Chapter 1

One

WESLEY

W here are you, Wesley? A voice asked a dozen times in my dreams. I often sat at a table with honeyed bread and fresh tea like I waited for someone while listening for the voice.

The scent of the tea reminded me of last days at the Autumn court with the last of the summer breeze blowing through the dying flora as the nights cooled before I’d been old enough to know the realm was collapsing.

A chill trickled through the dream, unrelenting with an icy bite, startling me out of the pleasant memories and back into reality.

I gasped for breath, air burning my lungs with crystalline cold. My skin stiff, half frozen to the ground, lashes coated in frost, freezing my eyes shut. A blessing, perhaps because they stung from the temperature.

The thick chain clenched tightly around my throat kept me from filling my lungs. It wouldn’t kill me, neither the cold nor the lack of air. Being part fae was a curse rather than a blessing. That I blended, and could be mistaken for true fae, extended my life. Why had I bothered if this was to be my fate?

The zombie remains of the court sat in silence like an early winter morning when the temperature dropped below artic levels, wind dying away to leave only the barest rippling crackle of ice forming. Winter had fled with the tattered bits of her realm, saving a handful from Spring’s wrath. But fae abandoned the last court in droves, realizing as I did that the walls, thin frozen illusions of castles and a prosperous realm, crumbled. Many slowly disintegrating, others crackling in a web of interlaced lines wriggling through the very core of the space waiting for a strong wind to unravel it all.

Winter was coming to an end. The Hag raged about lack of foes and the weakness of the rising kings. Always demanding a battle between courts despite their need to co-exist if they wanted to retain power at all. Winter warred hard rather than stepping down to let a new power rise. They clung to the threads of dying magic and tried to destroy the buds of new power, threatening to take all life with it.

The Fates were bitter bitches, winding the lives of mortals together in unbreakable ways. Demanding the rise and fall of courts, and death and destruction of species.

Were they losing power, as the modern world descended into chaos, or simply letting all the madness free to further tangle the weave in the fabric of reality? They weren’t benevolent despite what many followers claimed. The few remaining gods with power to change the world, they were as corrupt as the darkest of courts. Could the Fates change hands? I’d given up hope of ever knowing.

It was strange to be visionless. A lifetime of waking nightmares of other people’s fate falling silent should have been a blessing, but it worried me. What was I missing? Had the little King embraced his power? I hid him as long as I could, but his few years offered the barest of armor to help him stand his ground as the new Summer. Fate tied the wolf to him, but a blessing or a curse? Love could deliver both.

The crackling ice continued in a popping orchestra of sound around me. The lack of life and my ear pressed to the floor, made it louder than it probably was. I forced my eyes open, the cold stinging them instantly, but the sight of him comforting as usual.

Bound in stone like some science fiction movie, he screamed out the raging madness of a partial change into a beast of lore. Not unlike many lost creatures of Underhill, as he’d been long corrupted by the dark waves of ice and pain. One of the first witchblood mutts lost inside the mortal world after the veil opened.

Summer warmed him for a while, delaying his fall into this frozen madness. I wondered if he was meant to be Winter. His pain said no. Winter would never fight the cold as he had. Winter would revel in the chill, finding the crisp bite comforting. The beast bound by magic wasn’t Winter.

A rare comfort as I knew he was mine. Tied to me in some way. Life or death, whatever that was meant to be. Our paths crossed and my vision stopped.

A finger-wide crack crawled along the floor to his feet, slow at first, the break barely noticeable. I’d been watching it for weeks, or what felt like centuries. When it touched his toes, I feared he’d crack with it, chiseling away whatever remained of the terrifying thing held back by dying magic.

But the stone encasing his legs whittled away. Tiny slivers of rock crumbling like dust, unnoticed by all but me. The fissure widening, a swirl of wriggling energy inside rather than a person. A corrupt king?

