Cold Stars Midnight Glow (The Godkissed Bride #4)

Chapter 1

Sabine

This is what it feels like to die.

I never imagined it—how could I? Who would dare? To feel darkness creeping around the edges of my mind, folding in around me like dirt closing in on my grave.

I feel the life draining out of me onto the punishingly cold stone floor, and no matter how I scramble, I can’t hold it in. Can’t catch it up in my fists.

And, gods, it burns.

Ice-cold lightning rips through my heart’s center, shooting into my bones, until I’m sure they’ll splinter from the pain. Bursts of light flash behind my closed eyes, lighting up the spider-web veins in my eyelids.

With all my strength, I try to breathe. But I’m a sieve now, so full of holes that I can’t capture a single gasp.

Panic crawls over my skin.

It’s getting dark.

Darker.

And I’m fighting, gods, how I’m fighting. I’m fighting with every human ounce of flesh, scrambling to cling to that tiny slip of light I see cracked beneath my eyelids.

I have reasons to live. People who need me. Someone I love more than life itself.

And yet no matter how I try, my fingers turn colder by the second. I try to wiggle my bare toes, but they feel stiff as a cadaver’s.

How…how did this even happen?

I remember leaning in to hug my father one final time. My birth father, who I didn’t know existed until a few days ago. It didn’t matter to me that he was Immortal Vale, King of Fae. The most powerful god to walk the ten realms. Because for once in my life, I had a family.

And then?

Oh, right.

He stabbed the Serpent Knife in my back.

For a brief moment, I manage to scrape together enough strength to focus my energy. It’s anger. White-hot and boiling. Fury that I was betrayed by a man I thought loved me as a daughter.

I was so, so wrong. There’s only ever been one man who loved me.

Basten.

I try to part my lips so I can murmur his name. He’s here. I can sense him, somewhere close by. He was with me only a moment ago, our hands clasped, our eyes full of love, as we finally were about to get the happy ending promised to us.

But even the thought of Basten slowly bleeds away.

Basten, I’m….sorry.

And just like that, my mind empties.

My heart thumps one final time. Spent, finished, drained. Slowly, coldness seeps in, frosty as the stone beneath me, frigid as the blood in my veins, icy as my lips.

My soul’s final scream comes out hollow.

Then, there’s nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

And then?

Something stirs.

It begins soft as a mothwing flutter, the faintest tickle in the back of my skull. I can’t be sure how much time has passed. Maybe a second. Maybe a thousand years. But a spark—faint but determined—glows in the shadows shrouding me.

My lips tingle with the memory of breath.

Until—

With a jolt, my heart gasps back to action.

And it hurts.

My body remains still, but somewhere deep inside, something is sprouting. Pain ricochets through my chest with all the force of a hundred lightning bolts, but this time, I welcome it.

Because I feel something again.

It’s enough to nudge my waking mind back into the present. All my hopes and dreams chase after that tiny spark of light. It burrows into my body until the shadows are pushed to the edges, and in the semi-dark, one thought surfaces:

I’m…alive!

Vaguely, my ears pick up on voices outside of my body.

Yes—there.

People are talking. At first, their voices bleed together into one blurred orchestra, but slowly, one voice stands out. Deep and rasping.

“Kill him.”

Suddenly, as though I’ve been doused with ice water, I snap back into my memories.

I remember where I am: Drahallen Hall’s throne room. Basten and I were leaving. Saying our goodbyes and heading to Astagnon to confront Rian. My father betrayed me with a knife to my heart…

And now?

The back-stabbing bastard is going to kill Basten, next.

A bitter tang spreads down my tongue. Energy builds beneath my skin in a way that’s somehow cold and bright and deadly all at once. A thousand wasps thrash inside me, buzzing and fiercely territorial, ready to explode in defense of the man I love.

I will not let Basten die.

My body might remain a tomb, but I don’t need my body, I realize—I’ve done this before.

I did it when I possessed the tigers in Duren’s arena.

I did it when I took control of the cloudfox, Plume.

I did it when I synced my mind with Tòrr and decimated hundreds of Volkish raiders.

Before I can truly process what’s happening, that long-buried second self roars into control. It’s like shedding a snakeskin. Casting away the tender-hearted little girl they tried to break.

A part of me wants to cling to that previous self like an old, threadbare coat that’s kept me warm for years. But the light thrums beneath my limbs, buzzing and hot, pushing at the inside of my skin with the force of nature itself.

A gasp hisses between my teeth. Bitter, biting rage drips thickly down my throat.

I—erupt.

