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Prologue - Roan
Inside the cottage, thedoor explodes open with a spirit-jarring sound, as wood and debris fly. My friends—the witch Edith and the shifter Seff in his wolf form—are beside me, ready, we think, for whatever lies on the other side. But we are completely unprepared for the sight before us.
At first, I can’t quite comprehend it—her—as she stands before the table in the centre of the room, magic swirling around her like a golden gossamer cloud. Her arms are held aloft, something wicked gleaming in her hand. Her form flickers repeatedly, almost as if it’s a trick of the light. It looks like a photograph I’d seen as a kid, back when we still used film in cameras, and someone had used the same roll twice.
All at once, she is a glistening, ethereal being, her golden hair floating delicately about her head. But somehow, also decaying and rotten, haggard rags slipping from her misshapen form. She is both; she is neither. She iswrong.
Awestruck by her magnificent and horrific visage, we lose any advantage we had from Edith’s dramatic entrance. The thingpins us with her foul gaze, splintering our ears with her blood-curdling cry.
As the fae begins to recite magic in long-dead tongues, the spell pulses around us, choking the air from our lungs.
May the Gods ever bless Edith—she alone manages to resist, snapping to action and blasting back with her own magic.
That’s how the fight begins. Edith charging across the chamber, sword raised, Seff’s gold and grey wolf form gnashing his teeth at her side.
It’s my job to find him, Theo, the one we’ve all risked our lives for. Find him and get him out. My heart seizes when I realise he’s there, on the table, where the fae had stood with the knife. With only the singular conscious thought—get Theo to safety—I summon the power of my fae and berserker blood for protection as I run the gauntlet of the chamber to him.
To Theo.
He looks so fragile on the table. What has happened to him here?
Around me, I am vaguely aware of the blasts of magic, the explosions of glass jars and ceramic pots. Their contents fly as the ancient fae defends herself against the furious attacks of Edith and Seff. The latter’s growls echo somewhere close to me.
Theo looks so small. I am not even sure if he is breathing. There is no rise and fall of his breath. No flicker of his eyes under his lids. Just stillness.
His skin is unnaturally white where his golden lashes brush his cheeks. There is a smattering of freckles there, too. They look so harsh against his grim pallor. We’re here to save him—it’s why we risked everything to come. The fear that we are too late, that we’d risked ourselves for nothing, is overwhelming.
Theo.
The room is chaos, the air rippling with magic and power. I need to get him to safety. Everything in my very being screams atme to do so. To run. To keep him safe. Protect him. Like a caged wild animal gnashing its teeth, something vicious inside of me rattles its cage demanding I save him. Take him. Claim him.
Mine.
He is warm to the touch, which is a relief, but before I can slide my hands beneath him, there is a screeching next to me. I feel it in my bones rather than hear it. The air wraps itself around me, flinging me like a pebble instead of the hulking mass of fae I am, pulling me away from Theo. I barely register what is happening before I slam into the stone wall of the cottage with a grunt, the air knocked from my chest. My horns slam into the wall with the impact, protecting the back of my head, but the hit vibrates through them, ringing my skull like a bell.
Fuck.That fucking hurts.
Pain blooms everywhere, but I shove it down, lumbering to my feet to face the she-bitch attacking my friends. We came too far, and too much is at risk to quit now. We journeyed for days to reach this point, never knowing what we’d find at the end of our search or if Theo would still be alive.
My friend, Caelan, who is somewhere in this Godsforsaken cottage attempting to rescue his bonded mate, Tor, travelled the longest. Risked the most. He faced the evil here before and lived to tell the tale—but only barely.
On Caelan’s and Tor’s initial journey to find Theo, they were joined by Edith. Together, they had faced the unimaginable.
It was only Tor’s love and magic that had rescued them, but it had cost him his own freedom. Tor had been trapped here with Theo.
Apparently, they are brothers, Theo and Tor. Even though I’d never met either of them, I joined the journey. I’d been late, but I’d come. My fae knowing—or “fae-tuition” as Seff would call it—told me I had to come. It screamed that it was vitally importantthat I joined Caelan, Edith, and Seff in their mission to rescue Theo and Tor.
And so here I am.
This fae is like nothing I have ever seen before. The cottage itself, and the grounds on which it stands in the middle of the enchanted Whisper Woods, is already steeped in a heavy sense of foreboding. Wrongness. Her presence corrupts the balance of nature itself.
It is unnatural for any being to live forever; death is an important part of life. But for centuries, she’s skirted it, perverting the magic here.
Dazed, I watch in horror as Seff, fur matted with dirt and blood, charges down the flickering, formless fae once again. She flashes rapidly between her images, of haggard crone, golden floating fae, in the eerie glow of the green sacred fire burning in the hearth behind her.
Her arms dance magnificently, drawing up monumental power to blast at Seff as he bears down on her, jaws twisted in a snarl.
Protected by the charmed amulet hanging from his neck, another blessing from Edith, the magic is nowhere near as lethal as its intent. But Seff is still sent sliding across the debris-littered floor on his back. I can only watch in horror as he whimpers before launching himself to his paws, shaking the muck from his fur, growling in outrage, hackles raised.
