PART ONE
CHAPTERONE
Rooke
The Fates have blessed you with a mate. His name is Prince Soren Celestial, heir to the throne of the Southern Lands, and your union will unite a shattered kingdom. The bloodshed that has ravaged the Southern Lands shall end, the lands shall be restored, and the old ways shall be honored once more.
The Fates will guide you to him when your heart is ready.
As waves lap the sides ofthe Shepherd, I ignore all the eyes trained on me and enjoy the last moments of my journey home to the Southern Lands. It is the last peace I may know.
Returning to a kingdom ravaged by the evils of my own kind is not a path I’d ever have chosen for myself, but the Fates have made their demands of me. Surviving the war in the Northern Lands taught me the catastrophic but unavoidable lesson of what befalls a kingdom when a fate is broken, and while my heart is anything but ready, I know it’s time to return home as surely as I know the songs of the forest in my heart. No matter how far I traveled, the sorrow of the trees never left me, and I long to see them once more.
It took months to unravel myself from the life I had built, time to be discharged from the Sol Army and to train healers to take over my work for the Seelie Court, to convince my friends and family that the Fates could no longer be ignored and that I must do as they’d bidden. But as the peak of summer crept closer, I made the last of my preparations and found myself passage on a ship. By some act of the Fates, it was the same vessel that carried my brother and I north two hundred years ago—a sign if I ever saw one—and I began my journey back to the kingdom that was once my home.
The Shepherdconstantly travels the waters between the two closest high-fae kingdoms, mostly carrying cargo but with room for travelers as well. Old but well maintained, with a small crew of fiercely trained sailors, she’s provided a concern-free voyage home. I paid for and received a cabin all to myself, an easy achievement with very few fellow passengers on board.
No one wants to journey to the Southern Lands anymore.
I'm dressed in simple clothing, nothing fancy or restrictive. It distinctively marks me as a witch. The silver pins that hold my cloak around my shoulders and the bands of fabric around my torso are nothing more than fastenings, no ornate nature to them at all, but as the sun glints off them, they make what I am clear, even though I have no telltale markings on my face.
I’ve always been steady traveling the ocean, having natural sea legs despite my ancestors only ever existing in the Ravenswyrd Forest until my brother and I left. I suppose my father might have found himself on a voyage during his ventures before he met and married my mother. Maybe I’d come by these legs of mine honestly, but my family all died long before I could ask them.
The sun, which started off scorching hot when we left the Northern Lands, has been slowly losing its luster the closer we get to the Southern Lands. While it’s still summer here, the season is far milder in the south, and after two hundred years of heat soaking into my bones, I’ll have to reacclimate to the cooler, darker lands of the Unseelie Court. I clutch my cloak tighter around myself.
As we approach the port, the water beneath the ship changes from flat and calm into a churning and vicious sort of ice sludge, echoing the ice that seems to encase my heart. My scars from the Fate Wars are far more extensive in my mind than on my body. With every lurch ofthe Shepherdagainst the waves, I greet my homeland with nothing more than a deep sense of dread and despair. The land itself seems to warn me.
You are not welcome here, Rookesbane Eveningstar.
The Ravenswyrd Coven is gone.
The captain ofthe Shepherdcomes down from the upper deck and glares at the gaggle of crew and passengers until they go back to their work and their own business. Cloaks are thrown over shoulders and caps set on heads, the sun no longer warming everyone the way it did days ago in the north, and the crew works hard under the captain’s watchful eye.
He comes to stand next to me, resting his gnarled hands on the aged wood of the side of the ship as he looks out over the water. He’s a part-blood, more Unseelie high fae than anything else, and his face doesn’t give me any true indication of his age. With his close-shorn hair and pale but sun-damaged skin, he could be a hundred years old, or a thousand.
I never was good at guessing at anyone’s age.
He doesn’t look at me as he speaks. “Are you sure that you wish to return? A lot has changed since you left, little witch. There’s nowhere left for you to go that the high fae won’t find you…or Kharl’s armies. He won’t tolerate a witch without loyalty to his cause living on her own.”
I shrug, shooting him a small smile at the term of endearment that he’s held on to all these years. Perhaps it’s something he calls every female witch he takes across the seas, a small kindness to those fleeing from the horrors of the war in the south. Either way, I’m grateful for his certainty that I don’t intend to join the witch commander Kharl Balzog and his witch armies. To know that a few here in the Southern Lands still have some common sense is promising, but I’m not holding my breath about the majority of the population.
I cross my arms and thread my hands into my sleeves to fight the chill in the air. After two hundred years away, I’m unaccustomed to the cold. The air is more than a little brisk, and no matter how strong my Unseelie blood is, it’s going to take time to acclimate.
Until I do, I’ll long for the sun-soaked days of the Northern Lands.
“I return here for my fate. I can’t wait any longer, not without angering the Fates themselves. I’d never do such a thing.”
The captain's eyebrows furrow, but he nods, scratching at the shadow of a beard on his chin. The high fae I’ve known haven’t ever grown facial hair like that, and I’d guess that he has some human blood. Or perhaps witch blood—maybe that’s why he’s always had a soft spot for me. His eyes aren’t silver, and without that clear marker or witnessing an act of magic, it’s impossible to tell. I won’t pry by reaching out with my own magic to check. Some secrets are better left alone.
There isn't a person between the two lands who isn't aware of the war that just ended. The Fate Wars began after the king of the Northern Lands broke his fate, chose a different path, and ruptured the very fabric of the world, spilling forth monsters that threatened to wipe out the entire northern kingdom. The Sol King’s people were being wiped out, city by city, entire bloodlines of high fae and lower fae alike, and there weren't enough magic-wielders within their ranks to counter the Ureen, creatures impossible to defeat without magic. Thousands of them ravaged the lands. In his desperation, the Sol King sent out decrees to all of the kingdoms under the rule of the high fae.
Join me to win the war and you’ll have a place in my kingdom, with prosperity and glory for all.
Two hundred years ago, my brother Pemba and I fled the Southern Lands to join that war. We’d learned to be soldiers and made a new life for ourselves there, met friends and lovers and people we now called family. Even in our darkest days, I was content with the choices I’d made to bring us there. I’d run from my destiny and thought it was possible to turn my back on it forever but, instead, in the midst of the most horrifying battles the Northern Lands had ever seen, I learned an important lesson.
There is no escaping fate.
The king of the Northern Lands himself couldn’t do it, and hundreds of thousands of people had died because he’d tried. That’s a heavy burden to carry, and I have more than enough regrets in my life. I don’t need any more.
