Prologue

UNA

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I shuddered as a stinging wave of pain sharpened beneath my shoulder blades where my wings had been cut from my body. Curled into a ball on my side, I pressed my cheek to the dank stone floor and shivered. I bit my lip to keep quiet. I didn't want to bring them back.

A trickle of blood trailed from the open wounds in my back, down the sides of my ribcage to the dungeon floor. They'd torn open the back of my gown, the tattered remnants covering only parts of my body.

It didn't matter. I didn't care. Only the pain mattered at the moment—and trying to survive.

I huffed out a shaky breath. The only light came from the flickering of a single torch near the arched entrance to this cell block. Whenever the shadows disappeared and the cell grew brighter, that meant one of them was coming for me. That's why I dreaded the rhythmic bootsteps of one of my jailers and clung to the shadowy dark.

My body shook with another ripple of pain, a numbing sensation beginning to overtake me. Min said that happened when one was close to death. The spirit left the body a little at a time.

I'd been put in this cage and dragged out so many times by those foul creatures. Tongueless and earless, horned and clawed, they followed someone's orders to poke and prod me with demon-forged weapons, their dark magick piercing through my skin, tearing at my core.

I'd never see home again. I was going to die here. Soon.

A sob ripped from my throat. I sniffed and stifled it, tears slipping down my face.

"Shh, shhh, basta met . Shhh."

It was the hag in the cell next to mine. She'd kept to the shadows since I'd been in this infernal hell. She shuffled closer across the stone floor now, while my own agony kept me still. She reached her hand through the bars and brushed my filthy hair away from my face.

" Sorka, lillet ." She spoke in demon tongue, brushing my hair and whispering softly. " Ora est miyett, lillet ."

"I don't understand." My voice cracked, my throat raw from screaming.

Finally, I turned my head so that I could see the occupant of the cell next door for the first time. She was nothing but skin and bones. Her dark hair hung limply around a withered face. But her eyes shone with a hue I didn't expect—the deepest shade of purple.

My gaze skimmed along her shoulders and found no wings. Hers might've been cut off like mine, though she had no horns either. Her pointed ears were small and delicate, not tall and pronounced like most dark fae.

But why would she be speaking in demon tongue?

She held a clay cup through the bars. When I reached a hand up to take the cup, a sharp pain twinged from the wounds in my back.

"Ah!" I cried out and shrank into myself.

"Shhh." She lifted my head and urged me to drink. I did. The filthy water was gritty with soil and smelled foul, but it was heavenly to my parched throat. I slurped it down, gagging only once before swallowing the rest.

She nudged me to lay down and continued to pet my hair, pushing the tangled mess away from my face.

Her small act of kindness and gentle words sparked a wave of grief mixed with gratitude. "Thank you," I croaked softly, wishing I could use my magick to bless her with a healing balm.

Once again, I closed my eyes and willed my goddess-given magick to come to me, to give me the healing power I so desperately needed.

But not a spark. No distant hum of buzzing energy in my blood. Nothing. It was gone.

I lay still, mourning the loss of my most precious gifts—my fae power to heal and my beautiful wings.

That seemed the purpose of those foul creatures—ripping magick from every light fae they found as punishment for merely existing. Hatred and a sick kind of satisfaction had reeked from their hollow eyes as they'd tortured me.

The hag's sibilant whisper shimmered like an ethereal ghost in the dark with words that trembled along a hum of power. Magick?

I thought she was a hag, a creature bereft of any meaningful power. But what I felt vibrating between the bars separating us was significant. More than a spark, it was potent and strong.

Then I heard something shatter.

I peered through the bars where she held up a sharp piece of the clay cup. She pressed it into her wrist and sliced into her skin, all the time whispering indecipherable words.

"No. Don't," I argued, though my protest was faint and weak, my body exhausted and my mind listless.

She dragged the jagged piece of clay up her arm, still speaking in that foreign language, then slipped both her arms through the bars. While holding my hair back with a gentle but firm press to the top of my head, she dipped her fingers in her own blood and began tracing something on my forehead.

