lost it? How long until they got to her, too?

Because whoever had poisoned her son was close. Too close. Smart and cunning. Brave.

And if she ever found them, the stars were going to hear their screams.

Below the windows stretched the sea that poured into the darkness at the very edge of the continent. Miles and miles of uninterrupted waters that had served her Court long before she was even born and would continue to do so for millennia to come.

But what would become of her ?

What would become of her son?

Would they really die, both of them, without ensuring that the queens and kings of the future would think of their names with awe and respect?

That had always been her mother’s dream since the day she groomed her to be the king’s wife. It had always been her purpose—to live long, but not just.

To be remembered.

“My Queen,” said the companion, and she turned, about to tell him to get out because she was tired. So tired of everything.

But what she saw stopped the words from leaving her lips.

“What is it? Speak, Neron, speak!” her brother demanded of the companion as the queen went closer, eyes on the seer who was shaking and humming and had her eyes squeezed shut. The milky white water was slowly climbing in the air over her bowl like it was being pulled by invisible strings.

Hope bloomed in her chest, but the queen squashed it right away. This had happened before. The seer had come close to finding a link, a clue, a name for the traitor, and if they found him, they would find the cure for whatever was done to her son. All they needed to know was who had done this.

“She sees, Sire,” the companion said. “She’s close—she sees something!”

Again, the queen closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, chased away the hope.

There, she waited, looking down at the seer as she shook and began to bleed from her eyes, and the water that climbed up over the bowl dropped and rose up again three times.

Her brother was pacing around nervously, and the companion of the seer held his head with his hands, something she’d never seen any of the seer’s companions do before. He looked paler, too, and his skin was covered in sweat.

“More,” the seer whispered, and maybe her ears lied to her, she thought, but then the companion turned to the queen.

“She needs more, Your Highness.”

One thought remained in the queen’s mind—the seer had never needed more before.

She moved, threw her glass of wine on the carpet, grabbed one of the sharp blades from the golden crown on her head, and she went to her son. Took his hand in hers. Cut a clean line across his palm and coated the golden blade with his blood as well as she could. It wasn’t big, merely the size of her hand, but it was full of the prince’s blood now, and he did not have more to give.

When she returned to the seer, she hesitated for a moment. She hesitated because it was her son’s precious blood, and if it didn’t work, she would be furious. If it didn’t work, she would have the seer’s head—she would be too angry to stop herself from giving the order and she knew it.

“Oreya,” her brother said—the name she’d carried her whole life, that her mother had given her. A name she heard so rarely now.

Her fingers opened and she threw the blade into the bowl.

The milky white water swallowed it whole, and the seer began to choke almost immediately.

More blood came out of her closed eyes, and some slipped out of her ears, too. Her hands shook so much they turned to a blur, and more drops of water climbed the air to create a round surface over the bowl, right before her hands.

The queen squeezed her own fingers, tried to stop her heart from beating faster, from hoping as she watched, unblinking eyes on that surface.

A name. A face. Anything, she thought.

And Reme and Emer must have heard because the white surface of the liquid gained color and within seconds it showed a face.

A face it shouldn’t have showed at all.

The queen stopped—heart and lungs and eyes. Everybody stopped for a good long moment, even the seer. She no longer bled or choked or shook—she just froze.

And then she fell back against the ground, and the water dripped back into the bowl, and the companion was on his knees to hold her head over his lap, and the wide eyes of the queen’s brother locked on hers.

“Impossible,” the queen whispered.

“But you saw it. I saw it,” Helid said, as shocked as her.

“The Ice Queen.” Again, she whispered the words because she was afraid she’d be laughed at and looked at as a fool if she gave them more voice.

But her brother nodded. “The Ice Queen.”

The queen stepped back and looked down at the floor, but the face that had appeared on that surface of water was right there in the center of her mind—blonde hair, much lighter than hers, blue eyes, pale skin and peony-colored lips.

It was the Ice Queen, the ruler of the Frozen Court that was their neighbor.

It was the dead Ice Queen that the seer had showed them.

“It’s impossible,” the queen argued with herself—because it was. The Ice Queen had been dead for twenty summers now—dead. Killed. Gone.

“It was her—I saw it with these eyes,” her brother said. “It was her, it was?—“

“My Queen.”

