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Chapter1
Pan
Nightmares plagued me.Awake or asleep, it didn’t matter.
Her ghost lingered. Phantom touches caressed my skin. Peals of her laughter echoed, and whispers of shattered promises replayed in my mind. The scent of her arousal and the memory of her heat against my body toyed with my sanity.
Gods, I missed her, or at least that version of her.
“Fuck,” I growled, running my hands through my hair. It felt like an eternity since I’d heard my own voice, and even then, it was only to scream. Sitting up from my bed, I shook off the madness as it tried to sink its claws into me.
She wasn’t here. No one was.
My steps were silent as I crossed the room. The eerie glow of candlelight flickered, casting a shadow dance on the walls of my underground tomb. I stopped at her altar. An altar made not for what she was to our realm, but for what she had once been to me. All that remained was a single black feather. An iridescent shade of dark blue shimmered when brought near the light.
I smashed my fist into the marble dais.
I would not mourn for what could have been. I knew what that led to. Pain. Death. Destruction. It was all her doing, and there was nothing I could do to stop it ... nothing except what I was doing now.
“Your Majesty?” A voice broke through my thoughts, and I turned to see a young shifter standing at the bottom of the stone steps that led to my quarters. His lower half resembled a goat, and his upper remained human-like. A faun? In Arcadia?
“What’s happened to you, child?” I asked him, my voice scratchy from years of disuse in my solitude.
The boy dipped his head, casting his eyes down. “One day I tried to shift when I was playing with my sister, and I’ve been this way since,” he said quietly. “Our power ... it’s like we’re broken.”
“What do you mean by that?” The child was stuck mid-shift, and my brows furrowed as concern lanced through me. “You said ‘our’ ...”
Refusing to meet my gaze, the boy continued. “It’s what’s happened to us all.”
My heart sank.
Had this truly happened to all of Arcadia? I’d tried to protect my people. Instead, I’d damned them.
“The guardians sent you for me, haven’t they?” I glanced at the parcel he held in his hands.
He nodded. “I come with a message from the Temple of the Gods,” he said softly. I approached him, taking the parchment and unrolling it. Tufts of wolf fur had been placed inside, one brown and one gray—and now they were speckled white.
The demand was simple.
It is time.
My hands shook with fury, and I crumpled the paper as I headed to meet them. I ascended the stairs that led from my tomb to the world above.
Arcadia.
My home.
How long had it been since I’d breathed fresh air? Smelled the night irises? Run through the forests?
Too long.
I climbed and climbed.
When the first light of day reached me, my steps quickened. It was only when I saw a figure standing in front of the entrance that I slowed to a stop. A tall, slender woman in blue robes regarded me with cold eyes.
“Go back to your temple, priestess. You’re not welcome here.” My voice came out thick. Dark.
She raised a single brow. “Have you decided to end your self-imposed exile, my king?” At that moment, she glanced behind me. I turned to see the faun-like boy as he approached from his climb up the stairs. The sadness in his expression tore at me. “You see what you’ve done to your people? They looked to you, and you abandoned them. You are no god.” She curled her lip in disgust.