Dark fae often cast charms over someone with demon runes, spelling them with magick and demon sign.

Perhaps it was the fact that they'd taken everything from me and killed whatever will I had left to live, but I couldn't fight her while she whispered in the dark and cast her spell with her own blood.

" Ora est kel ohira. Ora est kel n?kt los. Ora est meheem. "

Then I felt it. Her magick. It vibrated and pulsed through my blood, giving me new vigor. It was powerful and jarring, pulling a whimper from my throat. Her hands shook as she continued going over and over the signs on my forehead with trembling fingers.

" Ora est kel ohira. Ora est kel n?kt los. Ora est meheem. "

She gasped and collapsed to the dungeon floor. I lifted up onto my elbow and crawled closer. "Old one?"

She didn't answer. I looked around for the bucket of water she'd fed me from.

"Let me help you."

Shaky fingers touched my chin, guiding my face to look at her. The dim flicker of torch-flame darkened the hollows of her eyes and cheeks. Even though life had been unkind to her, especially now near the end, I could see she'd once been lovely, her dark purple eyes glittering with goodness.

"I'm sorry," I added, holding her hand with one of mine, feeling utterly useless without my own healing magick. "I wish I could help."

Her mouth tipped up in a feeble smile before she spoke in my language. "You are the destiny. You are the dark lady." Her dialect was perfect Issosian. "You are for him."

As her eyes grew glassy and her spirit left her body, I knew those were the words she'd been repeating over and over in demon tongue.

" No ." I closed my eyes and gripped her lifeless hand, tears pouring yet again. But for once, they weren't for me or what I'd lost, but for this poor, sweet fae of my homeland who'd died in the dark, whispering nonsense and trying to care for a stranger.

Then my gut clenched. The sound of bootsteps drew near as the cell grew brighter.

They are coming.

GOLL

The wights were hungry tonight. Desperate groans rumbled louder than their normal low murmur and hissing. Their skeletal fingers clawed at the stone wall of their pit, making that grating click-click sound.

Sometimes, it felt like the sound actually penetrated my skull and scraped me on the inside, driving me slowly insane.

I looked away from the pit, wishing my vision wasn't so clear, even in the near pitch-black of the dungeon beneath N?kt Mir. Pushing to my feet, I then wandered to the left of my cage. The chain attached to my right ankle clattered as I dragged the heavy links across the stone floor.

The chain served no purpose but to add a layer of humiliation to my imprisonment. The warded iron bars were the true barrier holding me within this confined space in the heart of my father's guarded keep.

My father, the Demon King of Northgall, held court a few stories above this wasteland of death and bones. His courtiers, the most appalling sycophants adorned in leather, lace, and malevolence danced to his every tune somewhere above me in his throne room of obsidian and glass.

He kept me, his only son, as his prized prisoner in the deepest, darkest pit of his realm. No one cared. No one would come for me.

My mother would have had my father not beheaded her then cut out her heart for committing adultery when I was ten.

Mother was the only one who would've faced my father's wrath to try to free me from this cage. She was the only one who could keep his paranoia in check. Before he so brutally murdered her, of course.

Ever since Father's treasured oracle Vayla envisioned that I would one day usurp him and take his crown, I have been kept in this filthy, maddening hell. The only reason he let me live is because Vayla warned that if he killed me, or even gave the order, then he'd pay with his life.

I wondered what he'd done to Vayla for her prophetic vision of his demise. He'd have not taken kindly to such news.

So here I was. Living. Breathing. Counting the agonizing days.

Father might think I have accepted my fate to waste away in this cell for eternity, going insane with monotony and isolation, but he was wrong.

Leaping upward, I grasped two bars along the top of my cage and began my routine, pulling my weight up then lowering in a slow, even pace. I focused on the tempo of my heartbeat, the flex of my muscles, and the mild pain that reminded me I was alive.

My complexion had faded to a pale ashen gray rather than the deeper shade of a healthy wraith fae. But as long as I was breathing, there was a sliver of hope that I would get out of here.