Light tears out of me in a hundred directions at once. It blisters down the length of my arms and my legs. It bursts from my temples, down the sides of my blood-spattered face, shooting out of the corded lines down my neck. It’s cold and terrible, blinding and seismic.

Come to me, creatures of the skies! I command.

From a million places at once, I feel them respond. Birds from across the castle gardens and deep into Vallen Forest. They pinwheel toward the Aurora Tower unquestioningly, as surely as I were pulling them on kite strings.

My eyes remain closed, but my ears are open. I hear wings pounding at the locked glass windows. Caws sharper than blades. Talons scratching at the latches.

Come to me, creatures of the land! I beckon.

The ground rumbles as my call is answered by an army of mice, cats, foxes, beavers.

I call to the yellowjackets. To the goldenclaws in the stable. To Plume.

And I don’t stop there.

I summon forth the creatures of the waters—fish and eels and salamanders—which means raising the very waters of the raging Ramvik River right here to this throne room.

The ground rumbles beneath me, vibrations rattling the windowpanes.

Wind, I command. Thunder. Quakes. Everything. Come to me!

The floor trembles harder, and I hear the gasps of people around me as they try to process the impossible happening. My summoned creatures burst through the windows and door, flooding the throne room with claws and stingers and sharp beaks.

Screams ring out.

The stone tiles crack and break apart as the Ramvik River rushes upward.

Pins twist in my stomach. It’s exhilarating, this power.

It’s wild.

It’s—

“Sabine?” Basten’s velvet-deep voice calls in my ear, and it’s so shockingly familiar that it tugs me like a rein, tethering me back to myself.

My eyelids flutter open, slowly, as my spirit swims up from the blindingly bright depths of endless light.

There—I can see him. He’s a hazy outline against the brightness. Even blurred, I know the shape of him the way I know my own breath. The flow of his raven hair. The softness hiding in his lips. The way his eyes drown in mine.

My lips purse to call his name, but a different voice interrupts my attempts.

“No.” Vale’s voice is stern yet rings with a strange note of pride. “That isn’t her name. Not anymore. That isn’t what she is.”

“I know who she is!” Basten bites out, fierce and sharp. “She’s the only thing in this damn world worth the gods’ wrath!”

At his words, my eyes snap fully open, and I stare up at the beautiful chaos I’ve called to me.

There’s Basten, so handsome it hurts, his eyes bleeding out every fear in the world as he gazes down at me.

Just over his head, more birds than I can count sweep through the arched chamber with deafening caws like shattering glass. Wind and rain roar through the open windows, and thunder rumbles so close that the chandelier sways.

“Basten?” I whisper on cracked lips.

His eyes widen for a fearful, awe-filled moment, like he’s watching a star being born. But the shock is short-lived. He blinks, then grips his powerful hands around my shoulders so tightly it hurts.

“Sabine?” he croaks. “You’re—you’re really alive?”

I gaze up at him as if seeing him for the first time. My eyes have changed, somehow. Now, I see all the little details I was too blurry-eyed to take in before. How could I have never noticed the dozens of shades of auburn in his hair? The pinprick scar just under his bottom lip?

I shift my gaze to Immortal Vale, standing behind Basten with the Serpent Knife still in hand.

All my love twists sharp as a needle.

I hiss aloud, “I’ll break the world before I let them hurt you, Basten.”

My jaw clenches iron-tight, the burn of my light blazing even brighter.

Heat builds in my palms, a power I don’t even understand beginning to spark.

Artain’s voice suddenly rises, high-pitched and sharp. “Brother Vale—look at her fey lines! She’s going to blast the fucking castle apart!”

My attention hooks on him. My eyes narrow. This golden bastard staged the Night Hunt so he could kill Basten and claim me as his own. Now, it’s his turn to be afraid.

I let out an exhale, and as though I’d spoken aloud, a swarm of yellowjackets swerves straight for him. He yelps as dozens of stringers batter every inch of his exposed skin. Angry welts rise on his sinewed forearms.

He flicks them away with zaps of his own flame-orange fey, but hundreds more swarm in to take their places.

“Fuck this! I’ll make her stop.” Grimacing under the wasps’ onslaught, Artain swings his bow around, knocking a golden-tipped arrow that he aims at Basten’s chest.

“No!” I scream.

Roots tear out of the river-soaked floor, twisting up from between shattered stone tiles and weaving themselves around Basten and me. Thorns jut out on the opposite side from us. Leaves unfurl to hide us from sight, forming a living barricade to keep any arrows or blades away from Basten.

“Sabine!” Vale shouts over the roaring wind and churning waters. “As your father and your god, I command you to end this!”