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Prologue
Nero pushed a red pin into the map of Elphyne on his desk and then wiped the sweat from his brow. Up here on the top floor of the Sky Tower, the conservatory and humidifiers made the temperature sometimes suffocating. But he needed privacy, and this room was best.
This map was everything. Each red pin symbolized a site where the mad Unseelie Queen had attacked the Seelie, resulting in a loss of life. He had placed orange pins upon intel from his Reapers regarding potential future attacks. Blue pins showed where his soldiers kidnapped Guardians and stole their unique mana. A single green pin sat unused in a bowl on the side of the map. It would signify a successful large-scale mana-harvesting expedition… the Holy Grail.
Ten years was a long time in human years, but according to the tainted fae, it was a blink in time. He’d expected the mad queen to escalate her war against the Seelie because their power source was more unreliable than usual. He’d calculated wrong. He was playing chess with pigeons again.
Unforgivable.
But not unsalvageable.
Ten years ago, there was naught but a handful of red pins on that map. Now, they littered the landscape. Even if Nero had only harvested mana in small chunks, once the Tainted were fewer, he would swoop in and take control. He would finally rule the entire land—under one mind, one set of rules.
“Sir?” Alfred’s young voice jolted through Nero.
He had forgotten the new captain was here and inspected the young man’s uniform and short ginger hair. Gold epaulets showed his new high rank, which the fool was immensely proud of. That, and the gold buckle on his belt he planned to gift to his betrothed, soon cementing their arranged marriage. The tall, gangly youth had filled out after a few years of service as a Tower Guard. He came to attention through his friendship with Nero’s halfling ward, Willow. Alfred was impressionable, amenable, and smitten with the silver-haired wolf-child.
Nero had asked him to monitor the girl as she grew. During the previous captain’s unsuccessful coup, they’d almost lost her. Since Nero’s plan to control Elphyne relied on the young female’s ability to raise an army of the dead, it couldn’t happen again.
She was special, that halfling—more than his useless daughter, Aurora. A wave of anger swelled with memories of her insubordination over the decades, but he squashed it with a frown. His daughter had taken too much of his time already. He would not waste another moment on her.
The best quality in subordinates was not experience but obedience; this young man had it in spades. Molding his mind with stolen mana was not even necessary.
“Yes?” Nero raised his brows.
Alfred held out a folded piece of paper. “Sir, I have just returned from overseeing a training session between Rory—ahem—Aurora and Miss Willow in the garden.”
“Report.” Nero returned to his map, studying the red pins to try to see if he could ascertain a pattern. In his peripheral, Alfred awkwardly dropped his arm.
“Willow’s ability to wake the dead is faltering. I think she’s succumbing to the same problem the fae are with their magic source.”
“Faltering how?”
“Eight out of ten attempts were successful. The other two times were…”
At the silence, Nero faced Alfred. “And?”
The young man frowned. “The bodies vanished.”
Nero had seen worse. However, an eighty percent efficacy rate was becoming further from reasonable. The past decade, they’d been fortunate for this halfling to evade the same warped effects the fae suffered. He wished he understood why because, in his opinion, there was no such thing as luck.
“Did the missing undead turn up anywhere else?” he asked.
Alfred hesitantly walked to the map, picked up a red pin, and pierced it into the heart of Elphyne—a neutral city called Cornucopia.
“How many bodies?” Nero frowned.
“Fifty.”
Fuck.
“Do the fae suspect us?”
“Not that we’ve heard. The Unseelie assume it’s the Seelie, and vice versa.”
Nero had patiently remained in Crystal City for a decade while his halfling protégé matured and trained. Scowling, Nero reached over the large map and gripped the pin Alfred had placed, but he paused at the sight of his hand. Wrinkles and age spots had coalesced on his skin. His ingestion of mana had been reduced due to the poor quality of source material from outside the walls. He was left with only two options inside these walls—his near-empty daughter and Willow.
He pulled the pin out and dropped it back in the red bowl.
