Prologue

The crowd's savage screaming faded to roaring silence when I was shoved to my knees in front of the Keep's enormous gates, blood dripping from my nose and mouth, my body too brutalized to fight any longer.

The hot sun beat down mercilessly, the boiling heat a shock after being imprisoned in the cold, damp cell for so long I'd forgotten what fresh air smelled like.

Days or weeks, I'd lost track of time.

Weeks, I decided, going by how rotted the soldiers' bodies were, still spiked to the high stone wall behind me, a stark warning of what happened to traitors to the crown.

I forced myself to look at the long line of broken males I'd led into battle.

To see what the Shadow King had done to these good, decent men I'd failed in every way, our glorious uprising over after a few short months of fighting.

Three fucking months. We'd planned our revolt carefully for a century, assembled allies and weapons for damn near fifty years, and after all that preparation…we'd been routed embarrassingly fast.

Almost as if we had a traitor in our ranks.

I watched blood drip from my broken nose into the dirt beneath me, trying to shut out the jeering crowd, the sickening stench of putrefaction, this crushing sense of failure. Not that our failure mattered now. Not in the face of what was coming.

The handful of soldiers who hadn't been immediately executed were, like me, kneeling with their heads down, wishing they were dead. The Shadow King had carefully chosen every last survivor himself. He'd kept only the deadliest fighters, the most cunning assassins, the Fae with the strongest magic.

The pragmatic part of me admired his restraint, when it must have been tempting to just kill us all.

Foolish, really, to waste good talent.

The stench of forged iron and burning flesh coated the inside of my mouth like metallic ash as the king came closer and closer. My chest heaved from panic, the words Serpens had warned me to never forget looming in my mind, the threat etched onto my bones, more enduring than the Keep itself.

"From this moment on, you are nothing unless I will it. Every breath you draw, every beat of your traitorous, worthless heart belongs to me."

The king's dark magic crackled like lightning when he forged the iron collar onto the helpless male beside me, his anguished grunts of pain turning animalistic, as if the nulling magic penetrated deeper than skin.

As if the king forged that collar to his very soul.

Another minute and I'd be like that poor sot. Powerless. Enslaved.

My chest heaving in wild panic, my pride in tatters, I made a vow.

If I survived this, if I ever managed to claw myself out of slavery, I'd overthrow this soulless bastard and free this realm. I didn't care who I'd have to kill, who I'd have to betray, I would not stop until Serpens Centaria lay dead at my feet, my knife buried in his chest.

A pair of shiny black boots stopped in my vision, the tips coated with vomit and dust.

"Raziel. My once-great commander turned traitor. How the mighty have fallen." I managed to lift my head, squinting through swollen eyelids enough to bring the bastard into focus.

The Shadow King was a brute of a male, thinning black hair gathered back from a cruel face with eyes that were a shade too small, lips that were too big. He'd overseen my torture personally, had taken perverse pleasure in breaking my body.

I would heal, eventually, though some parts would never work quite right again.

"I have brought someone to help collar you, boy. Your replacement, so to speak. Zorander Vayle. I believe you two are acquainted."

My heart stopped beating. If he realized who Zorander was…No, if the king knew Zor was involved in the uprising, he'd be right here beside me or spiked to the Keep's wall.

"I know of him," I said neutrally, my dry lips cracking. Denial would be a sure sign of guilt, and if Zor had miraculously escaped detection…then fucking good. Maybe Julian and Tristan had evaded the king's notice as well. No dead bodies had white or red hair.

Right now, I'd cling to anything that brought a shred of hope.

Zor did a good job of looking bored with today's sordid ordeal, his dark gaze skimming down the line of disgraced, kneeling soldiers—most of whom he'd recruited personally—his expression never faltering.

"Bring it." The witch-forged collar the two ironsmiths carried seemed…bigger, somehow, than the others, the spikes sharper, the thrum of nulling magic colder. "Once this is on you, I will always know where you are, like a dog and its master. You will have no magic to speak of, only enough for rudimentary battlefield healing, but no more. So try to remain intact."

Breath sawed in and out of my lungs when they clamped the iron around my throat, a dark, paralyzing cold leaching through my veins before my magic guttered away to nothing.

Roaring power was replaced by fractured emptiness; no trace remained of the deathly magic I'd taken for granted for so long. I thought I knew what it was like to be powerless, but in that moment, I realized I was only now discovering true vulnerability. To exist like this for the rest of my life would be worse than death.

I should have fallen in battle. I should have…

"Closer, Zorander. Witness the fall of those who betray me. Look at your predecessor, who believed he could rise up against me and steal my fucking throne."

Serpens face grew colder, crueler. "Much like my brother, you tried to take my power, you common-born bastard. Now, you'll learn what it is to be at my mercy." He stepped back. "Now hold the collar in place while I forge the lock."

Zorander's misery-filled eyes met mine for a split second before he pressed the two halves of the collar together, the iron heating hot enough to scald my throat when the king's dark magic melded the two halves together and turned me into his slave.

Rage. Regret. A thousand other things bloomed in Zor's dark eyes before he dragged his cold, unfeeling gaze back to the king.

"That is all, Commander." Dismissed, Zorander stepped away, fading into the lines of loyal—and some not-so-loyal—guards.

Serpens crouched down so we were eye to eye, the rings on his fingers glinting in the afternoon sun. "Because I know you're a clever fuck, I added an extra layer of protection to your lock. Blood magic. Can you smell it, Raziel?"

My nostrils flared, and damn him, but yes, I could.

"You used Zor's blood." Spit frothed between my broken lips, all my hopes of escape crumbling to dust. "You fucking bastard."

"It's come to my attention you are friends with my new patrol commander. Thus, his magic was used to forge the lock that imprisons you." His teeth glinted in the sun. "You know how this goes. Break the collar and he dies. Attempt to escape this realm and he dies. Override my magic and I will personally spike him to the Keep's doors until his body rots and his bones crumble to dust."

It was one thing to hold onto hope, even the fleeting kind.

But this…this was a door slammed shut, because I would never sacrifice Zorander for my own freedom. The best I could hope for was he'd continue our fight to kill this fucking monster in front of me and free this realm from his cruelty.

"Oh, one more thing." Serpens grabbed a handful of hair and yanked my head back so I had no choice but to peer into his pitch-black eyes. "You breathe a word of this to him, I will collar him, right alongside the rest of you poor bastards. You chose the wrong side, Raziel. Now you belong to me, and I will use you as I see fit until the day you die."