1. Ayana

My knees ached against the cold marble floor. From under my lashes, I followed the endless patterns of green and onyx from one end of the room to the other, then traced the carvings reaching for the ceilings of the grand palace chamber.

I'd made the same bored journey countless times in my ten years of enslavement as Matriarch Ashera's personal verdant.

"Bring him in," Ashera commanded, her voice cutting through the oppressive silence.

The massive stone doors at the far end of the chamber swung open. Four guards entered with their backs to Ashera on her throne, their weapons drawn and aimed at the prisoner in our midst. Four more took up the corner positions around him, with another four guards trained on the prisoner's back.

The guards shoved and dragged the prisoner forward. Chains around his wrists, ankles, and neck rattled with each step. Despite his bindings and escort, he held himself with a regal defiance, his eyes blazing with contempt.

The prisoner was unlike any I had ever seen. Deep purple skin stretched over a muscular frame. Fresh wounds marred his torso and leaked rivulets of black blood. Thick horns, ridged like ancient bark, curled back from his temples in an intimidating display.

Wraith.

I'd only heard whispers of their existence, fragments of stories passed down to scare children into good behavior. Their ability to phase through solid matter, to manipulate the forces of death itself. If half the tales were true, he could kill us all without lifting a finger.

A ripple of uneasy murmurs passed through the gathered venterran elite, marking the prisoner's passage. His kind had been considered extinct until five years ago when rumors of assassinations by living shadows began filtering through the Triarchy.

Before that, none had been seen alive in the three centuries since the venterrans drove off their oppressors and began their own reign of terror.

But here he was, captured sneaking into the drive core of a Triarchy vessel. A unit of ten venterran troopers had been needed to subdue him, and only three breathed at the end.

Ashera rose from her throne and descended the dais. With a flick of her wrists, she straightened the cloak trailing behind her. She circled the wraith with measured, deliberate steps that flashed the intricately embroidered panels depicting the Triarchy's conquest over the wraiths. Just another insult as the predator toyed with her prey.

"So this is one of the infamous wraiths who dared defy the Triarchy." She traced a finger along his jaw, her nail drawing a thin line of blood. "Your once great empire reduced to attacking our supply lines, disrupting our order. Your kind should have stayed dead."

The wraith said nothing. He kept his eyes fixed forward, as if she were beneath his notice. Ashera's expression contorted with impatience. She backhanded him across the face, the sharp crack echoing through the chamber.

Still, he did not flinch.

"You will tell us everything. Who are you?" Ashera demanded, the pupils in both sets of eyes narrowing. "Where is your base?"

The wraith remained silent, his jaw clenched. I could feel the tension radiating off him, a coiled spring ready to snap. Around us, the venterran elite watched with cold, calculating eyes, their iridescent carapaces shimmering in the light.

"Ayana, attend," Ashera snapped, her voice laced with venom.

I rose from my kneeling position, careful to let the deep green sash marking my rank and ownership fall into place. The vines and leaves embroidering the livery's hem swishing around my ankles would have been pretty if they weren't a stark reminder of the wounds I'd been forced to inflict.

"This filth," the Matriarch's mandibles clicked in annoyance, "refuses to cooperate. I want answers, and I want them now."

My stomach clenched as all eyes turned toward me. Ashera extended her arm, the sleek vambrace on her wrist flaring to life as it established the link. The paired control collar around my neck hummed with suppressed power.

"How many of you are left?" Ashera asked, her voice echoing throughout the room.

Still, the prisoner refused to speak. Refused to acknowledge anyone else existed in the palace chamber.

With a twitch of Ashera's fingers, claws of pain scratched down my spine. My breath hitched. The pain wasn't the worst part—it was the sensation of losing myself, a reminder that my actions were no longer my own.

I lived and served at the Matriarch's will.

My bare feet whispered against the marble. Up close, I could see the fine scars that crisscrossed his skin, a testament to the battles he'd fought. His eyes, a startling shade of silver, betrayed no hint of fear as I lifted my hands.

"I'm sorry," I mouthed, not daring to make a sound.

His gaze softened for a fraction of a second. Then he slid his look back over my shoulder, hardening as he glared at Ashera.

I steeled myself and reached for the well of power within me. It was a gift, a curse, a burden I had never asked for.

"Speak, wraith," Ashera hissed. "Or I will have my verdant burn you from the inside out."

I was aware of Ashera increasing the flow, coaxing more of the verdant energy to awaken within my cells.

