Chapter 1
ONE
PHOENIX
I run until my lungs scream for mercy, and only then do I stop, doubling over with my hands braced on my knees. But it’s not enough. It’s never enough. The rage inside me is a living thing—snarling and clawing at my ribs from the inside out.
So I straighten, alone in the endless stretch of forest with nothing but trees and silence for miles.
And I scream at the top of my lungs.
Still not enough.
I scream again, brace my arms out in front of me, and charge at full vampire speed toward a towering oak.
The impact when I hit it sends shockwaves through the ground. Roots tear free from the earth with a wet, ripping sound. The tree tilts, groans, and topples sideways.
I leap onto the trunk as it falls, riding it through a cascade of smaller trees. Branches crack and splinter. Birds shriek and scatter. The forest floor rushes up to meet me.
I jump off just before impact, grabbing the branches of the nearest tree to break my fall.
When I finally land, I’m sweaty, breathing hard, and my hair is plastered to my face with leaves and twigs tangled in the strands.
Still, the rage inside me sits just beneath my skin—barely banked. Simmering.
I scream one more time for good measure.
Back in my real life—back with Grandfather and his endless mind games—I’m never allowed to lose control. Even raising my voice a fraction could be interpreted as disrespect. And disrespecting Grandfather could get me hurt. Or it might get someone else hurt.
I collapse onto the ground, head buried between my arms.
Maybe it’s over now. He’s lost his leverage over you.
But even as I think it, I feel my face crumple. Because I can’t imagine ever being truly free of Vlad Dracul’s control. Not really. Not when he’s had centuries to perfect the art of manipulation, and I’ve only had nineteen years to learn how to survive him.
I’m mid-pity-party when a distant sound stops me cold.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
I go still.
Oh shit, there’s another heartbeat out here. With me. In a place where I’m supposed to be completely alone.
And it’s far larger than any animal’s.
Dammit. How did I miss it?
In the city, human heartbeats create a constant cacophony—white noise that’s always there in the background, pulsing through every building and street. But out here? Right now?
There’s just a single heartbeat besides my own. Even most of the forest creatures have fled after that tree I just demolished.
It doesn’t take much focus to zero in on exactly where it’s coming from.
Far too close.
I whirl around, scanning the treeline. At first, I see nothing. Then—
Eyes. Blinking at me from the tree directly behind me.
I lunge forward on pure instinct and tear a man from where he’s been completely camouflaged against the bark of a nearby tree.
“Don’t touch me!” His voice comes out weak, barely more than a wheeze.
I drop him. He tumbles forward, landing face-first in the mud. He’s so covered in moss and earth and god-knows-what that I can barely distinguish where the man ends and forest begins.
“Did Vlad send you to track me?” I demand, fury making my voice shake. “Answer me!”
I nudge him with my foot—not gently.
“Don’t—” He jerks away from me like I’ve burned him. But his movements are pathetic. Weak. Like he barely has any control over his limbs.
What the hell kind of new trick is this, Vlad?
I back away warily, watching him. Waiting for the reveal or ambush. The trap.
“Hey!” I shout, nudging him with my foot. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
He mumbles something so quiet I can’t hear it.
I inch forward despite my better judgment. “What?”
“Leave me,” he whispers, still face-down in the dirt.
Is he just some homeless guy who wandered out from one of the nearby villages and got lost?
I look around, scanning for signs of others. “Are you with anyone? Someone I can get to… help you?”
Against every ounce of common sense I possess, I reach down and grab what I think is his shoulder—it’s hard to tell under all the mud and plant matter—and heft him back up to sit against the tree.
That’s when I see his eyes.
Clear whites flash up at me. Stunning gray irises—translucent, like storm clouds over water. So alive despite everything else about him that screams he should be near to death.
“Leave,” he says again, voice still wan. Barely there.
Then he lifts one mud-caked arm.
White-blue light sparks suddenly erupt from his hand.
I jerk back as strange shapes begin to form in the air—geometric, beautiful, impossible—and then dissipate like smoke. He slumps back against the tree, unconscious.
I blink once. Twice.
What in the actual hell?
For once, I don’t think this has anything to do with Grandfather. Yes, the tree-man was definitely using some kind of magic at the end there. But there’s no way Vlad knew I was going to pick today to run away, much less that I’d come this direction and stumble across... whatever this man is.
