PROLOGUE
CALDRIS
My soul had split. Half of it consumed by the panic coursing through my veins—the fear that I knew logically did not belong to me, but was hers. The other half of my very being, whom I had felt as the phantom whisper of a caress along my skin through torturous centuries of waiting.
Terror like she’d never known possessed her, driving her forward with every step. I couldn’t see past the blinding fear that overwhelmed the bond, couldn’t use it to track her down and offer her the sanctuary she needed. I spun in place, trying to anchor myself in her reality to get my bearings. All I could glean from her were flashes of trees and her scent lingering in the air surrounding me.
With the ghostly imagery of woods at the sides of my vision, I paused for a moment to search for any sign of her passage. To prepare for what might wait for me when I found my way to the mate who needed my protection.
The village of Mistfell hadn’t changed for the better in our centuries apart. There had been no development beyond the improvement of both the looming structure of the Manor and the barracks that housed the Mist Guard. If anything, the village itself had fallen into disrepair in the centuries since I’d last crossed over the boundary, as if the income disparity between the wealthy allies of the crown and the destitute had grown ever worse in our absence.
I wished I could say it was a distinctly human custom to allow some to suffer in misery while others possessed riches beyond their needs, but that was a problem that united our races in misfortune. On another day, in another time, I might have felt sympathy for the people of Mistfell, but this village was where my mate had nearly died. A downtrodden hellhole with nothing to offer to the mate of a God—to the mate of a prince of Gods.
The mist bled out from the boundary, clinging to earth from which the humans had been formed and masking the filth they lived in. I walked across the stones lining the main street through town, moving away from the gardens where I felt the presence of my mate the strongest.
As a man stepped out of the shadows between buildings, a tang of iron hanging in the air as he thrust his sword toward my heart, all I could think was, this was such a waste of time.
I’d had centuries of time wasted by the Gods-damned Veil keeping us apart. My patience had worn thin.
I pinned the man to the side of one of the ramshackle buildings along the main street, my fingers wrapped around his throat. His sword clattered against the stone pathway as the noise echoed through the silence.
Most of the humans had retreated inside, abandoning the revelry that had clearly been meant to be a great feast. Long tables had been set up in the square by the fountain, awaiting the platters of food that would accompany their celebration. Samhain had come and gone, but the humans had likely long since abandoned the traditions they’d held so dear when we’d controlled the Kingdom of Nothrek.
Most of the Mist Guard had retreated to their iron-warded fortress, taking the new Lord of the village along with them. Leaving their people to die, abandoning them to the wrath of those Fae who’d been close enough to escape into Nothrek before Mab could gain control of the boundary.
We were angry. We were ravenous. We wanted what had been kept from us for centuries, and we would cut down any who stood in our way.
“Where is she?” I growled, leaning into my sword against his side. The man stuttered, reaching up to grasp at my wrists as if he could ever hope to remove them.
“Who?” His voice wheezed out of his throat, stretching between us as the battle raged on behind me. Humans fought, too stupid to understand it would take a single moment for me to slaughter them all if I so wished.
“The woman,” I snarled, hating that I couldn’t give a description, but could only speak of my mate in feelings. I could only speak of what existed within her, her very soul, and not the vessel that housed her. This man had likely seen my mate in passing every day. He knew the color of her eyes and the shape of her smile, where I had yet to lay eyes upon such blessings. “She was about to die when the Veil fell, but I know she still breathes. I can feel her light. Where?”
Fresh panic raced through the bond now, vibrating down the connection in a tangled mess. It overrode my focus, making it harder for me to pinpoint where she’d gone and how far she’d run in the time it had taken me to sail across the Mist.
At least she still drew breath.
“The Barlowe girl?” he asked, glancing toward where the Veil had once swayed in the breeze. The earth beneath it was scorched, the grass at the edges of the gardens blackened and stained with the magic I’d used to break through—to reach her in my desperation to spare her from death. “They were sacrificing her to the Veil when she fucking touched it and it all came down.”
Barlowe.
I’d felt her on the other side, so close yet so far away. There might have been a deep channel of water between our realms, two halves of the Veil swaying on either side of it, but the magic of the boundary had made it feel as if she existed just beyond. As if I could reach through the curtain and grasp her hand in mine.
“Where has she gone?” I asked, feeling her in the distance. She was too far already, and I wondered for a brief moment if someone had taken her. If they’d loaded her onto a horse and tried to get as much distance from me as possible. I’d left Azra with Holt and the others of the Wild Hunt in my hurry to sail across, braving the channel in a rowboat so I wouldn’t need to wait for the ship to be readied to set sail.
Fires burned at the end of the main street through town, wooden structures aflame in the midst of the fighting. I hadn’t wanted this, hadn’t wanted the war to renew.
“Enough!” I shouted, calling out to the Fae. As fiercely as the animosity between our peoples had burned in the decades of war that preceded the Veil, these humans hadn’t been alive long enough to remember such things. All we would achieve through this violence was renewing a war that had been cut short centuries before.
“Yes, Caldris,” one of the Fae murmured, dropping his torch to the ground. He stomped the flame out as I turned my attention back to the human I held pinned to the building.
“Caldris?” he wheezed, his eyes rounding in shock as he took in the crown gleaming upon my head, blending in with my silver hair before his gaze traveled down to my face and the swords strapped across my back.
“The woman is my mate,” I said, tipping my head to the side as I gave him the truth not many would be privileged enough to know. My secret would die with him soon enough. “I think you can guess exactly how far I would go to find her.”
The man swallowed as I pinned him with an icy glare, his bottom lip trembling as he realized just who held him trapped. Who held his life in his very hand. I slid my fingers across his skin, the sharp tip of a black nail cutting into the side of his neck in warning.
“She went into the woods,” he finally gasped. “I don’t know where she’s gone from there.”
“Was she followed?” I asked, squeezing his throat for good measure. His sword lay at his feet, discarded when I’d spun and pinned him after he dared to try to fight against the inevitable. There was a reason his ancestors had worshiped me as their God.
He was nothing more than a worm waiting to return to the dirt when compared to the lifespan and strength of the Fae.