A faint green light glowed beneath my fingertips as I sank tendrils of power into the wraith. I could feel the aches in his joints, the stiffness from the many bruises and sting of his open wounds. My power twisted against Ashera's orders, wanting to smooth over those pains and heal the rips in his flesh.

I latched around his heart—hearts!—instead. Grasping, tightening, squeezing until his jaw clenched.

"Where is your base?" Ashera demanded again.

The wraith bared his teeth, his breath coming in ragged bursts. The defiance in his eyes burned brighter, igniting a flicker of admiration—a dangerous sentiment in this twisted place.

The collar squeezed tighter; the pain seeping into my thoughts urged me to press harder. Sweat beaded on my brow as I fought the powerful instinct to heal, and instead obeyed the command to destroy.

"Who leads you?" Ashera resumed her questioning as she paced the perimeter of the dais, but the wraith continued to ignore her. "You will regret attacking the Triarchy when we raze your base to the ground?—"

The wraith's low, rumbling laughter cut her off. My skin prickled at the sound, a shiver running down my spine.

"Nothing to say?" she sneered. "You don't think we can do it?"

The wraith lifted his eyes to meet hers, the fury of a thousand suns burning in his gaze.

Ashera's fingers flew over her device. Fine hairs up and down my body stood on end as the torrent of power flooded my system.

"Laugh at this," Ashera taunted.

Bile rose in the back of my throat as I drew every bit of power to the surface and speared it into the wraith. My nerves blazed with fiery agony, my insides rolling and twisting until I was sure they'd fuse into knots.

The wraith's eyes bulged. His chest heaved. Dark veins of green snaked across his arms and chest like forking lightning. Thin wisps of smoke curled from his lips, his pained grunt echoing in the vast space.

And still, he said nothing.

Ashera's mandibles twitched. She tapped a series of commands, and I nearly collapsed with relief when the flow of power abruptly ceased.

"It appears the wraiths are not as dead as we believed," Ashera observed. "My verdant will accompany him to the Reflection Room. We'll see if he remembers how to speak after removing some of his parts."

I kept my face blank even as dread sank heavy in my gut. The benign name was a lie. Not even the worst of our enemies deserved the torture that waited inside.

Matriarch Ashera waved her hand dismissively and settled back on her throne.

"Take him away."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. I had no choice but to comply.

Every step felt leadenas I dragged myself down the dimly lit corridor. The walls seemed to close in, the air thick and suffocating. I focused on the floor tiles and willed myself to keep moving.

Just a few more steps.

Hold it together.

Almost there.

The wraith's raw, agonized screams still echoed in my head. I squeezed my eyes shut against the memory, but the sounds persisted, seared into my brain. My hands shook as I remembered the feel of his skin beneath my fingers, slick with blood and sweat as I poured my power into him. Healing him, only so they could break his body again. And again. And again.

But they couldn't make him speak, and the only begging he did was with the eyes he turned to me.

Too bad I couldn't grant him any mercy or a final end to the pain. The collar around my neck saw to that.

I ghosted my fingers over the metal. There was no touching it. No removing it with my own fingers. The blinding, debilitating headaches and punishments from my mistress beat those attempts out of me not long after the damned thing snapped shut around my throat.

My collar—every verdant's collar—served as a constant reminder of everything the Triarchy stole from us. We didn't deserve a family. Our powers weren't to be trusted out in the wild.

We were nothing more than tools of destruction to be wielded by the venterrans.

Bitterness soured my tongue. I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the disgust churning in my gut, but a cold sweat broke out all over my body.

Ihurt the wraith. I hurt those who came before him, and I'd hurt those that came after.

I stumbled, catching myself against the wall with a shaking hand. My vision blurred and I blinked back the tears that threatened to drag me down into a deep pit of despair. I couldn't break. Not here. Not where anyone could see the weakness.

Almost there. Just a few more steps. My cell door was in sight. I could fall apart behind that door and silently scream and rail against my fate.

I took a deep breath and pushed off the wall.

And then a hand clamped over my mouth. I tried to scream, but it was muffled against a calloused palm and reinforced with the cold bite of a knife pressing against my back.

"Quiet," a deep voice growled in my ear, "or I'll slit your throat here and now."

I froze, heart pounding a frantic rhythm in my ears. Fear sliced through me, as cold and sharp as the knife.

I gave a shaky nod, not daring to move anything else.

"Good," my captor said. The firm hand over my mouth tugged me backward into a shadowed alcove. "Now, you're going to take me to the wraith prisoner without raising the alarm, understand?"

