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“And I love you, Ki.” His throat bobbed, as did mine.
Moments passed, hushed yet comfortable, neither of us daring to speak. I sensed Liam’s affection wash over me from across the room, and I prayed he felt what my heart couldn’t bear to speak.
That was enough. It had to be.
“Ki—”
Thundering hoofbeats halted whatever he’d planned on saying.
Lights flickered across the village, gleaming yellows casting a hazy glow about the streets, a few pale sunfires dotting the blur of burnt orange.
Liam’s eyes hardened to steel. “It appears as though my time has run out.”
Chapter Two
The Hand of Death
Year 49 of the curse
My blade pierced my brother’s heart, cutting off his incessant screams.
He was not my brother by blood, but he might as well have been. We all were family, united by a common goal to save our people. We were supposed to end the curse. Bring back the sun.
I should have known better; family was nothing out here, not in the cursed lands. Not in the Mist.
Yanking my dagger free, I watched as he tumbled at my feet, his eyes wide and accusing. I didn’t have the energy to shut them.
The ghostly fog crept about my ankles, winding around my calves and thighs. It reeked of desperation. The rottenness of death. It poked and prodded at my skin, pushing into my mind, its saccharine whispers caressing the deepest parts of a soul I didn’t know I still possessed.
Glancing down into the obscurity, to where my brother’s body lay shrouded in haze, my eyes landed upon my bloodstained hands. As if to taunt me, the luminous moon shone brighter, its mocking light illuminating the wet red that would never truly wash off.
The breeze shifted, plumes of white dancing up and down the length of my frame like a twisted lover’s touch. But the whispers—the ones that urged me to do unspeakable things—were dissipating, the wind stealing the chaos and frenzy that had occupied my mind.
I blinked. The agonizing weight pressing against my chest throbbed as my gaze tore across the murky field.
I spotted limbs—an arm here, a severed leg there. A discarded boot soaked with blood. Unseeing eyes that caught the glint of the moon’s light.
Dead. All my men were dead. And I was the last man standing.
My dagger dropped at my side.
And then I, too, fell to my knees.
“Commander,” the rough, familiar voice of Lieutenant Harlow interrupted my waking nightmare. “We’re nearly there.”
I flinched atop my steed. I was surprised to see sunfire-warmed houses and a quaint square in the distance—all the markings of a traditional Asidian town—rather than the miles and miles of open land we’d been traversing the past few days since the last town. And the one before that, and the one before.
Each village we visited, we left behind empty voids and broken hearts.
Cila would be no different.
Chapter Three
Kiara
Do not fear the dark
It was where we were born
