A Prince of Death and Night (The Ravaged Kingdom #2)

Prologue

KADEN

S he looked so small lying in that bed. So unlike herself.

Days had passed in mortal time since I’d brought her here, and still she hadn’t awoken.

She’d lost too much blood, even for a huntress. Silas’s blade had punctured her gut, which meant she was also fighting an infection.

Despite the magic that flowed through her veins, Lyra wasn’t immortal. Wounds festered. Organs failed. She was terrifyingly vulnerable, which was why I’d brought her to Adraeis.

Time was more forgiving here. I’d called in every healer I knew — sent Adriel to hunt down every tonic they’d suggested — but they’d done everything they could.

The infection was gone. Her fever had broken. Lyra’s respiration and heart rate had returned to normal, but I feared she’d been broken in ways that even the most experienced healer couldn’t fix.

Her friend the witch was dead, and that fucking demon had been inside her mind, doing gods knew what .

It was a violation I knew all too well, and, sitting here watching her fight for her life, I wished I hadn’t let him live.

It wasn’t easy to kill a demon without a witchwood blade. Rowan wood was toxic, but ordinary arrows and spears couldn’t kill a demon in his primordial form. The rowan had to be bound in cold iron and runed against our kind.

Without a witchwood blade, one had to slay a demon when he was in a more vulnerable form, or else bind him with magic and force a rowan bark poison down his throat. It was a slow, agonizing process — one I would have relished after what those two did to her.

From my chair by the window, I watched her chest rise and fall as the golden light played in the locks of dark hair that spilled across her pillow. Some color had returned to the hollows of her cheeks, but my huntress was still too pale.

All I wanted was for her to wake up — for her to yell at me. Call me a liar. Throw her daggers at my throat.

Anything but this persistent sleep that made me wonder if she would ever awaken.

She’d be furious at me when she finally came to, but I would make her understand.

I could make her trust me again if she would only open her eyes.

A gentle breeze drew me from sleep, carrying the scent of laurel trees, jasmine, and sunbaked earth. I could sense someone watching nearby, but my body didn’t register their presence as a threat.

Then I heard a soft gasp, followed by the rustle of linens .

My eyes flew open as awareness came rushing back.

Lyra was sitting up in bed, staring down at the fresh scars on her arms. She was too thin. Too pale. Her eyes were sunken and lined with fatigue, but she was still her .

Relief as I’d never known rushed through me. I wanted to cross the room and pull her into my arms, to breathe in her sweet scent and feel her warm skin against mine. But I forced myself to remain where I was.

As much as I wanted — needed — to reassure myself that she was truly alive, I knew it wasn’t the time.

Lyra had nearly died at the hands of her old master. She’d slaughtered every one of Silas’s hunters and sustained deadly wounds in the process.

Then the demons had come — my father’s most depraved lieutenants. They’d toyed with her. Made her suffer. Forced her to endure the horror of having her very essence stolen — a fate worse than death.

I was probably the last person she wanted to see. The demon king’s son.

I saw when Lyra’s panic set in — saw her realization that she didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten there. And that she was unarmed.

“Easy,” I said, my voice low and even.

Lyra whipped around to look at me, a thousand expressions flitting through those big golden eyes.

Shock. Confusion. Terror. Rage.

Rage that I’d confiscated her weapons, most likely.

I’d debated heavily about whether I should take them. It wasn’t that I was afraid she’d slit my throat while I slept, though that was a distinct possibility.

The more pressing reason was that I didn’t know what sort of state she’d be in when she finally awoke. I didn’t know if I’d been too late — if that demon had already warped her mind. If she might turn her blades on herself or someone else.

But judging by the way her eyes narrowed in reproach, Lyra was still very much herself.

I watched as her gaze traveled down my body, landing on my wings splayed over the arms of the chair, the sharp onyx talons gleaming in the sunlight.

Demon wings .

Her nostrils flared as the reminder of who — of what — I was came hurtling back, and an expression of cold defensiveness slid into place like a stone wall crashing down between us.

Before I could speak, the door creaked open, and my gaze snapped to Adriel.

I’d sent him on a scouting mission to track the movement of my uncle’s troops and hadn’t expected him to return for days. His copper hair was windblown from flight, and there was a weariness in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in a long time.

