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PROLOGUE
LOKI
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO
Though few will admit it, every Sombra demon fears going fully demonic.
It doesn’t happen often. Most of us are too honorable to lose control in a way that makes us no better than the monsters that lurk on the edge of Sombra’s shadows—unless, of course, webecomethem.
Just like I have.
The banishment to Nuit should have been enough to stop me in my madness. Being forced from the School of Mages, banished to a small village built on Sombra’s far-flung ash fields, that should have been enough to learn that patience is a virtue.
That anything worth having—worthkeeping—is also worth waiting for.
It was not. It did not.
And now, with my hands clasping my aching head, claws digging into my cheeks, both sets of my horns stabbing wildly as even the pain can’t stop me from jerking my head… the madness has taken hold of me.
The madness, and therage.
That’s what did it. That’s what made my purple gaze fade to blinding white, my words little more than snarls that barely drown out the pounding in my skull as I lose complete control of the male I once was. The rage made me demonic, while the missing mate I crave drove me wild.
It’s all my fault. Even as I stumble from the home I conjured with the promise of my female in mind, I know that the only one I can blame is myself. Sammael warned me that there were some spells a mage should never cast, but I thought I knew better.
But I wasn’t thinking like a scholar. I was thinking like a lonely male who was willing to take any risk to find my mate.
I don’t know if Sammael guessed that I stole the matefinder spell from the archives in Marvo. My mentor made it clear that, while magic runs our realm, there is only so much it can accomplish. Courtesy of the shadows that make up our second form, we have no control over finding our fated mates.
At least, not with Sombran magic. Either my female will find me, or I would have to travel this plane and all the others to search her out. It’s the trade-off the gods gave us. We are immortal, powerful,strong, but we’re tied to one true mate and it’s never easy to find them.
I refused to believe that because I was different. Born with a set of double horns, the mark of a powerful demon, I was convinced that my magic would be enough to call her to me. Whether she lived on Sombra or Soleil, a neighboring plane where most Sombra males find their females, I wouldn’t spend another three centuries hoping to chance on my forever.
Sammael even admitted that the spell might have worked in ages past. Before Duke Haures closed off our realm from fabled worlds we talk of as if they’re legends, the magic was stronger. Now, the parchment with the spell was a relic of its time, and not to be trifled with.
Oh, but I trifled. As I dig my feet into the ash, swallowing a pained howl as my head throbs and my chest feels like it’s been ripped open, I can still feel the echoes of my soul splintering when the spell backfired on me.
Because I searched for a mate that I cannot reach, and that, more than anything, is what has broken me.
I’m lost. Alone. Even as the members of my clan peek their heads out of their homes, watching as I drag myself out of Nuit, I am completely apart from them. I’m too dangerous to stay among the clan that welcomed me when Sammael caught onto my obsession—and possibly my theft—and sent me away from Marvo. No longer the honorable male I once was, I’ve fallen prey to every demon’s fear.
There is nothing left for me to do.
I’m more beast than male—and the cruelty of it all is that I recognize that. Feeling as though I’m being pulled toward a mate I just cannot touch and every part of me wanting to rip the worlds apart to find her, there’s only one place for me.
And that’s where I go.
In the distance, just past the ash fields of Nuit, the shadows on the edge of Sombra beckon me. I’m still sane enough to know that I must abandon the village, and I push forward until their oppressive weight welcomes me.
Glowing eyes, the same white shade as mine now, watch me curiously…hungrily… from every corner of the darkness. I fear them not. I still have claws. I still have fangs. Both are longer, sharper as I struggle to retain my demon form; already my shadows beg to join the darkness surrounding me. There are prey beasts here, and predators that could challenge a Sombra male, but I’m a two-horn.
Worse, I’m a two-horn without any essence to remind me who I am—and who I was.
The shadows should fearme.
Still clutching my head, I stumble over the horned skulls that cover the ash-covered ground. The warmth of Nuit fades. The shadows are cooler than the rest of Sombra, and without the gold moon to illuminate it, the black moon takes on the colors of the inky shadows suffocating me.
Something scurries by. My nose scents meat, though I haven’t hungered since the spell failed. If I do, I’ll have to hunt for myself. Provide for myself.
