Chapter 1

ONE

COLLINS

I glanced around the room. “So, any sign of Prince Riven tonight?”

They all shook their heads.

I pursed my lips. “Does he wear any jewelry?”

“As a matter of fact . . .” Ellie grinned. “On his left pinky he wears a big amber crystal. On his right thumb is a band with smaller amber crystals. I made both of those?—”

“ You made him rings ?” Jada looked appalled. “What for?”

Ellie blushed and tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. “It’s a long story and not important right now. Point is, he wears those. Oh, and on his left pointer he has a massive moonstone ring with two small rubies on the side.”

“You just casually remember these details, eh?” Stellan arched one eyebrow.

Ellie rolled her eyes. “They were a big discussion. Easy, tiger.”

“All right. Well, let’s see if I can get his attention.” I licked my lips and took a deep breath.

Bash tucked my hair behind my ear. “Don’t exert yourself too much too soon.”

“We don’t have a choice.” I pressed my hand over the moonstone in Bash’s chest and concentrated. For a moment all I could feel was the beat of his heart. His spicy vanilla scent calmed me enough that I could focus on the stone.

This moonstone gave Bash the ability to tap into people’s senses, so with my experience in crystals, that made me think it could sense other moonstones. Whenever I did things like this, I was basically just winging it. I felt his stone’s power swirling around under my hand, so I focused my thoughts on Prince Riven.

We need him. Can you just give him a little gentle zap for us?

I saw images in my mind of a big metropolitan city, but as if I was looking down at it. The others were all watching me with worried expressions, so I smiled and nodded. They were standing right beside me like they were worried this little experiment was going to break me. If Tephine hadn’t broken me, then this certainly wouldn’t.

A cold draft swept over us. We all shivered and turned in the direction the cold wind had moved in—and gasped.

Lounged in that dark crimson hematite throne with one leg draped over the armrest and his arm hanging over the other was a man unlike any I had ever seen before. He had bright, icy-blue eyes and the blackest hair I’d ever seen. The combination was intoxicating. He looked absolutely lethal dressed in all black. The way he lounged on that throne reminded me of a leopard lying in a tree just waiting for his prey to walk unknowingly beneath him. Part of my body yearned to go to him. It begged for me to move closer, which made no logical sense except that he was the Vampire Prince and there was just something so overwhelmingly sensual and hypnotizing about him.

Prince Riven.

He arched one black eyebrow and gave us a crooked grin, revealing one long sparkling white fang. He lifted a glass of red wine up to the armrest, and the movement made his moonstone ring shimmer in the light. “Well, well, well . . .”

No one spoke.

We all just stared at him. He was a beautiful piece of art meant for us to savor . . . and desire. My lips tingled. My breaths grew short as my entire body warmed and relaxed. Every muscle in my body yearned to move toward him, to climb in his lap and let him devour me. I could already feel the graze of his fangs on my throat— WHOA.

I slammed my hand onto the moonstone in Bash’s chest and pushed my magic out, siphoning some of my soulmate’s magic with it to sever the effect of him on our senses. I felt his magic wash away from my body like waves rolling back into the sea on a beach shore. My body turned cold and achy, so I pushed Bash’s magic harder until the chill left my skin. Everyone else gasped, echoing each other.

The attraction and lust I’d been feeling for Prince Riven vanished.

That was all him.

I held my chin up high and pushed my shoulders back, ignoring the sharp pain in my shoulder blades from where my wings used to be. “We’ve been played with enough, thank you.”

In my peripheral vision I saw the others jump and look to me with shocked expressions, then turn back to the Vampire Prince with concern.

Prince Riven threw his head back and laughed, then he licked his lips and one of his fangs grew a little longer. He turned those pale-blue eyes to Ellie. “I just thought Wentworth could use a little . . . firsthand experience with what I can do. Or should I say, what I did to his pretty little Violette. ”

Stellan growled but didn’t move. His blond hair and green eyes might’ve made him look less terrifying than Riven, but I knew Stellan was dangerous . . . especially when provoked.

