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Prologue
UNA
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I shuddered as a stinging wave of pain sharpened beneath my shoulder blades where my wings had been cut from my body. Curled into a ball on my side, I pressed my cheek to the dank stone floor and shivered. I bit my lip to keep quiet. I didn’t want to bring them back.
A trickle of blood trailed from the open wounds in my back, down the sides of my ribcage to the dungeon floor. They’d torn open the back of my gown, the tattered remnants covering only parts of my body.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t care. Only the pain mattered at the moment—and trying to survive.
I huffed out a shaky breath. The only light came from the flickering of a single torch near the arched entrance to this cell block. Whenever the shadows disappeared and the cell grew brighter, that meant one of them was coming for me. That’s why I dreaded the rhythmic bootsteps of one of my jailers and clung to the shadowy dark.
My body shook with another ripple of pain, a numbing sensation beginning to overtake me. Min said that happened when one was close to death. The spirit left the body a little at a time.
I’d been put in this cage and dragged out so many times by those foul creatures. Tongueless and earless, horned and clawed, they followed someone’s orders to poke and prod me with demon-forged weapons, their dark magick piercing through my skin, tearing at my core.
I’d never see home again. I was going to die here. Soon.
A sob ripped from my throat. I sniffed and stifled it, tears slipping down my face.
“Shh, shhh,basta met. Shhh.”
It was the hag in the cell next to mine. She’d kept to the shadows since I’d been in this infernal hell. She shuffled closer across the stone floor now, while my own agony kept me still. She reached her hand through the bars and brushed my filthy hair away from my face.
“Sorka, lillet.” She spoke in demon tongue, brushing my hair and whispering softly. “Ora est miyett, lillet.”
“I don’t understand.” My voice cracked, my throat raw from screaming.
Finally, I turned my head so that I could see the occupant of the cell next door for the first time. She was nothing but skin and bones. Her dark hair hung limply around a withered face. But her eyes shone with a hue I didn’t expect—the deepest shade of purple.
My gaze skimmed along her shoulders and found no wings. Hers might’ve been cut off like mine, though she had no horns either. Her pointed ears were small and delicate, not tall and pronounced like most dark fae.
But why would she be speaking in demon tongue?
She held a clay cup through the bars. When I reached a hand up to take the cup, a sharp pain twinged from the wounds in my back.
“Ah!” I cried out and shrank into myself.
“Shhh.” She lifted my head and urged me to drink. I did. The filthy water was gritty with soil and smelled foul, but it was heavenly to my parched throat. I slurped it down, gagging only once before swallowing the rest.
She nudged me to lay down and continued to pet my hair, pushing the tangled mess away from my face.
Her small act of kindness and gentle words sparked a wave of grief mixed with gratitude. “Thank you,” I croaked softly, wishing I could use my magick to bless her with a healing balm.
Once again, I closed my eyes and willed my goddess-given magick to come to me, to give me the healing power I so desperately needed.
But not a spark. No distant hum of buzzing energy in my blood. Nothing. It was gone.
I lay still, mourning the loss of my most precious gifts—my fae power to heal and my beautiful wings.
That seemed the purpose of those foul creatures—ripping magick from every light fae they found as punishment for merely existing. Hatred and a sick kind of satisfaction had reeked from their hollow eyes as they’d tortured me.
The hag’s sibilant whisper shimmered like an ethereal ghost in the dark with words that trembled along a hum of power. Magick?
I thought she was a hag, a creature bereft of any meaningful power. But what I felt vibrating between the bars separating us was significant. More than a spark, it was potent and strong.
Then I heard something shatter.
