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Prologue
Kalen
ITCHEN, A FEW WEEKS AGO
Araven cut through the thickening mists. I held up an arm, and Boudica’s familiar claws curled around my skin. With a caw, she nuzzled her beak against my cheek, and my relief was so intoxicating, it almost landed me on my knees. For days, I’d feared I’d never see my familiar again, or any of the shadow fae whose lives I’d sworn to protect.
My kingdom, my people, my home.
I took a moment to steady myself, a light wind dusting sand around my legs. The city was eerily silent now that the storm had died, along with our attackers. The streets beyond the castle had once been full of life. Centuries ago, Itchen had been a bustling hub of trade, a direct route between Albyria and Dubnos. That had all changed after the war.
I’d brought my army down on this place.
Sometimes, I could still hear the screams.
With a long exhale, I turned away from the empty homes and unfurled the two notes Boudica had brought me. Good news from home, I hoped. But when my eyes landed on the words, written in Niamh’s familiar scrawl, my hope plummeted like a broken body tumbling into the depths of the Great Rift.
Kal,
Everything is fine here, but I have bad news. I’ve spoken to one of our spies in Albyria, and things are worse than we feared. Oberon caught Tessa’s family before they could escape. They’ve been in his dungeons this entire time.
But there’s more.
Tessa’s surname is Baran. You know what that means and who her father was.
I don’t know what she’s trying to accomplish, but I worry it’s nothing good. It seems she’s fooled us all.
Stay safe,
Niamh
I crumpled the note in my fist as a wave of cold rushed through me. Niamh had to be wrong. Or there was some other explanation. With a thundering heart, I stumbled to the side and leaned against the onyx building, the world blurring before me.
TessaBaran.
She’d never told me her surname. I hadn’t even thought to ask. We’d been so focused on our mission—find her family and kill Oberon—that we’d hardly discussed much else. There was obviously much I didn’t know about her.
Including, it turned out, who she was.
“Fuck,” I muttered, suppressing my desperate need to shout the word into the wind.
Tessa had mentioned her father’s death, but she’d told me that Oberon had killed him. If she genuinely was a Baran, then that wasn’t the truth at all.I’dbeen the one to end his life. It had been the only way to stop him from dooming the world. And now Tessa would doom it too.
Fuck!
Pacing just outside the castle’s front door, I glanced at the second note. Niamh had written this one as a fake to show to Tessa. It said Val and her mother were in Dubnos. It would be a way to lure her back to my city without arousing suspicion.
I tried to roll the tension from my shoulders. The last thing I wanted was to deceive her. We’d been traveling together, trying to save her family. And somehow, over the course of a few weeks, she’d knocked a hole in my defenses. It was hard to imagine the girl with fire in her eyes as my enemy. How much did she know? Did she truly believe that Oberon had killed her father? I could tell when she was lying, but…what if she had found a way around that?
I glanced up at the sky. No sign of any comet so far, thank the moon. But…
She’d been so insistent on visiting the god trapped inside this castle. Just like her father. She’d broken the gemstone to help me fight the storm fae, but what if that had been nothing more than an excuse to gain access to the god? When I’d first found her crossing the bridge from the Kingdom of Light, she’d been so against me helping her that she’d stabbed me.
Perhaps this was why.
The thought stung far more than I wanted it to. I’d seen her bravery. I’d seen her love for those she’d sworn to protect. My hands fisted as I thought through the implications. Therewasa chance that she hadn’t betrayed us and that Niamh was wrong. But there was also a chance that she’d been playing me. I needed to get her back to Dubnos, talk things through with the others, and then see if I could discern the truth.
It meant lying to her about something that was unforgivable: the fate of her family. But if I didn’t—if she was exactly who Niamh thought she was—the world would never survive. Not as long as she lived.
