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~ D evin Grimm, Death Mage, Revenant Protector of the Realm, The Cursed One ~

The capital stank of rosewater and desperation.

Even under the warded hood of my cloak, I could feel it—magic clinging to the air like wet silk, heavy with enchantment and expectation. The capital had thrown open its gates for a royal wedding and a tournament, two events I couldn’t care less about, save that they gave me the only opportunity I had left.

I needed an audience with the Shadow Fae’s High Enchantress—Lady Myrienna, the fae-blooded sorceress who served as both seer and spellcaster to the royal line of Abrakearth, my home. She was said to be as old as the mountains, as powerful as the Veil itself, and more merciless than either. She was my last hope.

And she had denied me an audience in my own capital city, the fortified seaport less than a day’s sail from The Spire. Denied one of her own citizens. A death mage who had sacrificed his entire life in service to our people.

Denied me twice .

“She’ll see me now,” I said quietly, voice muffled beneath the hood. “Even if I have to tear down the gilded walls of this city stone by stone.”

Beside me, Prince Kassio Polaris—heir to the Dark Spire and my closest friend for longer than either of us cared to count—sighed like a long-suffering saint. His shadow magic flared briefly beneath his illusion, sending a shimmer across the glamour that masked his silver sigils and the infernal crown inked into his skin.

“Must we do this now?” he asked. “I was rather enjoying not being hunted for once.”

“You gave me your word,” I said flatly.

Kassio’s smile vanished. “I did.”

He didn’t need to say the rest. We’d already spoken the vow in blood and magic. If I slipped beyond the threshold—if the curse that rotted my soul from the inside devoured what was left of my will—he would end me.

Quickly. Cleanly. Before I became a monster.

The line between Revenant and Wraith was razor thin. I’d been walking it for years. Now I could feel the edges of my soul fraying. Every breath ached. Every spellcasting left me hollow. And the hunger… gods, the hunger in my bones had begun to whisper. I was ravenous for more. More power. More magic. More souls. Soon I wouldn’t be able to silence that hunger.

I didn’t want to die. But I refused to become one of them .

A Wraith. The horror of horrors. A soul-stealing, parasitic evil that never stopped hunting. Killing. Devouring everything in its path. More ghost than man. I needed Lady Myrienna’s shadow magic to bind the darkness within me.

She’d refused to see me, but she was in this city. Somewhere. Her powerful shadow magic, calling me like a few drops of blood in water, could summon the deadliest sharks.

Kassio and I crept through the shadows beneath the arching bridge that led to the inner keep. Once through, we used the shadows to walk up the wall to the roof of the guard house, keeping the celebratory music and laughter, the wild dancing in the courtyard below, just out of sight. Reflections of firelight danced across colored glass in the capital city’s windows. Silhouettes twirled. Banners fluttered. The river we had just crossed bubbled and pulsed through the city like life’s blood.

Life danced with joy all around us, every note of song, every tinkle of fae laughter, made my body burn with hunger. I had to find Lady Myrienna. Being in the capital, surrounded by so much magic, had made my condition worse. I doubted I would last the night.

I pressed my hand to the stone wall, feeling the ancient ley-lines thrumming beneath the city. Singing next to them, humming from every dark corner, every flickering shadow? Ancient magic. Dark magic. “She’s there. In the tower above the Queen’s Hall. I can feel her magic.”

“And how, exactly, do you intend to climb a wall covered in royal protection sigils and thorny fae wards?” Kassio asked, arching one elegant brow. “Turn into smoke and pray you don’t get caught in a wind ward?”

“If I must.” If I shifted to smoke and shadow, wild fae magic, wind magic, could tear me to pieces and scatter my remains across the city.

“You are mad,” he said with fondness. Then, quieter, “You are also running out of time.”

I knew that better than anyone.

And yet… I paused.

A whisper tickled my mind, silken and strange. Not the hunger. Not the ache. Something else. A pull.

I straightened.

“What is it?” Kassio asked, drawing his black daggers.

