Veil of Ruin (The Grey Wolves #24)

Prologue

“There are many definitions of hell. Apparently, one of them includes bad lighting, unstable physics, and your worst ex.” ~Myanin, moments before considering murder . . . again.

Myanin decided there were many things worse than death.

Being stuck for all eternity without cotton candy was tied with being separated from her mate.

What that said about her, she didn’t want to examine too closely.

Being trapped in a cursed magical book with her sort of ex was currently coming in second.

She stood with her hands on her hips, staring at the endless gray nothing that stretched in all directions. No sky. No ground. Just . . . existence. The kind that pressed in on you, like it was waiting to see what would break first. Her. Or him.

“Stop pacing,” Shade said mildly.

“I am not pacing,” Myanin snapped, spinning on him. “I am aggressively standing in different places.”

Shade leaned against absolutely nothing, because of course he did. Arms crossed. Dark eyes amused. Not worried. Not surprised. Just . . . Shade.

“You’ve taken eight steps,” he said. “In a circle.”

“Good,” she growled. “Then I’m consistent.”

Suddenly, the Nushtonia shifted. It sounded like pages turning, as the landscape around them began unraveling into mist before reforming into a vast nothingness.

Just earthy toned space all around them.

There was light, from somewhere, she wasn’t sure how, but she could see, which was infinitely better than being in the dark.

The ground beneath her boots flickered between cracked stone and pressed parchment, as if reality couldn’t quite decide which draft it preferred.

The biggest, glaring issue, besides the butt wipe djinn that was with her: Gerick wasn’t there.

No warlock general. No familiar gaze watching her. No grounding presence, no echo, no warmth. Just silence where her mate should have been. Her chest tightened. Just once. She crushed it down immediately.

Myanin turned sharply and jabbed a finger at Shade. “You’re not supposed to be here. I jumped into this damn book, it’s my hell, fair and square.”

“And yet,” he replied smoothly, gesturing at the vast emptiness around them, “here I am. Funny how fate works.”

Myanin narrowed her eyes on him. “If you say fate again in relation to us, I will stab you.”

“With what?” he asked pleasantly. “The air?”

Myanin looked down at her clothes and realized she had absolutely no weapons on her person. How in the world had that happened? She opened her mouth, then closed it and took a breath.

Do not kill him. Killing him will not improve this situation. Killing him will feel good, but it will not improve this situation. Instead, she needed to focus on the facts. Myanin’s jaw tightened. “Raja is free.”

“Yes.” Shade’s voice was sharp.

She thought about the words he’d said a few hours ago, or at least she thought it was a few hours ago.

What you just did was both impulsive and impertinent.

Were you listening to what Raja said? He didn’t say it had to be a sacrifice.

He said it had to be her. It had to be the healer you tossed out or else he’d be free.

What did that mean for the friend she’d tried to rescue?

“Is Jewel alive?” She swallowed hard as she waited for an answer she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“If I was a betting man, I’d say no.” Shade never had been one to mince words. “Raja’s words implied that the healer was what kept him tied to the book, and more than likely that meant he began to use the book to attach her power to him. So without being in the book, she wouldn’t survive.”

Myanin felt her stomach twist. Of course she would attempt to save someone and instead wind up getting them killed. She shook her head as she continued. “That means Dalton is dead as well.”

Shade cleared his throat and then said, “Yes. It’s a better end than being left in the world without his other half.”

She took those words at face value, even if Shade might have meant there to be a deeper meaning. Myanin continued to consider their predicament and consequences. “And we are trapped.”

“Also yes.” He smiled, but his tone made it clear he was annoyed. “As you can see, my answers just keep showing how fantastic our situation is.”

She rested her hands on her hips, no longer pacing; instead, she tapped her foot as she considered her options.

Her options, because Shade played no part in her plans.

For all she cared he could wander off into some different pages of the Nushtonia and have his own story .

. . apart from hers. Maybe a story with a tragic ending where he accidentally walked off a cliff and survived long enough to feel the pain.

“You know, my life was going pretty good until you showed back up into it,” she lifted her head and glared at him.

He gave her a skeptical look. “Really? You were stripped of your djinn powers for murder, then mated to a warlock, and have developed an obviously unhealthy addiction to what amounts to clouds of sugar. Where in that do you get ‘my life was going pretty good’?”

Myanin folded her arms. “Touché. But at least I wasn’t stuck in a sentient book that smells like burnt parchment and regret.”

The sound that came from Shade could have been a laugh or a growl, she couldn’t decide which. “You always did have a talent for drama.”

“I call it emotional coping through sarcasm.” She flicked her hand towards him. “You should try it; it builds character.”

A ripple moved through the space, faint but definite, like something breathing beneath the surface. The mists curled tighter around them, whispering in voices that weren’t quite words. Myanin froze.

Shade straightened slowly, the lazy amusement leaving his face. “Did you feel—”

“Yes.” She didn’t want him to say it out loud; naming things here felt dangerous, like drawing attention from an audience she couldn’t see. The air tasted metallic and felt charged with something malevolent.

“Myanin,” Shade said quietly, “we’re not alone.”

She rolled her eyes, because that was easier than admitting her pulse jumped. “Obviously. I have the pleasure of your shining personality.”

He ignored that. “The book is alive. Raja made sure of it when he bound his essence to it. If he’s free, something else has to keep the balance. Something to keep the cage from collapsing.”

Myanin’s gaze swept the nothingness until it landed on a thin line of light far ahead, like the first tear in paper. “You’re saying this place is trying to replace him.”

“Yes. And it will start with us.”

For a heartbeat neither spoke. The faint rustle of turning pages came again, closer this time, accompanied by the scent of scorched ink. Myanin rubbed her arms, hating that she was shaking.

“Well,” she muttered, “that’s just great. Trapped in a homicidal scrapbook.”

“Stay behind me,” Shade said, stepping forward.

She barked a laugh. “After you, hero. Let’s see if hell wants you more than it wants me.”

The light trembled, widened, and the gray world peeled away in shreds of parchment. Something inside the glow moved–too tall, too thin, too unfinished. And it was coming straight toward them.

Myanin’s mouth went dry. “Shade.”

“I see it.”

“Good. Because if this page monster eats me, I am haunting you.”

The figure stopped at the edge of the light. For a second it looked like a reflection, Myanin’s own outline, but hollow where her heart should be. When it spoke, its voice rasped with the sound of turning pages. “The book remembers its promises.”

The figure stepped closer, its outline rippling like ink across wet parchment. Its words didn’t echo, they sank, seeping into Myanin’s bones until her pulse matched the rhythm of turning pages. “What the hell does that mean?” She asked, already dreading the answer.

Shade froze. “The Nushtonia was forged on blood-oaths,” he said quietly, the arrogance stripped from his voice. “It remembers every vow, every lie, every broken promise ever spoken near its pages. And I have a feeling perhaps it has access to our inner beings.”

Myanin’s throat tightened. Of course it did. Because why wouldn’t a cursed manuscript double as a cosmic guilt ledger? The thought scraped across her nerves, dredging up a dozen oaths she’d made and broken, some in anger, some in love.

“Perfect,” she muttered. “We’re inside a book with some serious grudges that probably span thousands of years. Not to mention, it can find out all our own screw ups and use those against us. This should be fun.”

The echo smiled, at least, it bent the air in something that felt like a smile. “The book remembers,” it whispered again, and the gray world rippled as though it had just turned another page.