The warded bars blocked my magick, but I felt it sizzling under my skin, itching to be used, whispering through my blood. During the past fortnight, I'd felt a sudden quickening of powerful energy through my veins. The melodic refrain told me my time was almost here.

I lifted myself repeatedly, finally reaching the point where I'd pushed past the pain when suddenly there was the clang of the iron door opening at the top of the stairs.

Feeding time.

The wights erupted into ravening groans, knowing what that sound meant. The bone-keepers were hauling some poor mortal down to their doom.

Gaunt arms with exposed bone and fingers covered in pasty gray skin reached up toward the platform suspended high over the pit. The black-stained hook where they'd lower the victim dangled freely, waiting for fresh meat.

I realized long ago that my father housed me here next to his pit of foul wights, his army of bone soldiers who obeyed only him, for a reason. Putting me within sight where he'd feed victims to his death horde would eat away at my sanity.

The two hulking bone-keepers were clad in leather tunics, their ears severed. Their tongues were as well. My father spoke to his guards through mind alone and kept them deaf and mute to any order but his own. They wouldn't hear the anguish and despairing cries of their captives, only the demonic voice of their king.

I was glad the gods hadn't bestowed on me the gift of neklia, to raise and use the dead as my army. But I'd been given the remarkable power of a zephilim, able to wield feyfire with a single word. Not that it did me any good behind these wards.

The bone-keepers hauled a sack between them with the wights' dinner struggling inside. My pointed ears pricked at the muffled sound, for it was…feminine.

Scowling, I leaped toward the bars, gripping them tightly. They'd never fed a female to the wights. The victims thrown into the pit were alleged traitors to my father, wraith fae who'd wronged him or light fae captured near the border. But never once a female, not even a magickless hag, not even they were fed to the wights.

"Let me go," came the soft cry within the canvas sack as one of the guards set it on the platform above the pit.

My gut clenched at the desperate plea, but nothing prepared me for what happened when they pulled the sack open and she fell to the platform floor.

A guttural groan trembled up my throat at the shimmering light filling the room, haloed around the beautiful creature—battered and bruised—whose slender arms were now held tightly by the foul bone-keepers. When she twisted to try to get away, I saw an open gash on her back through her torn gown. Her wings had been ripped from her body. My grip tightened on the bars.

Her skin was as smooth and white as the marble carved from the northernmost mountains of Solgavia. Her white hair was soiled and dirty, strands falling loose around her fear-brightened face. Her gossamer gown was tattered and torn.

A delicate light fae female. She was young, just a girl. An innocent. My gut clenched at the cruelty of it.

When she turned her angelic face down toward the pit, dawning horror washed over her expression.

" No! " The first word I'd spoken since my imprisonment scraped raw and true out of my throat.

My magick replied with a fervent ripple through my body, bashing against the wards of the cage, relishing the spark to life.

The bone-keepers forced her onto the hook dangling above the platform and tied her to it with tattered ropes. Rather than fight them, she grasped hold of the hook, as if this instrument might be her savior.

Frantically, she kept glancing from the guards to the pit below. One of the bone-keepers pressed a lever, and her slow descent began. She cried out in alarm, the sound piercing through my flesh and bones, snaking through my body like an invading viper. An ethereal whip lashed at me to act. Now.

"No," I repeated, burning with rage, feeding it to my magick, allowing the power that lived within my royal blood to burst forth in torrents. The magick listened and relished the aggressive fury, devouring the darkness that lived inside me, kept bound for far too long.

A dark fae's power was a sentient, dominant force that craved to be free. And mine burst from within.

My muscles bulged as I poured my power into the iron, breaking the chains with surprising ease. It was as if the wards were never a barrier for me at all. I'd only needed a catalyst strong enough to set me free.

My gaze riveted on the frightened faeling, her slender arms clinging helplessly to the hook lowering her to her death.

Just as the lower edge of the hook reached the frantic hands of the hissing and groaning wights, I roared with rage.

An explosion of red light sliced through the gloom as the wards broke, and then the iron bars bent to my will with frightening ease. I leaped through the opening of the bars and bounded toward the pit.

She cried out as wights pulled at her tattered gown, clawing at her bare legs. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream, while I roared yet again.

