Prologue
THEY SAY THE GREATEST FORCE ON Earth is love.
It can heal and destroy. Create and annihilate.
It can also turn mortal into immortal because love never dies.
But what if you’re no longer human?
What if the power you were never meant to wield breaks apart the very bones you were born with?
Do the old rules still apply?
Or does it mean you’re no longer part of this world?
And what happens if you accidentally destroy it?
Chapter One
WINTER ROSE FROM NOWHERE AND EVERYWHERE.
A scream of wind.
A blast of cold—
Power tore out of me—viciously cruel and dangerously strong, ripping across the burning mountains, hurling icicles, smiting snow, delivering extinction to everything it touched.
Lucien’s hell didn’t stand a chance as ice clawed over flaming rock, frost surged over rivers of magma, and the entire night shocked white as winter stole everything—ending the lives of a million fires with a single exhale.
For one fragile heartbeat, I felt monstrously powerful.
I balanced the scales of destruction Lucien had unleashed and proved I was his perfect opposite, but...that fleeting triumph crumbled instantly, replaced by a grief so deep, it felt as if my soul was carved out with a rusty spoon.
Grief.
Bone-breaking, soul-tearing grief because he’d left me.
Leftme!
“Don’t you dare do this!” Flinging myself on Lucien’s corpse by my knees, I balled my hands and struck him. “Wake up!” I punched him over and over, wanting to tear apart that despicable piece of metal in his chest. Each strike cracked something deeper inside me. Every blow was a plea, a prayer, a curse. “Wake up! Come back.Wake up!”
Without him, I wasn’t capable of holding back the ice.
Without him, I would die.
I could feel it rising, building,snarling. A ragingapocalypse...a catastrophe that would plummet the world into an icy coffin.
“You don’t get to leave me!” I struck him again. “You’re not allowed, do you hear me? I forbid it. Ineedyou.” I slapped his cheek, sending his head snapping to the side. “Open your damn eyes! Don’t youdaredo this. I won’t let you do this. You can’t!”
He couldn’t abandon me.
He couldn’t just suddenlyunexist.
I hated him.
Hated that I couldn’t find him, save him,keephim.
And the longer he was gone...the longer his heart didn’t beat...the worse my power became. It didn’t just open its eyes, it stretched and yawned and prepared for war.
