Chapter 1

The Dream Walker

‘You sure about this?' Dorian asks me for the hundredth time, his voice low so only I can hear him as he stares ahead. ‘Is this truly the wisest thing to be doing?'

He folds his arms across his chest and furrows his brow as he continues to watch her.

‘Yes,' I reply. ‘I'm positive.'

Dorian and I both lean to the side as a stream of soil soars between us. We watch it slam into a tree with such force that the bark shatters. It slowly falls with an angry groan and crashes to the ground.

‘That tree was almost fifty years old,' he grunts. ‘I liked that tree.'

We both brush off the clumps of dirt, bark and leaves left on our shoulders and sigh before returning to watch the chaos unfold.

Pixie rests her hands on the soil again. Her face is red and scrunched up with sheer effort and determination. With an angry puff of breath, she rids herself of the stray strand of silver hair blocking her view, and tries again.

We both step back and brace.

Her magic ripples from her fingertips as she connects to the earth around her.

‘This is a bad idea,' Dorian complains.

‘Why do you think that?' I reply.

‘Because she's pissed off and dangerous enough as it is,' Dorian continues. ‘With her newfound strength. Her extremely pointy teeth. Not to mention the uncontrollable blood lust. Are we certain encouraging her to get stronger with her earth magic is wise? Perhaps if she took some time to calm down. To forgive us for what happened. Maybe then she would be less likely to slaughter us all in our sleep.'

We duck, avoiding a massive clump of earth.

‘We don't have the time to wait for her to forgive us or to calm down,' I reply. ‘Besides. A pissed-off witch is a powerful witch. And with Neve and Cole still on the loose, a powerful witch is precisely what we need.'

Neve, the recently resurrected blood queen. And Cole, the traitorous earth coven leader and Pixie's shit stain of an ex.

If I ever thought to place two people side by side, they would be the last. Earth witches helped us destroy the blood covens. And blood witches killed Cole's mother. But desperate and deranged people do desperate and deranged things, I guess.

We brought Neve back into this world. So, I know something about doing desperate and deranged things.

Soil hits us like a wave before we get a chance to react. I spit out a load from my mouth and dust off my shoulders.

‘Besides. I would rather a pissed-off and powerful earth witch than a pissed-off blood one.' I face Dorian. ‘Wouldn't you?'

Seeing as we have decided to keep her, we would much rather Pixie not be an evil cunt that wants to kill and destroy everything to give her more power.

So here we stand. Just as filthy as her as she tries to master her earth magic a little more each day.

He catches a stone before it connects with my face, and we both turn to look at Pixie.

Her eyes are focused as she grunts and swears, attempting to grasp control of magics beyond her ability right now. Perhaps Dorian is right. It's only been a couple of weeks since her biological mother, Neve, returned, and her emotions aren't precisely… settled.

‘We should help her,' he says, breaking the stone in his palm and dropping it to the ground. ‘Before she hurts herself.'

‘Oh yeah? You know a lot about earth magic, do you? Do you have a head full of spells and techniques I don't know about?'

She screams as her feet sink into the dirt. She hollers again when she gets tugged down to her knees.

Her hair is a dishevelled mess, and her skin is barely visible through the dirt and sweat she's smothered herself in.

Dorian snorts before slamming his hand over his mouth. Her glare has my lips sealed together in a desperate effort not to laugh.

She's so angry, and I find it immensely amusing.

‘Say the word, Pixie. And we'll help you out,' I offer, tempting her to say something to us.

Anything.

I haven't heard her speak since we brought her back to the castle. Not a damned word. But she's buried pretty deep now. If she wants my help to get out, she'll have to give in and-

She flicks her hand, and we both get showered with dirt. We're smothered, and she has a satisfied little smirk. Dorian shakes out his hair, sending chunks of filth back to the forest floor as I spit out another clod of mud.

Stubborn little bitch.

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. The ground around her cracks. The ripples reach past our feet, and she pulls herself free with a grunt.

Her legs are scratched up and bleeding. I can smell it. Dorian, too, as he lets out an involuntary groan. She simply sweeps off the mess from her long green skirt, rolls her shoulders, and continues to practice.

‘When is Archie due back?' Dorian asks.

‘Latest midnight, I expect.'

I glance up at the sun. It's begun to set. The air has turned, and the chill is strong. I wonder when the snow will fall and how the hell I'm going to get her down the aisle in front of the king and all his men without alerting them to the fact that she's not quite the little mud witch I pretended her to be—now more so than ever.

