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CHAPTER ONE
Click.
Click.
Click.
The sound scratched at my senses. My eyelids were so heavy, it took everything in me to open them even to slits.
Sunlight stabbed into my eyes, and I instantly slammed them closed. But I’d gotten a glimpse.
A carriage.
I was in a carriage. Moving. I tensed my hands. Tied. My mind whirled. What was I doing—
Lorian.
Demos.
Asinia.
Oh gods. Cavis.
The web on his face. The web that meant he was one of the human king’s spiders. Those who were often planted in foreign courts as children.
Lorian’s words drifted into my mind.
“Cavis was from Jadynmire. One of Galon’s men found him wandering alone and barefoot in the forest. He was the only survivor.”
He’d only reached six winters. And Regner had already gotten to him, twisted his mind, used his filthy magic to plant a seed in Cavis that he could use at any time.
Fury blazed through me. And this time, I managed to keep my eyes open.
They met bright-blue eyes. Eyes that laughed at me.
I knew those eyes.
The man smiled at me, and I went still in the way of prey. His smile widened.
“I’m not exactly sure how you’ve woken so soon,” he said. “But it’s rather impressive.”
I kept my expression blank. Dark hair, wide shoulders, and those amused blue eyes. I’d met him at an inn soon after Lorian and I had docked in Gromalia. I’d been consumed with bitter jealousy as Lorian spoke to a beautiful fae woman, and this man had approached me.
“You’re far too beautiful to be frowning into the flames.”
How long had he been following us? Who was he? And how quickly could I slit his throat and jump from this carriage?
His mouth twitched. “You’re sitting there, half drugged, clamped in fae iron, yet you’re actively planning my murder, aren’t you?”
Ignoring him, I turned my attention to the other man in the carriage. The one I hadn’t yet been able to look at.
Cavis stared straight ahead, as if he wasn’t present. Blood slipped from his nose in a steady drip.Dread coiled in my stomach, my throat clamped shut, and the world spun around me. Cavis had done everything he could to let Lorian kill him before he took me. Now…he looked like he was gone.
“What did you do to him?”
The man tutted. “That’s from fighting the compulsion, I’m afraid. Regner will be very interested to see this.”
My breath shuddered from my lungs. It might not look like it, but Cavis was still fighting. Looking at him was agonizing, and the man who’d put me in this carriage was obviously enjoying my pain. I turned my gaze back to him.