Charging across the dungeon, I swiped my hand out at the creatures that were reaching for the hook to try and pull her down. Feyfire poured from my body. A wave of euphoric pleasure washed over me as the flames incinerated a dozen wights into dust. The dark victory filled me with an ecstasy I'd never known before.

The girl looked up from the hook where she clung, her clear violet gaze full of desperation and fear. I soared over the pit and onto the hook, swinging us like a pendulum.

I breathed a word and disintegrated the ropes binding her, then hauled her into my arms. She gasped but didn't struggle as I walked on top of the groaning piles of wights trying to pull us down. My steel-heeled boots cracked craniums and arm bones as I used the wights as stepping-stones to lift us out of the pit.

All the while, I gripped her closely against my chest, careful not to scrape her silken skin with my claws. I bounded up and over the wights, back onto the gritty stone floor of the dungeon. Her slender arms clung tightly around my neck.

Before the two bone-keepers realized what was happening, I whispered, " Etheline ," and waved my hand.

Flame leaped from my fingers in a red stream, incinerating them into dust. Power poured through my body, like a forgotten river that found its way back through a dormant valley.

It was sublime.

Following the shadowy passages I hadn't seen in decades, I hurried down the deserted hallways winding away from the castle. The girl shivered in my arms, her teeth chattering. Hoisting her higher and trying to avoid the wounds in her back, I held her close and slipped through the shadows quietly, knowing the best way out.

An odd sense of rightness swept over me. In defiance of my father, I was going to escape his pit of death. And I was bringing one of his poor tortured creatures with me.

The scrape of boots on stone from around the next bend of the darkened corridor made me freeze. The fae girl sucked in a breath then went quiet, sensing the danger. Quickly, I spun back the other way. There was a small alcove not far from the main cell block where I'd been kept. I'd seen bone-keepers walk in and out of it for decades.

I ducked inside the alcove, finding a small cell without bars, tables piled with all manner of sharp instruments. Some of them still stained with the dark red blood of light fae.

"Don't look," I whispered close to her ear. I didn't need her screaming at the sight of blood and giving us away.

She tucked her face against my shoulder, while I pressed my back to the wall beside the entrance. The footsteps drew closer.

I set the girl down. She went quietly onto her bare feet then I nudged her into the far corner, away from the entrance. Snatching a particularly sharp and short blade from the table, I pressed close to the entrance, out of sight.

The boots pounded closer, a single set of them. As soon as a hulking frame passed the entrance to the alcove, I leaped from the shadows, gripped his horn and jerked his head to the side, then easily sliced through his throat. He was so surprised, he barely fought me. By the time he did, it was too late. I sliced a second time, so deep that I partly decapitated him. He fell with a weighty thunk .

He wore a heavy fur cloak, apparently one of the guards who either roamed the woods to seek out more victims for the dungeon or who watched the closest exit of the keep. He might've even been the one to capture the moon fae girl inside the alcove.

Growling, I straddled the glassy-eyed guard, his blue blood leaking onto the cobblestone. Then I cut the lacing clasps of the cloak near his throat and pulled, shoving his giant body with my boot so he rolled off of it. I tucked the blade into the waist of my loose-fitting trousers.

When I stepped back into the alcove, I heard nothing at all. For a moment, I thought the girl had run away in fear.

"Fae girl?" I asked dumbly, not knowing what to call her.

I sensed movement from the other corner farther away, then she stepped out of the shadows, still shivering, her eyes on the bleeding guard behind me.

I held out the cloak. "I know it smells foul, but you'll freeze to death once we get outside."

From the scent of snow on the cloak, I knew it was winter. She stepped quickly toward me and allowed me to wrap it around her, the hem falling to her ankles.

"I'll carry you." I pointed at her bare feet. "You have no shoes and will slow us down."

She merely nodded, pulling the dirty fur cloak tighter to her body. I scooped her up, stepped over the dead guard and stalked swiftly back toward the exit of the keep.

She said nothing, still shivering in my arms. The long corridor leading toward the exit was empty. Likely because I'd killed the guard meant to patrol this area.