This made Riven’s grin widen, and it was the single most mischievous expression I’d ever seen. I was instantly far more terrified of him than I ever thought I would be. Tephine was evil and wanted power, so it was easy to know what she wanted and what she’d do to get it. There was a certain amount of predictability there. But this vampire seemed the kind of person who might kill someone just for fun or to try something new. It made him unpredictable in the worst ways.

Ellie grabbed Stellan’s hand. Hard. She looked up at him with those glowing purple eyes in warning, like she knew her soulmate wanted to put hands on the vampire. Her purple magic swirled around their entwined fingers. They looked so connected, matching each other in their all-black sweaters and jeans outfits.

Riven’s gaze dropped to her magic, then lifted back to her soulmate. “Ah, so she did tell you.”

“I saw,” Stellan growled through clenched teeth.

“Precisely, Wentworth.”

“ You sent that to me?”

Riven shrugged one shoulder, like he really didn’t care at all, and swirled the wine in his glass. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I know when I’m being watched. You learn a trick or two when you’ve lived as long as I have.”

“Even the nicest of dinosaurs get bored after a while and take a bite for fun,” Bash grumbled in a low, tense voice I’d never heard him use.

Riven chuckled. “Your sisters deserved every bite, and then some.”

Bash smirked. “Too bad you didn’t bite their heads off when you had the chance.”

Riven ran his tongue over his top teeth and fangs. “Your sisters and their magic may not have worked on me, but your mother’s does. I do not start fights I cannot win, though I did poison them many a times. I think you would have loved it—given your recent proclivity for torture. Oh wait. No. That was your soulmate who cherished those moments.”

“With a smile on my face.” I held my chin high. He was taunting us, playing with us like my brothers pushing their broccoli around their dinner plates. We didn’t have time for games. “And I summoned you here for a reason, Prince Riven?—”

“Yes, I can smell your desperation from here.” His eyes sparkled, and it sent a cold chill down my spine. He twirled his moonstone ring around his finger and smirked. “ Impressionnant, petite chuchoteuse.”

Stellan sighed exasperatedly. “You and the French?—”

“ I do not speak French, Wentworth, ” Riven snapped, his eyes sharpening on the other prince. “There was naught a place called France when I was born, nor when the realms separated. The French you speak of got their language from us. The words I speak may sound similar, but it is not exactly the same.”

“Thanks for the history lesson,” Stellan growled.

“It is important to know the order of things.” Riven’s stony gaze met mine again. “History has a way of lending a hand.”

“Violette means purple and the astral stone is purple, so I got that nickname.” Ellie cocked her head to the side and looked to me, her wild black curls falling over her shoulder. “But what does impressionnant, petite chuchoteuse mean?”

“Impressive, little whisperer,” Bash said softly. “Mother taught us all the languages of the realms so we could deceive in all of them.”

Little whisperer because I whispered through the stone. That’s actually kind of cute. No, stop it. This guy is dangerous. Focus, Collins. I knew without a doubt Riven was using some form of magic to unravel my group, because only my mother and Jada had not gotten distracted, and I’d learned the Nephilim were not as susceptible as we were. Or perhaps experience trained them to deal with it. But Riven wanted us to lose focus. My whole body burned and ached, I didn’t have the strength to stand here and play, so I pressed my palm to Bash’s chest stone again and mentally whispered to it, Block everyone else out. I heard their gasps of surprise. Bash cleared his throat and tightened his grip on my waist.

Riven’s eyes danced with delight. “You’re stronger than you look, petite chuchoteuse. Good. You’re going to need it.”

“Then stop fucking with us. You clearly know what we’ve been up to so you should know I just had my wings ripped off my back, I have no amount of grace or patience right now to sit here and watch you play with us. And I’m sure you have better things to do, after all, your Stone Keeper is around here somewhere . . . isn’t she?”

