Prologue

Thorne

Ididn”t feel much like celebrating my best friend”s wedding to the woman I loved.

When I pushed my chair back, Dare”s eyes sparked in a way I didn”t care for. ”Sit,” he said. ”Drink. Everything”s better when you drink.”

”I don”t need another drink.”

He sauntered after me as I left the room, but he stopped to snag the bottle off the table. Still, he was on my heels when I walked into the quiet of the hall. ”You definitely need another drink. You need to get drunk enough to give up your obsession for tonight. Fuck some nice, biddable girl and forget---”

I slammed him up against the wall. The bottle shattered, splashing booze across us both.

”That was uncalled for,” Dare said mildly. ”That was my favorite wine.”

”I”m never going to fuck anyone else,” I growled. ”She”s the only woman for me, and that won”t change.”

I was cursed with her.

”You”re unhinged.” He brushed himself off. ”You think Kaelan is the type to share? Hanna might like that, being of the Isle. We all know how they are. But then... she doesn”t seem to care very much about your professions of love.”

He let those words linger, clearly trying to get his revenge on me for the shattered bottle.

I was sure that Hanna did care how I felt about her.

I just wasn”t sure she returned the sentiment.

I released him. He brushed his lapels as the two of us walked on, his posture straight and perfect as if he had been completely unaffected.

Dare headed past the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the vast, snowy planes; the windows were frosted with ice, coaxed by the servants” magic to form whimsical scenes.

Hanna and Kaelan stared out from every pane. Hanna smiled a dozen smiles from the windows, her hair swirling around her. I”d memorized her smiles, even before I actually met her: the teasing smile that came to her lips so easily; the small, polite court smile that made me want to reach the real woman behind the fa?ade; the smile of open-hearted delight that crinkled the corners of her crystal blue eyes.

She”d been smiling up at Kaelan while he whirled her around the dance floor as if all those smiles were his, only his.

I scowled at the windows, wishing I could shatter them. Let the wind howl through the palace and bring the whirling snow inside until everyone felt as cold as I did right now.

”Kaelan”s never going to be the sharing type,” Dare told me without glancing back over his shoulder. ”And you”re insane if you punish yourself for the rest of your life, watching her love him.”

”Fucking someone else wouldn”t change the way I love her. It would just make me feel like shit.”

He turned on his heel. ”I know you”ve got to hold onto those old memories for Kaelan”s sake, but maybe that doesn”t mean you need to live with the memories yourself. Maybe you can give them up.”

I shook my head.

”Why?”

”Because what if I lose them?” I asked. ”What if we can never get them back into Kaelan”s head?”

”You don”t need to be someone else”s hero if that makes you into your own villain.” Dare”s voice softened. ”I”m worried about you, Thorne.”

”Really? That doesn”t sound like you. At least not like you”ll ever admit.”

”I”m worried you”ll fuck up everything that matters. The bond between the three of us. The plans we have. The girl is noth---”

”Finish that fucking sentence, and you”ll see just how much I can fuck things up.”

Dare paused, clearly choosing his words carefully. ”See?”

For a few long seconds, I was silent.

”At least talk to Gerrad,” he said.

”Gerrad”s insane.”

”Which is why he”s the only magician who will dare mess around with your memories,” he said.

People had a habit of surfacing from that kind of magic in a rather...aggressive state. They knew they”d lost something, and once it was gone, they wanted it back.

I already had a reputation of being murderous enough.

I shook my head. ”I”m not like you or Kae. I don”t need to deny my feelings. Or that I even have them.”

”I”d say it”s your funeral,” he muttered, ”but I have a feeling it”s going to be all of ours.”

”You”re always such an optimist.”

”It”s a peasant thing. You wouldn”t understand.” He swaggered off down the hall.

I watched him head down the corridors. Edric had forced him into a room in the servants” quarters. It offended Dare, no matter how much he pretended not to care, but Edric”s little humiliation was never about Dare. It was always about one more small punishment for Kaelan, one more way to dilute his power...or to pretend that Edric could dilute his power and destroy his bonds.

Edric had grown so accustomed to abusing Kaelan that he didn”t see how he”d shaped Kaelan. How dangerous Kaelan was to him now.

Kaelan was biding his time. But he was a killer, through and through. He had just always been able to stay his hand for the most strategic moment, no matter how he was provoked.

As I went down the hall, I passed Kaelan”s room. I quickened my pace, trying to get past that door as quickly as I could.

But I heard the faint sound of Hanna”s pleasure, a breathy cry that burnt through my chest and hardened my cock all at the same time. That sound penetrated so deeply that I knew it would haunt my thoughts all night.

I moved rapidly to my own door. My fingers were clumsy with the key, as if my hands had turned to ice.