As we came into the final passageway, I heard the slowly marching steps of a guard near the back of the keep. I knew there was an exit nearby, because I'd been morbidly fascinated with the dungeon when I was a little wraithling, exploring where I shouldn't.

I followed my instincts now, peering down the long passageway where it ended. Between two flickering torches on the wall a stone staircase spiraled upward.

That was it, the exit.

I kept to the shadows. I was about to set her on her feet so I could grab the knife in my waistband to kill the approaching guard, but the guard walked right past the stairwell and kept going, never even glancing our way. When the footsteps receded altogether, I hurried across the corridor and up the spiral stairs.

The fae girl was light in my arms as I continued upward. Halfway there, I stopped to listen. I heard no one above or below, so I rushed up the final spiral and onto a landing where there was an iron door.

I set her down, cursing myself, for there was likely a key. But when I gripped the latch and pushed, it swung open easily. Cold wind gusted inward. The girl gasped but still said nothing.

One probably only needed a key to enter from the outside. At the moment, I didn't care. All I knew was that freedom awaited us. Without a word, I swept her back into my arms and marched out into the snow, tiny flakes falling from the gray sky, and hurried toward Esher Wood.

I carried the faeling at a brisk pace into the snow-dusted forest of esher trees. For a while, there was only the sound of my heavy boots crunching in the snow and the light wind knocking naked limbs together in the boughs above us.

As we wound farther into the woods, I lamented that it was deep winter. The esher trees, bare of their blue leaves, resembled gray-trunked ghosts standing solemn as we passed and offering little cover.

"Thank you," came the soft voice of the fae in my arms, husky from her ordeal in the dungeon.

Frowning, I replied, "Don't thank me yet," I answered in high fae, having learned it from a young age since it was the common tongue across the kingdoms. "We have a way to go."

And I wasn't sure where to take her.

Her injuries were severe. We wouldn't make it to the Borderlands for days if I had to carry her. But who could I trust in the closest city of Silvantis? My one true friend was Keffa and he'd been taken prisoner by my father at the same time as I had.

I needed a place to hide myself while I planned what to do next. There was the baker Ogalvet who lived on the edge of Silvantis. He never seemed to be a fan of my father. He'd likely help me and find a way to get the girl back to her people.

"My name is Una," she said, voice quivering.

I kept my eyes on the trail, glancing back over my shoulder to be sure we weren't being followed, not in the mood for conversation. I thanked the gods that it was snowing, covering our tracks as we went.

"You're a wraith fae."

I continued on, ignoring her.

"Why were you in that dungeon?"

I didn't owe this girl anything, least of all the truth that cut me so deeply.

But she was a puzzle, piquing my curiosity. Had the guards found her at the Borderlands and abducted her?

"How did the bone-keepers capture a young, moon fae female like you?" I asked.

She lifted her head, her gaze riveted to my face. She stared with open fascination, but no fear.

"I was caught near Dragul Falls."

I stopped suddenly, scowling down at her. "What in all the hells were you doing so close to the palace?"

Her violet eyes widened, but her gaze remained steady and calm. "I was looking for something."

"Something so important it was worth losing your life?" I snapped.

"Yes," she answered coolly.

"Alone?"

She dipped her chin in a stiff nod.

I shook my head on a sigh. "Stupid girl."

She turned her face toward the path.

Now in the afternoon light, I noted what I had first thought was a bloody cut on her forehead was actually demon runes. They were smeared and illegible, written in blood beneath her hair. I wondered what kind of horrific spell the bone-keepers might've been commanded to put there. She didn't seem to be suffering in any way other than her physical injuries. The spell must not have worked.

She whimpered when my splayed hand on her lower back slid upward. I shifted her gently, higher in my arms, keeping my hand around her slim waist to avoid her wounds.

I walked on in silence, carrying her deeper into the woods, no sound but my heavy footsteps crunching in the snow.

"They didn't know," she murmured softly.

"What are you talking about?"

"My family. They didn't know I left, so it wasn't like they let me go off alone."

"But you did it anyway."