I didn’t answer. My gaze swept the outer courtyard below, past the golden light and chaos of celebration, past the laughing dancers and drunk fools, until?—

There.

She moved like a shadow. Hood drawn low, cloak brushing against the curve of her calves. A slip of a girl, ordinary in the way a lightning bolt might seem ordinary until it struck the earth. Her body glowed with magic; a bright arc of power surrounded her that I doubted many could see. Not wild magic like the fae. Not vampiric or shifter. Not the magic of death and shadows.

Unique. Cold, like glittering diamonds. My breath caught and my cock went rock hard.

I couldn’t see her face. Not clearly. But my magic—my soul—recognized her.

The spark hit like a thunderclap, violent and sudden. A jolt of heat, followed by the deep, aching echo of something ancient. Something lost. I wanted her, when I’d desired nothing for decades. I needed to touch her. Know her. Let her magic devour me.

She looked up.

Our eyes met.

And the world stopped.

Silver and flame. Her gaze struck me like a blade to the chest. Not just beauty—not just attraction. This was claiming. This was bonding. The threads of fate lashed tight around my soul and refused to let go.

A Death Mage does not feel warmth. We are not granted light. We exist in shadow, in silence, in the still places between one breath and the next.

But in that moment, I felt everything.

I felt alive.

The hunger that gnawed at my soul surged, not with pain, but with longing. Mine , the curse whispered. She is mine.

And she was running away.

I moved before I could think. Stepped forward to follow her?—

Kassio grabbed my arm.

“What is it?” he hissed. “What do you see?”

“Her.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.” I tore my gaze from the shadows where she vanished, heart pounding hard enough to crack bone. “But she is the key.”

Kassio looked between me and the crowd, something tightening in his expression. “Devin?—”

“I felt it. Saw her magic. You did not?”

“No. I felt you. Your magic just spiked. So did your pulse.”

“She’s mine.” The farther she moved from me, the more I struggled to speak. To be rational. To explain. How could I tell my friend what the was happening when I did not understand myself?

Kassio’s jaw clenched. “We came here for the fae sorceress. We came here to save your soul, not chase some stranger because she made your cock hard?—”

“No,” I snapped. “I can’t explain. I must find her.”

I didn’t wait for permission from my prince. I strode down the ramparts and into the flood of celebration. The moment I crossed the boundary into the light, the people around me shrank back instinctively—no one saw me for what I was, not truly, but they felt it. The presence of Death clinging to my aura like frost.

She had disappeared.

But I could still feel her.

The bond had awakened. Her magic called to mine like a song, and I would follow it. Through fire. Through war. Through The Veil itself.

“She’s the answer,” I muttered.

“To what?” To my surprise, Kassio walked beside me. I’d been so preoccupied, I had failed to notice when he followed me. Dangerous, this level of distraction. Especially with the number of vampires in the city. They either worshipped or hated my kind, and some weren’t shy about killing one of us if the chance presented itself.

“To all of it. The curse. The hunger. The breaking of the Revenant bond.”

Kassio caught up beside me, moving like liquid shadow. “You think a girl?—”

“She’s not just a girl. Her magic is cold. It glitters like diamonds.”

Kassio went still. “That’s impossible.” We both knew what I implied. The Starborn clans were dead and gone, hunted to extinction more than fifty years ago.

We paused near a fountain, hidden in a spray of light and sound. I turned slowly, closing my eyes, letting the bond between us pull tight again.

“I’m going after her,” I said.

“And the High Sorceress? We traveled all this way.”

I opened my eyes. “Lady Myrienna is irrelevant now. I either find the girl, or you keep your promise to me.”

Kassio didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. He knew me. He knew what it meant when my voice went quiet, when my resolve turned to stone.

I would have her.

I would find her, bind her, drag her back to The Tower if I had to. Because if I didn’t, Kassio would have to kill me. Within a few days, I would fall. I would become the very thing I had sworn to destroy.

“I’ll watch your back,” Kassio said finally. “But if you’re wrong…”

“I’m not.”

He offered a rare smile. “Then may The Void have mercy, because you won’t.”