Confusion warred with my fear. He wanted the wraith? Not Ashera? Not any of her commanders?

I craned my neck as much as the hand would allow. Black gloves hid his skin, black armor with an odd, bluish sheen protected his body. A shroud of darkness seemed to swirl in the edge of my vision where a man should have stood.

The knife pressed harder, drawing a thin line of pain. "Do it, verdant. Or I'll carve those pretty powers right out of you."

I choked back the hysterical laugh that bubbled up in my throat. As if I had a choice. As if I'd ever had a choice.

Keeping the blade digging into my back, my captor prodded me forward through the dimly lit passages. Away from the faint hope of my cell. Deeper into the bowels of the palace.

Back towards the screams and the blood and the sickening sense of my own helplessness.

Back into the nightmare I could never seem to escape.

Then we reached the block of cells leading to the Reflection Room and the prisoners meant to be forgotten. Two guards looked up, hands reaching for their weapons.

All hell broke loose.

Shadows rippled around the guards as my captor shoved me behind him. He moved like night given form, a whirlwind of death that struck its victims and left only broken bodies in its wake.

Wraith, I realized somewhere deep in my shock.

I pressed myself against the wall, frozen in terror. The guards crumpled to the floor, bodies ashen and drained of life before they could even draw their weapons.

My captor turned at the pounding of footsteps up the stairs and savagely yanked a knife from the torn throat of a downed guard.

He glided between the second wave of venterran troopers faster than I could track, seeming to appear and vanish within the shadows he wielded like extensions of his body. Tendrils of darkness struck, choking the life from his enemies, as he lashed out with hands and feet and knives that didn't glint like normal metal.

He dispatched the last guard with a brutal twist of his hands, the venterran's neck snapping like a twig. Then he turned to me, golden eyes gleaming through his shadows.

I shrank away and tried to melt into the stone. A pitiful whimper leaked out of my clenched jaw. This was it. The end had finally arrived. Not at Ashera's cruel, fickle hands, but from a stranger most considered a long-dead myth.

Instead of a killing blow, my captor grabbed my arm and shoved me ahead of him into the Reflection Room.

The stench of blood and sweat hit me like a physical blow, and I gagged, stomach revolting. The wraith prisoner hung from the restraints, his once-proud horns sawed down to nubs. One eye was swollen shut, the other barely open as he lifted his head to regard us.

"You should have left me to die," he rasped, voice like gravel.

"Not today, old friend." My captor dropped my arm and approached the wraith's restraints. "I still have a use for you."

He unfastened the wraith's bindings, one by one. The prisoner swayed, legs buckling under his own weight. My captor caught him under one arm and threw his shoulder under the wraith's, supporting him as he limped forward.

Alarms sounded throughout the palace, the faint tinkling of bells from the upper levels turning into a wailing blare as the emergency signal spread.

Fear spiked in my gut as I jerked my gaze to the only exit. I was out of bounds with two wraiths and several handfuls of dead guards. "Quickly," I breathed. "You must hurry. They'll have every verdant in the palace active in minutes."

Only a matter of time before I felt the tightening around my throat and claws of pain down my spine as Ashera connected to my collar.

The prisoner's gaze shifted to me, and I flinched at the accusation in that single, baleful eye. "She's one of their weapons."

My captor cocked his head, assessing me with a hooded, golden glance. He stepped closer, shadows swirling around his lean frame. I could almost see the gears turning. I'd seen his face, witnessed how he sliced through the venterrans, helped torture someone important enough to risk a rescue.

Shadows whipped out, grasping my arms before I could run. They were cool on my skin and strangely solid, but too gentle for an executioner's touch.

My lungs dragged air in and out, faster and faster. I didn't want to be under a verdant's treatment. I didn't want to hang from my wrists and watch my insides be scooped into outsides.

"You're coming with me," he said, his deep voice sending a shiver down my spine.

It wasn't a request.

He reached for my collar with his free hand, fingers brushing against the sensitive skin of my throat. I sucked in a breath at his closeness, the heat of his body against mine. My pulse drummed in my ears.

With a soft click, he unlatched the control collar from around my neck. The metal fell away, clattering to the floor.

The instant it released, a shock of power surged through my body.

The world tilted, a roaring filling my ears. Black spots danced at the edges of my vision as my knees buckled, unable to handle the sudden influx of raw, untamed energy that had been suppressed for so long.

Strong shadows caught me before I hit the ground. The last thing I saw before the darkness claimed me was a pair of molten gold eyes, burning with a fierceness I couldn't comprehend.

Then, nothing.