Again, the voice of the companion made them both look down at the seer, eyes red but open. She looked dead, but she breathed as she lay there on the fae’s lap, looking at nothing.

“The seer has answers,” the companion said, holding the seer by the head so that it didn’t slip down.

For a fleeting moment, the queen wondered if she were being tricked. Played with. Made a fool.

But then the seer whispered, “The prince’s Lifebound is a mortal.”

That’s when the queen kneeled on the floor as queens do not do, and her brother followed.

“Repeat that,” she ordered, and the seer did.

“The prince’s Lifebound is a mortal.”

A moment of silence.

“My son is not bound to anyone. He doesn’t have a Lifebound.”

“The prince’s Lifebound is a mortal from Nerith,” the seer spoke again as if she hadn’t heard the queen’s voice at all.

“He doesn’t?—”

“Thirteen summers ago, the prince saved a life, and created a bond that tethered it to his, perhaps on purpose, perhaps by accident,” said the seer.

“No.” The queen shook her head. “No, no, no…”

“By Reme, he hasn’t died,” her brother whispered a moment later, while the seer continued to repeat the same words as she bled.

His hand closed around hers. “Sister, he hasn’t died because he’s bound.”

“My Queen,” said the companion, and he’d leaned down all the way to bring his ear to the seer’s mouth because she could no longer produce voice. “ The Lifebound will awaken him. The Lifebound will set him free ,” he repeated, his voice thick, hoarse, wavy.

That was the first time that the queen allowed that hope to fully grow inside her.

The companion produced a small vial from the pocket of his suit and filled it with the white water from the golden bowl. He offered it to the queen without putting the lid on, and Helid stepped in and took it.

“His blood will take you to her. You must only search, and you will find the Lifebound,” said the companion another three times. Those same words.

After that, the seer fell unconscious.

When they took the seer away for cleaning, the queen remained in the bedroom with her brother. Looking out at the dark sky and the sea behind her palace, she allowed herself to imagine that this nightmare might truly be over after all. Just when she was beginning to believe that her future was doomed.

“You will go to Earth and you will find her, brother. You have the vial. A simple charge of magic should suffice,” she told Helid, who stood beside her and drank his wine, more nervous by the second.

“I will,” he solemnly said.

“Take men, as many as you need, and bring her to me.”

Her brother looked at her. “Do you believe it? Do you really believe that Lyall secretly created a life-bond? And with a mortal?”

“Thirteen summers,” the queen whispered, holding the rim of her golden cup to her lips. “Thirteen summers ago was when I took him to Earth to see it. You were there, Helid.”

“I was,” her brother said. “And he was eight years old.”

“You know he’s always been more powerful than anyone.” She waved a hand—this was not something that surprised her. Her son had been not only powerful enough to create a life-bond, but well acquainted with all ancient rituals and spells of the fae since he began his tutoring at the age of five.

“We’ll know more once the seer is back to herself, but it matters little what I believe now,” the queen said and turned to Helid. Though she was inches shorter, she’d mastered the art of looking down at him since they were children. “That mortal, if she truly exists, might be our last chance.”

“She looks so much like the Ice Queen,” her brother said, as confused as her by the fact.

“Coincidence, perhaps?” the queen offered, though she knew there was no such thing. Not in Verenthia.

“If you say so, My Queen.” Helid bowed his head deeply, and she touched the top of his smooth hair.

“It must be,” she whispered, like she were arguing with her own self. “We would never survive another Icefall. You’ve heard the stories.”

“I’ve read all the books,” Helid said. “The Icefall nearly destroyed the Courts the first time. I couldn’t imagine another…”

The hair on the queen’s arm stood at attention.

Right now, she couldn’t afford to think about anything other than her son, so she pulled her thoughts in order and stepped back.

“Go, brother. Bring her to me.”

“I will,” Helid said and immediately started for the door.

But before he walked outside, the queen called his name again. “Make sure the marked bastard doesn’t find out she exists. He must be kept away from her at all costs.”

His eyes widened in surprise once more. “But the prophecy is over…is it not?”

The queen had no answer. “It is safer if he never finds out she exists, brother. Go. ”

With another bow of his head, the fae turned around and walked out the door, and an hour later, he was on his way to the other side of the continent so he could cross over to Earth.

He was Prince Lyall’s last chance.