I stepped into the quiet of my room. I was turned on by the sounds she”d made. But I also felt raw and aching that I couldn”t coax those beautiful sounds from her myself. I didn”t know what to make of the mix of emotions... or the ache in my cock.

Or the way I wanted to tear Kaelan off her.

I couldn”t bear this forever.

Thankfully, the room went silent as I walked away.

A servant came to their door, carrying a tray and looking nervous. I paused and turned back at the end of the hall, feeling a nagging sense something wasn”t right, even though Kaelan certainly often called for wine and cheese and cat treats at whatever hour of the night he felt the need.

Kaelan”s door swung open, and I caught the quickest flash of him, of his pale skin rippling over lean muscle as he took the tray. Of the rare smug look on his face. His lips were faintly upturned, his cheeks unusually flushed, his lips red from kissing her.

Fury and rage spiked through my chest.

Kaelan closed the door again, and the servant looked up at me, his gaze surprised. I realized I”d come closer to him than I expected, that I”d accidentally closed the distance.

But I had been racing for Kaelan.

I”d wanted to slam him inside, to hurt him, to take Hanna.

”Lord Thorne,” the servant muttered, his face awash with terror. ”May I---”

”You may shut the fuck up,” I growled, very softly, because I didn”t want Hanna to know I was lurking outside her door like a lost lovesick puppy.

”Of course, Lord Thorne.” The servant turned and dashed away into the labyrinth of the castle”s halls.

I continued to my room, my heart still pounding in my chest, my legs restless as if I were about to enter a tournament. But there was no one to fight.

Dare was prone to bouts of staggering stupidity---his feelings about Hanna were a shiny example---but maybe he was right. Maybe I couldn”t live like this.

I couldn”t rest anyway. I grabbed my cloak and headed out of the castle, making my way through the soft, deep snow. There were new flakes falling, drifting so slowly that they seemed suspended in the air. The castle lights reflected off the flakes casting a thousand crystal glimmers.

It looked so different than home, and I touched my pendant absently. I rarely made it back to Caer Far. Like Kaelan, perhaps I’d adopted a habit of pretending I didn’t care much, to protect the people that I loved most.

The few people awake at this hour greeted me in friendly voices in the village streets. Dare always complained that I just grunted back, but tonight there was no one to complain.

Would my attitude bother Hanna?

Did Hanna think I was ”friendly as a particularly large stone”, as Dare had accused me?

Why the fuck did my thoughts keep drifting back to just how Hanna would look at me with those wide blue eyes?

Gerrad”s was on the opposite side of the village, at the edge of the ice plains; the house had been built before the old castle was subsumed by the ice. Like every peasants” home, the upper part of the house was visible over the snow but small; the bulk of the dwelling was deep below the ice and snow and earth.

I banged on the door. The pause that answered me was long enough that I was already reaching for my knife when it finally swung open.

Gerrad blinked at me with his watery eyes. There was no reason to assume the delay had been anything but an old man”s long hobbling to the door at an unreasonable hour of the night.

But there was something about this night that felt wrong in every way, from Hanna”s wedding to another man to this moment when I stood on the step facing the old magician. My gloved hands flexed, hidden within my cloak, ready to draw my weapons.

”I have questions for you,” I told him.

”Questions that can”t wait for morning?” he asked, stepping back. ”Questions on Prince Kaelan”s behalf?”

I grunted. Let him think what he wanted.

”I don”t want to get mixed up in Prince Kaelan”s business,” he said.

”Mm.” I entered the room. The fire was going hard in the kitchen fireplace, flames dancing; the room seemed smoky. I glanced at the stone chimney. Was the old magician going too daft to keep the chimney clear?

Or had he deliberately caused the smokiness to cover something else? The acrid scent stung my eyes and nose, but my nostrils flared against my will anyway, trying to tease out the scents of magic in the room.

I didn”t expect anyone to tell me all their secrets. Not voluntarily. Even though I was part of the rebellion, the rebellion”s best chance was to stay in isolated cells so that one failure didn”t allow Edric to tear through the entire thing like so much paper.

”You alone?” I asked.

”Yes. I”m not young like you anymore. I like to sleep at night. If I”m allowed.”

”Mm.”

I certainly wasn”t letting him anywhere near my mind tonight, and I could never if I pissed him off. I trailed my fingertips absently over the big, scarred wooden table that he used both for suppers and for slicing open minds. Then I paused and knocked absently on the wooden tabletop.

He glanced all over the room, looking at anything but me. But finally, he couldn’t stop himself from demanding, ”What did you need from me?”

The Snake Queen”s emissary had gone missing, and we were supposed to find her. That could be my excuse for turning up at his door while I tried to figure out if his secrets were any of my business. ”Have you seen Seraphine?”