The lines of his face sharpened. The playful look vanished, leaving a violent killer in its place. “Careful, petite chuchoteuse. I do not take well to threats.”

I dropped my hand from Bash’s chest and sighed, and my body collapsed into him. The only thing keeping me upright was Bash. “Does it actually look like I’m threatening you, Your Highness?”

He arched one eyebrow.

“We are here for your help. To beg for it, quite frankly, though I’m positive you’re already aware of that. Were we to be threatening you, we wouldn’t have gone through your Nephilim to your club. I may be young but I’m not that stupid.”

Riven swirled the wine in his glass, then took a sip. He licked his lips and then held the glass out to me. “I am sorry about your wings.”

“Do you know if they can come back?” My mother asked from behind me, speaking up for the first time.

Riven held his glass of wine up. “I have seen many a fae lose their wings by force, never have I seen them grow back.”

My heart sank. Tears I did not welcome rushed to my eyes.

“But never have I seen a Stone Keeper in action, until recently with Violette . You are all a new species, much like your Nephilim counterparts.” He wasn’t looking at me, he was staring at his wine, which was good because otherwise his words may have triggered more emotions than I wanted to feel. “I would say, Ms. Elliott, to not yet lose hope. You may simply have to get creative. Eloise has managed unimaginable feats. I suspect nothing less from you, Collins.”

“Thank you,” Ellie whispered.

Riven nodded once. “I am not your enemy. I simply cannot be your ally at the moment. That does not mean I will not lend aid when and where I see fit. For example, right now, I am going to ask Collins to come over here and have some of my wine.”

Everyone gasped. Bash’s grip on me tightened. I felt my mother move closer behind me. Yet Riven’s gaze was sharp and locked on mine. He said he wasn’t our enemy. He’d helped Ellie get out of Fourth Realm. He said he’d help us when he could. There was something about that wine he wanted me to drink. It was probably recklessly foolish to accept, given that I barely knew him and mostly didn’t trust him, but . . . my gut told me to trust him. I’d been through hell with Tephine and her daughters. Riven loathed them as much as we did. Sometimes to win you had to take a leap of faith.

The light in the room caught the edge of his moonstone ring and it sparkled like it wanted my attention. I reached up and touched Bash’s chest stone again. I’m listening. Like all the other times crystals wanted to show me something, I found myself pulled inside of them to see the world from their perspective. Particularly, his moonstone’s perspective. At first, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, but it looked like the night sky. Then, Riven’s face hovered above me as I moved. I saw myself sitting on a thin, pale hand that definitely looked feminine. This hand reached out and took a male’s hand, one with a signet ring with the letter M on it. It was Riven’s hand. Above his wrist, on the inside of his forearm, I saw intricate red markings on his skin that looked like some form of astrological diagram, but it was gone before I could get a good look. Then the images were hitting me rapid-fire, I wasn’t even able to process all of them, but I did see the hand with this crystal ring holding a gnarly sword pointed right at Tephine. There was a flash of light and then there were different fingers beneath me. I recognized them as Riven’s.

And then I saw a flurry of images of Riven holding weapons pointed at Tephine and her daughters, and of young children smiling and kissing the ring. The last image I saw was Araqiel and Zuriel smiling and shaking the hand I was on.

Then I was back in my own body. I blinked and shook my head.

Riven cocked his head to the side and arched his black eyebrow. “Drink.”

“Okay.” I nodded and took a step forward, but my knees buckled.

Bash’s hand caught mine and held me up. “ Collins ? — ”

“We’re going to find out his allegiance right now.” I looked up to my soulmate and smiled. “Trust me.”

He nodded but didn’t back away, He just helped me get up to Riven’s hematite throne. I took a deep breath and met Riven’s eyes, then nodded. Riven held the glass up to me without saying another word. My hands trembled as I reached for the glass, but I managed to get it to my lips without spilling or dropping. I was putting my trust in the moonstone on his hand. Crystals had never led me astray . . . yet.