I watched it for endless hours, days, and weeks, until my vision blurred and I could stay awake no longer, losing myself in dreams for a short time until the cold jolted me back. Parts of his wings were freed from the stone, a stretch of leather skin between bony juts of darkness. I waited for them to move, my breath catching for long minutes as I prayed for an eruption that would end my suffering even if it was a swift death.

He stood immobile. The stone near his face cracked like a shattered mirror, a net of shards cascading outward.

Another thick break freed his fingertips. They moved. I gasped, blinked, thinking I’d been mistaken. But he moved again, hand clenching, fist forcing the arm to flex and more of the stone crumbled. Audible now with a cracking that couldn’t be mistaken for ice.

He ripped his arm free, shards of rock ricocheting in a dozen directions, hitting the walls like tiny missiles, which exploded the thin layers of ice.

Someone screamed, followed by a dozen more, that shifted into a deafening roar that shook the realm with earthquake ferocity. His face morphed from semi-human, to the elongated snout and sharp fangs of a dragon. Many of the WitchBorn could take this form, though few had ever attempted to learn to control it.

Enormous, like the storybooks, with a crown of horns ringing his brow, he erupted from the stone, body completing its change, part serpentine, a chaos of legends. His tail smashed free of the remaining stone, releasing the monster from the crackling remnant of broken ice magic. The beast snapped at the movement around him, latching onto a few remaining fae, piercing them with fang and claw.

He devoured fae whole, biting some into pieces, the others swallowed in a single gulp as everyone ran and the beast jolted toward the screaming chaos, claws as large as my head paused inches from my face. Once changed like this, the beast rarely stopped, the hunger driving them to madness. The prince had consumed legions of fae before he’d been entombed in ice and saved by the mortals fated to ground him and give Spring life.

The end it was to be then, wasn’t it? That was okay. It explained a lot. A payback by the Fates of sorts for meddling with their design.

Did he kill the Winter Queen?

I hoped so. That bitch needed to end; it was time for a fresh Winter to rise.

Closing my eyes, I breathed, ignoring the shaking and painful shrieks of the dying. I sank into the comfort that the end was coming. Freedom could come in a lot of ways. Enslaved to the courts, the expectation of death had been my only hope to find it.

The shrieking terror trickled away, leaving only the sound of my breathing in the barren space. Had I been the only one to survive? Cursed to remain bound here motionless in endless torture? That sounded a thousand times worse.

I opened my eyes to find the dragon gazing at me with glazed eyes, its hot breath close enough to warm my face. I couldn’t help the tears. The human form, forced into by the magic binding chains, added weaknesses and lack of control when emotions overwhelmed me. My father’s genes cursed my existence with tainted blood much as the Summer and Spring kings.

A sharp talon traced the chains binding me to the floor. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from his, and wondered if he saw me at all. His clouded eyes feverish, perhaps maddened by the magic that had kept him bound or the thorns of corruption they’d dug into his soul?

I swallowed; the dagger-like claws close to my skin. A sharp tip slid beneath the tight link around my neck. The metal parted as though the talon sliced through butter rather than thick magic coated silver. The chain slipped off my throat.

I gasped, chilled air half-choking me as I breathed deeply for the first time in ages.

The beast snuffled, pressing its face to my chest, his head easily as large as half my body. It tilted its head. Did it expect me to run? A coughing fit seized control of me for several long minutes, but a dozen other chains locked me to the floor.

It snarled, mouth opening in a gaping maw of rage and heated breath, screaming again. I flinched, ears aching as the sound shattered the remaining stone. The bonds slipped away, Winter’s power broken, though I didn’t move.

Lying beneath the beast, I thought he’d take a bite, or devour me as he had the other fae, but a careful talon-tipped hand wrapped around my core and lifted me.

I couldn’t stifle my scream as skin ripped away in a dozen places where the ice had fused me to the floor, pain sharp and white hot. My vision blacked out as I envisioned myself eaten by the beast and prayed for a quieter ever after.