But there was a flash of emotion across his face---recognition, terror---before he schooled his features.

And now, unluckily for him, his secrets were very much my business.

”No,” he said, a little bit too loudly.

”Mm.” When someone lied to me, I kept silent so they kept spinning lies.

They always revealed more than they meant.

And once again, he caved, his eyes still fixed on the pitted wooden floor. ”You”re looking for the snake queen’s heir?”

”She”s not the only princess, is she?” There was no reason to assume Seraphine would rise as heir.

”She”s the queen”s favorite.”

”Perhaps not anymore, and perhaps that”s why she”s disappeared.”

His lips parted in uncertainty.

”Let”s have a bottle and solve the kingdom”s problems,” I told him, already heading past him toward his stairs below.

He raised his hand helplessly, but didn”t try to intercept me. He hadn”t lived so long by being stupid.

My boots clattered down the stairs; there was no entering the room stealthily when the house was all stairs.

The room must be Gerrad”s private study, and it was empty. There were piles of bowls with dried-on food and cups of wine that looked like they had been permanently stained. A riot of papers covered the oak table that dominated the room.

And away from the smokiness above, the faint scent of death was unmistakable.

He hesitated at the top of the stairs. Too close, too slow. I leapt up a few steps and snatched him by his throat. His face startled, his mouth opening and closing like a startled snapping turtle.

I whirled and shoved him, and he fell backward into his crusty pottery, barely saving himself by his elbows.

”Who did you kill, Gerrad?”

”Bullying an old man?” the voice was cool and feminine. ”That doesn”t seem like behavior befitting a knight.”

”Lie to a knight, and all bets are off.” I turned to face the young, dark haired woman who had just emerged from the floor below. ”So, who did you kill, Seraphine?”

Her lips twisted. ”I didn”t kill anyone.”

”Is that so?”

I opened the cupboards one by one.

Mostly clutter.

One corpse.

Kaelan”s servant fell to the floor.

I looked at Seraphine quizically as the corpse sprawled between us.

”He killed himself,” Seraphine noted. ”Neither Gerrad nor I had anything to do with it.”

”And why was that?”

She shrugged. ”Suicide is never a rational decision.”

”Bullshit.”

She smiled at me. ”Fine. Perhaps his was a rational decision, given what he did. He killed himself when the compulsion spell wore off.”

She was being far too honest.

Because she didn”t think I”d ever leave this room either.

”And what did you compel him to do, Seraphine?”

”You were trying to find me,” she said idly, stepping to the fire and holding out her hands to warm it over the faint smoky flames. ”What are you going to do now that you have?”

There was precious little warmth coming from that fire, given they”d been doing something above, which was why the fire was hot in the kitchen. It had actually been tended.

But she was suddenly warming her hands over the little flames because she had a plan.

I leapt toward her just as she shook her sleeve and a small package slid into her hand. I grabbed her wrist, pinning her against the wall. She slammed silently into the wall, not crying out, but immediately attempting to sweep my leg.

It was a fake out.

It was Gerrad who threw something into the fire then.

Sudden billows of smoke, tinged with magic, filled the room, and all three of us choked.

But it was me they meant to weaken. So it must be something that would keep me from using my unique abilities, and that meant they were trying to keep me from shifting.

”Your mistake was assuming the dragon is my most dangerous form,” I told her.

I slammed my fist into her temple, and she dropped like a bundle of rocks at my feet. I threw her over my shoulder for the information she could provide.

Then I turned to Gerrad. ”What was the compulsion spell?”

He edged away from me, his eyes wide and terrified.

”I don”t ask nicely twice.”

He turned and fled for the stairs.

I kicked him in the back, and he flew into the stairs. He lay there groaning for a few long seconds, before I leaned down and turned him over.

”For this man to kill himself, he must have been afraid of Edric, of Kaelan, or of Seraphine,” I said. ”Which was it?”

”Kaelan.”

My heart sped in my chest.

I”d been ready to kill him myself earlier tonight, but no one else would hurt the man I loved like a brother.

”Why?”

”Because of what the prince is going to do to his bride.”

Trying to carry Seraphine slowed me down in my desperate rush back to Kaelan and Hanna. I dropped her into a snow bank, determined to bind her and leave her there. I’d prefer to interrogate her, but I wasn’t particularly worried if she froze to death.

Her dark eyes flashed up at me. It was the first indication I had she was conscious; despite the cold and the pain she must’ve been in, she had remained absolutely still as if she were still knocked out.

My sword was in my hand without hesitation.

The next second, there was a dark, shimmering hollow in the snow behind her. A portal. I leapt forward, but I was too late.

The look she gave me was pure hatred, and then she was gone.

I faced nothing but an empty snowbank.

I raced for Hanna.