Is he an elf? Some kind of fae?
Does that kind of thing even… exist? I don’t know if there are other magical creatures out there besides my family.
Other than Sabra, my best friend who’s a witch, I’ve never met any.
But Sabra and I are always theorizing that other beings or spirits might be able to break into this plane the way my ancestors did.
Just because we’ve never personally encountered any doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Grandfather has stories about running into... things. He never gets specific. But he always tries to keep a witch in his employ for exactly these situations.
I bite my bottom lip, studying the unconscious man.
Maybe I should leave this guy alone. It’d certainly be much better for him if he never got entangled with my family.
With me.
But can I really just leave him here?
As I start to back away, ready to run in the opposite direction, I make the mistake of looking at him one last time.
He looks so fragile. Like he might simply dissolve into the earth if I leave him here.
How long has he been sitting against that tree?
When I first spotted him, he looked like he’d become part of the tree—an endless bed of moss and ivy covering him, crawling around his chest and up the trunk behind him.
He doesn’t seem to have much energy left. If any.
In the end, it’s not so much a decision as an impulse I can’t fight.
I can’t just leave him here.
I step forward and heft him into my arms. He barely weighs anything—what weight he has feels like it’s mostly caked-on mud and plant matter—and I start jogging with him thrown over my shoulder.
On my way in, I passed a remote cabin, maybe twenty kilometers back.
I head that direction now.
He stays motionless in my arms the entire journey. Light as a child.
When we reach the cabin, I hate having to drop him at the doorstep. His eyelids flutter as I set him down, and I catch what looks like distress when he realizes where I’ve brought him. He starts shaking his head weakly, mumbling, “No. No people.”
“Hush,” I hiss at him, already raising my hand to knock. “I’ll get rid of them.”
His eyes pop open wide—those shocking, translucent gray irises flashing with sudden clarity—but he doesn’t say anything else.
At my knock, a man in worn country clothes opens the door. Shotgun in hand. He threatens me in the local Romanian dialect, gesturing sharply for me to get off his property.
“Is your wife home?” I ask in the same language, keeping my voice calm. Sweet, even. “Bring her to the door. Along with anyone else in the house.”
His eyes go blank in the familiar way they always do when I apply blood compulsion. He immediately lowers the shotgun to his side and nods.
“Mariana,” he calls back into the house.
A woman’s voice snaps something about how he’s a fool and she’s not even dressed yet.
But he calls again, insistent. Several moments later, a grumpy older woman appears beside her husband—handkerchief tied around her head, cigarette dangling from her lips.
“Hello,” I say, smiling at both of them. “Please leave and don’t come back for a month. Go take a lovely holiday somewhere warm.”
Her angry expression melts away as her eyes zone out.
I pull out my wallet and hand them more money than they probably see in a year.
But it’s the pressure I put behind the words—the compulsion woven through every syllable—that has them both walking directly out of the house.
The husband takes the money silently. They head down the little path toward the road without looking back.
I watch tree-man’s eyes follow them, then return to me.
“How?” he asks, voice barely audible.
I roll my eyes. “You’re not the only one with magic, tree-man. Now come on, let’s see if they’ve got a hose out here somewhere.”
I scan the side of the house and sigh when I spot the water pump in the overgrown front yard. “No such luck. This is going to be cold.”
I look down at him. “If I leave you here, will you stay put?”
He just stares at me, unmoving.
I narrow my eyes. “Stay.” I add focused compulsion—stronger than I bothered with the couple. Will it even work on him? Sabra learned to shield herself against me after we practiced. And Grandfather Vlad is the only other person it’s completely useless against.
But my uncles—all dozen of them—can’t resist. So it should work on tree-man.
I hurry inside the small two-room cabin and grab what I need. I also swipe a plate of still-steaming stew off the table while I’m at it. Good timing. We got here just in time for dinner.
When I return outside, my heart actually stutters.
Tree-man has made it halfway across the yard, dragging himself in the most pathetically slow army-crawl I’ve ever seen.
“I told you not to move,” I say loudly.
He collapses to the ground immediately, giving up his pathetic escape attempt.
I walk over to the water pump and drop the soap, towel, and blanket I grabbed from inside. Then I close the distance to where the man sprawled in the grass, plate of food in my hand.