The impending wedding between Pixie and I is on the very long list of problems we're trying to navigate. The king made it clear that if I do not wed her, he will hand her back to the earth coven.

At the moment, she is as likely to marry me as she is to fall to her knees and suck my dick.

Very un-fucking-likely.

‘You expecting him to discover anything?' Dorian asks, his voice lower so she can't hear.

‘Not particularly,' I shrug. ‘Whoever Pixie's real father is may well remain a mystery forever unless we get Neve to admit who knocked her up. Everyone else who would know is dead.'

Dorian unconsciously glances back at the castle and shifts away from it. Having the rotting corpse of Neve's sisters in the basement is far from ideal. But their bones must be kept away from Neve at all costs.

Dorian wants to destroy them, but I can't shake the feeling that they may be useful. Neve will want them back, which gives us leverage.

Archie has travelled north to where an old healer lives in a human town. She was held captive by Neve and forced to heal her coven when they were injured. Her service left the old hag a nervous and deluded wreck with no fingers and one missing eye.

Neve certainly had a temper when she failed to heal her blood bitches, and made sure to take something from the healer that she couldn't fix as punishment. The king pardoned the severely disfigured and mentally damaged witch and placed her in a quiet town in exchange for fixing him up when he fell off his horse before one of the battles we rode into.

She may know something about Neve's pregnancy, as she would have been with Neve around the time Ashe was conceived. But I suspect it will lead to nothing. The same as every other lead we have followed.

Whoever fathered Pixie must have been something like us—something old, something powerful. To be cursed as we have can not be done to any mortal or witch. No. There is something else in her blood. We all tasted it when we took our first bite of her. We all crave it still. We always will.

Our Pixie.

What are you?

‘You spoke to the soldiers this morning?' I ask.

‘Hmmm,' he grunts back. ‘They remain unaware of Neve's return.' He shuffles his feet and folds his arms around his chest. ‘I hate knowing that she and Cole are out there.'

‘At least they can't cross into our territory,' I reply. ‘The castle is safe.'

As more dirt crashes over our heads, we duck and quickly straighten up.

‘For now,' he says, continuing our conversation. The barriers Leo put around our land will not hold forever, Shaw. He's a powerful air witch with plenty of spells up his sleeves, but he can't keep it up forever.'

It's not an ideal fix to depend on a witch, of all things, to keep us safe. But other than running, I struggle to find an alternative for the immediate future.

The spell Leo cast around our perimeter makes it so that no witch except those invited by the three of us can enter this land. Not without a gale-force wind striking them away so hard, the force of it collapses their lungs, and they suffocate to death.

‘And we can't just stay hidden away like this,' Dorian continues. ‘Neve is out there doing fuck knows what, along with that sadistic little fucker Cole who we owe a hell of a lot of pain. And we're just sat here babysitting a thoroughly pissed off witch who refuses to even speak to us, let alone allow us to feed from her. We need blood if we're to stand a chance. We can't go on like this. It's making us weak.'

I agree with what he's saying. I know we need her blood and that we can't continue to wait around for our enemies to come for us as she works through her anger.

But the need to gain her forgiveness and to have her back outweighs any logic or reason. We could take her blood. We need it. But she will only add that to the list of reasons why she tells herself to hate us.

‘Two days,' I decide, speaking it aloud so I will be held to my word.

‘Two days?' he repeats.

‘Two days to let us feed from her willingly, and to say something to us. Anything. A simple "Fuck off" will do.'

‘And if she doesn't?'

‘We broke her once,' I shrug. ‘We can do it again. Remind her that we can play nice and she can be happy. Or we can play dirty, and she can be miserable. See which version of us she prefers.'

She suddenly yelps in victory and throws her hands in the air with a laugh. Looking over, I fill with pride.

She's created a structure in the dirt, and I just burst out laughing at the giant hand with a middle finger sticking up in our direction.

‘All that… to flip us the bird?' Dorian mutters. ‘Does that count as communication?'

She walks towards us with the sweetest and most satisfied little grin and barges between the two of us. Her wrist flicks and a tree branch slaps us both around the face, drawing blood with its vicious snap.

‘Yeah,' I groan, wiping away the bead of blood. ‘I think there's definite communication going on.'

Shoulder to shoulder, we watch her return to the castle. She leaves us in the devastation she's created. The ground is churned up. The trees are obliterated.

But there, in the centre, is her pristine sculpture, four times the size of us.

A giant fuck you.

Strange that I'm proud of her.

I'd rather bend her over and make her scream for me. But for now, this will do.