"It was important ," she emphasized with a bit of steel in her soft voice that drew my gaze to her scowling face.

I huffed, wanting to laugh at her foolishness. "And look where that got you, faeling."

Distracted for a fleeting second, I didn't hear the whistle of the arrow until it was too late.

It struck the left side of my chest, painfully close to my heart, the force of it jerking my body backward. She screamed, falling to her knees beside me, the filthy cloak slipping from her shoulders.

"Let go of her, you fucking wraith bastard," came the deep voice of a male.

Just as I pushed myself up, the arrow still jutting from my chest, a fair-haired male fae in sapphire and gold regalia grabbed Una around the waist and flew backward, his white wings shimmering in the gloom. He carried her several feet away, swirling snow into the air.

Growling, I shifted up, only to be pierced by arrows twice more in the right thigh and hip.

"Stop it, Baelynn! You're hurting him!"

The male fae held her back with both arms, his rage furiously aimed at me as a guard of at least twelve fae males uniformed in blue and gold armor appeared out of the shadows. A royal guard of Issos.

"Hurting him?" The one called Baelynn shouted, now holding Una by the shoulders and inspecting her with a fearsome expression. He visibly flinched when he saw her wings were gone. "We must get you home, sister," he hissed quietly.

Sister? My mind reeled. She was the royal princess of Issos, Tiarrialuna, the only daughter of Connall Hartstone, High King of Lumeria. I knew this because it was drilled into me by my father to know our enemies and know them well.

"Not before you help him ," she yelled. Tears streaked down her face as she tried to free herself from her brother's grip. Tears for me?

A strange charge rippled through my flesh as I knelt in the snow, pulling the arrows from my body, one by one.

"He captured you, Una. What are you saying?"

"He freed me, Baelynn. I would have died without him."

The fae prince looked over her shoulder at me, still scowling. The animosity radiating from him and his guard was a palpable whip in the air. Six of his guards had arrows nocked and aimed at me. I could've incinerated them all, but I held still. Some instinct whispering from the place where my magick lived kept me calm and immobile.

"Go home, girl," I told her, still on my knees. "You don't belong here."

Una stared at where I'd been hit, blue blood trickling down my chest.

"Your brother's little arrows cannot hurt me," I sneered, disdain falling from my lips.

Though I'd never met the prince, and currently our kingdoms were at a truce, he was my enemy. It was fortunate he did not know my identity.

"Come, Una," he said, giving her no choice as he urged her toward the fae guard, closing in.

One of them with dark blue wings and black hair stepped forward with a gold cloak and draped it over her shoulders. He gripped her shoulders and whispered softly, "You are safe now."

She nodded, as if she knew him well and welcomed his comfort.

The small exchange tore a hole open inside of me, one that wanted to devour and maim and crush. My lips curled back, revealing my fangs, which the black-haired fae noticed.

She turned toward me, a wisp of white hair escaping the hood of her cloak.

The fae guard fell in around her to form a shield. Then her brother lifted her into his arms, his wide wings beating hard as he lifted off into the sky. The rest followed, rising fast and hard.

That was how they'd come so far into our territory without being seen. And surely how the princess had dropped out of the sky into Northgall. Only something had happened and she'd been captured.

I watched her leave. The falling snow and billowing clouds swallowed them, blurring their figures, but I caught a flash of violet as she looked back over her brother's shoulder.

Then they were gone.

Rising to my feet, my wounds a mere ache with no pain, a new flame burned white-hot around my heart. This flame was for my father.

I smiled, a twisted sort of joy burning through my soul. He'd put me in that infernal gorge of hell, expecting me to rot and waste away into death. But his spiteful brutality was not strong enough to kill me.

For whatever reason, the god Vix gave me the strength to break my father's wards and fulfill a prophecy he tried to prevent. Now more than ever, I knew my rightful path.

A soft voice and fair eyes flickered across my mind. I blinked it away.

Peering over my shoulder, I eyed the pinnacles of N?kt Mir jutting toward the winter sky, then I turned back toward the woods and walked on. Vayla was right. My path was resolute and sure—to take my father's throne.