I didn’t let myself think about what I was drinking, I just tipped it back and took a big sip. The flavor was rich and packed a punch. It burned and tingled my mouth yet didn’t hurt. My vision blurred for a second, so I blinked my eyes and shook my head.

“ Finis-le , petite chuchoteuse, ” Riven rumbled in front of me. “All of it.”

I took a deep breath, then tossed the drink back like a giant shot. It took me only a few swallows to get it all down. It was only as I finished the last of it that I tasted the slightly metallic, bitter taste of blood. That definitely wasn’t wine. I licked my lips and eyed the glass. That was blood. He’d just made me drink blood, tricked me into it. But whose? I did not know, nor did I know why it took me so long to register the taste. As he reached out to take the glass from me, I saw a slight pink mark on the inside of his right wrist, right over where a vein would be. My stomach rolled. I took a few steps back.

Bash caught me and pulled me to his side. “Do you feel all right?”

“I feel the same.” Except that wasn’t entirely true. I felt stronger. I felt like I could actually walk on my own, that perhaps I wasn’t as close to death as I’d felt when I woke. When I rolled my shoulders, the pain from where my wings should’ve been was sharp and suffocating. I looked to Riven but was too afraid to voice my question out loud.

Riven gave me a crooked grin. His icy-blue eyes shot down to my feet, then back to my face. He shrugged one shoulder. He pulled his leg off the armrest and rested his foot on the ground beside the other, as if he was about to stand.

I cursed. “Wait.”

“ Pourquoi? ”

That meant why , I’d heard that one before. “Because we called you here for a specific reason, and we have not asked that yet.”

He sighed. “ N'hésite pas à perdre ton temps .”

Bash growled. “He’s not going to help us. Says we’ll be wasting our time.”

“He’s going to let me ask my question and then he can refuse, but he’ll do so in English since he’s so damn fluent in it.” I rolled my shoulders and the pain was even less than before. It was giving me the courage to make our request. I cleared my throat. “Tephine has bound herself to Third Realm?—”

Riven’s eyes darkened. But not with surprise.

“—and we’re looking for the way to sever that bond.”

A muscle in his jaw flexed. “And why ask me?”

“Because when we fought her in Vegas a few days ago, we dropped vampire blood on her and it burned her. Because when Bash and Savina were killing King Bregan, they asked him how to sever the bond and his exact words were: ask Violette.”

He snarled.

“Perhaps you should give less specific nicknames if you don’t want them to be traced back to you.” I arched one eyebrow at him, since he loved that move himself. “We know that clue meant to ask you. Bregan thinks you know the answer and we suspect he was telling the truth. So, Prince Riven, do you know how to sever the bond between Tephine and Third Realm?”

“ No, ” he growled, and the air seemed to pulse around him. “We’re done here.”

Bash cocked his head to the side. “You do realize what’s at risk if we don’t kill her?”

“More so than you infants could possibly imagine,” he growled through clenched teeth.

My heart sank. “Then why won’t you help us?”

His ice-cold gaze looked from me to Bash, then shot over to Stellan and Ellie. He closed his eyes and shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough. “Because I know what is at risk if I give you the help you request, and for that . . . I cannot.”

I opened my mouth to protest but he was gone.

For a moment, we all just stood there staring at the now empty throne with our jaws basically on the ground. My heart sank and my stomach turned like I was on the big drop of a rollercoaster.

“Oi. What the bloody hell just happened?”

“I don’t like that. He knows but won’t tell us?”

“What could possibly be at risk if he tells us how to sever the bond? It makes no sense.”

“I don’t like that he made her drink that wine.”

“He was playing with us the whole time.”

“What do we do now?”

“Who else could know?”

They were all talking so fast over each other. Panic was creeping in. I saw it in all of our auras. We were unraveling.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Stellan shouted. He grabbed Ellie and dragged her to the door behind us. “I don’t want to linger in his room.”

“We need a whole new game plan,” Ellie said with a sigh.

“We may have to get creative.” Jada cracked her knuckles.

I followed behind them with only Bash behind me as we reentered the main bar area that was full of people despite the late hour of the night. It was actually quite full. I bumped into scantily clad women with every step I took. My strength was returning, but it wasn’t fully back. A woman with red hair crashed right into me, or perhaps I crashed into her, all I knew was one second I was upright and the next I was toppling over. The woman gripped my shoulders and giggled. Bash snaked his arm around my waist and lifted me upright, then peeled the woman’s hands off of me. He didn’t set me down, just carried me right out into a dark alley with a growl.

The others had already stopped and were discussing where to go next.

“Put me down, Bash,” I snapped. I wasn’t that fragile. He didn’t need to carry me everywhere.

“You’re not better yet,” he snapped back.

“I’m not that delicate! Put me down.”

“Fine.” He dropped me onto my feet. When I wobbled and stumbled a few feet, he held his arms out and gave me a cold smile that made him look just like his mother. “That better, love?”

I flipped my hair over my back and clenched my teeth as the wounds from my wings seared with pain. “Did I not survive the same torture as you? I don’t see anyone carrying you around like a doll?—”

“I didn’t have my wings and most of my skin peeled from my back,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

“So you agree I had it worse.” I put my hands on my hips. “I’m the Stone Keeper. I don’t get to be coddled and nursed back to health. I have to find the damn Chaos Stone, so I have to start figuring out how to function wounded.”

He flexed his fingers and sighed, but it rumbled like a growl. “Getting back in the fight too soon will only drag you down faster. You need to return to the infirmary and let Nickel work her healing magic on you— like she did for me— so we have you at full strength. Why is that so damned hard for you to grasp?”

Mom frowned and looked back and forth between us. “Everything all right?”

“Just fine. Let’s go to Megelle Island.” I sighed and pushed my hair out of my face. “I may look like a pretty little flower, but I assure you all I am not.”

“No, you are going back to the infirmary?—”

“You don’t get to order me around?—”

“Like hell I can’t. When you’re being daft?—”

“ What are you gonna do if she attacks right now? She can block your magic easily! ”

He nodded and gestured between us. “Go ahead, let’s see what you can do right now.”

I scoffed. “Did I summon Riven too slowly for you? Or maybe you’re butthurt because I used your magic to get him out of our heads since you weren’t?—”

“ OI. ” Stellan’s silver magic flashed and garbage that had lined the ground flew between us. “Tephine or Venus could show their ugly cans round here any second and you two wanna spat in the street? Get on with it then or let’s get to the bloody portal.”

“We’re going to Megelle Island to regroup and strategize in peace in a safe place where she can’t get to us?—”

“Like hell you are.” Without warning, Bash leapt forward and scooped me up into his arms. We were airborne in the blink of an eye.

I screamed in my mind but there was nothing I could do now. My wings were gone, and he’d taken advantage of that. He and I were going to have words about how this relationship was going to work, because I did not stand for being bossed around. I didn’t know what happened in that throne room of sin that flipped a switch on his personality, but I wasn’t going to stand for it. So I let him fly us to the portal and into The Emerald. Except he didn’t set me down. He flew me down the hall so fast I couldn’t actually see where we were going—actually, he was using his magic on me so I couldn’t.

“BASH, STOP!” I screamed because I knew where he was taking me. “BASH.”

My feet touched the ground, but I saw only darkness. I heard Savina’s voice and then the sound of metal clanking. Jada cursed. I screamed. My vision returned just in time to look through the windows in the doors and see Bash locking the infirmary doors from the outside.

“STAY,” he yelled and then he was gone.

“BASTIEN!” I shrieked and slammed my fists on the door.