“What are you —”

I broke off at Lyra’s gasp, and I turned my head in time to see her shrink back on the bed.

I realized too late that she didn’t know my royal guard and only friend. She thought Adriel was one of my father’s demons sent to drag her to the Otherworld.

“ You ,” she hissed, staring at him as though he’d personally ordered her abduction.

Adriel’s expression hardened. He didn’t approve of my plan and made no effort to hide it.

“Not helping,” I muttered, annoyed by his piss-poor timing. If he’d only gotten here two minutes earlier . . .

“I’ll just . . .” Adriel grimaced and ducked out of the room, behaving more like a skittish chambermaid than the lethal warrior he was.

I might have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so dire.

My royal guard never wavered in a fight — even when the odds were stacked against him. But at the first whiff of awkwardness or a delicate social matter, the male disappeared.

“You’ve been working with them all this time,” Lyra said coldly.

I turned to look at her, my chest tightening at the wrath and betrayal etched all over her face.

Everything. I wanted to tell her everything.

“ No .” I tossed an apologetic glance back toward the door. “Adriel’s not with them. He’s . . . He works for me.”

“He’s a demon.”

“Not exactly.” My royal guard was the only one of his kind — neither demon nor fae, but with a bewildering array of powers all his own. “What Adriel is isn’t relevant.”

“Isn’t relevant ?” she said in a furious whisper, slipping out of bed and balling her fists at her sides.

Looking her over, I could see her knees wobbling after so many days spent in bed. She had to be lightheaded from a lack of food and water, but she just stood there, glaring.

Then she launched herself across the room, heading straight for the open window. I caught her before she could tumble over the sill, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her tight against me.

She was so damn thin after a week in bed, and still she fought like a caged animal.

I held her close, breathing her in, knowing this might be the last time I got to touch her .

I felt it when the fight drained out of her — when she realized that she would fall to her death if she tried to escape.

Jerking out of my grip, Lyra backed away and lifted her chin to look at me. “Where are we?” she rasped.

“Let me explain.” I steeled myself for what I had to tell her — what I should have told her the night she found the apokropos stone.

“Where are we?” she repeated, her gaze flicking once again to the talons that tipped both of my wings.

I sighed. She was never going to trust me again. Not after what I’d put her through.

Still, I owed her the truth. And as soon as I opened my mouth, it all came spilling out.

How I’d used the stone to pass as a normal fae in an effort to gain her trust.

How my father, the demon king, had broken his bargain with the gods. About the insatiable greed that was destroying my kingdom.

I told her about his plan to rip down the veil between worlds — the reason he’d been hunting Coranthe witches.

All the while, she listened.

A few times, she allowed that cold mask of hatred to slip, though she was quick to haul it back into place.

By the time I finished, my voice was hoarse. “I never lied to you, Lyra. Never . Not once. Not with my words, and not with my actions. And I would certainly never hurt you.”

Leaning in, I felt her whole body quiver as I planted my palm on the wall behind her. I reached for her instinctively, wanting to brush my thumb over her swollen bottom lip. But she flinched away from my touch, and so I clenched my hand into a fist and rested it beside her head.

I willed the ache in my chest to subside, but an iron vise squeezed my heart. “Everything you felt for me, I feel tenfold,” I said. “If you believe nothing else I’ve told you, please believe that.”

Lyra scoffed, though she might as well have reached into my chest and ripped my heart from my body. “If that’s true, then take — me — back .”

And there it was — the promise I’d made in desperate haste.

It was the only thing she’d ever asked me for, and it was the one thing I couldn’t give. Not without turning my back on my people and relinquishing my kingdom to the Ravaging that was spreading across the land like a plague.

If I refused her, I’d lose any chance of earning her forgiveness.

“I can’t.”

“ Why not ?”

I swallowed. If I let her go, if I let Anvalyn fall, I’d never be able to live with myself.

“Because I need your help.”

Lyra just stared at me, a thousand emotions warring behind those eyes. Confusion. Indignation. Disgust. And that quiet, simmering rage.

“You want my help ?” she repeated softly. “After everything —”

Lyra broke off, and I could practically taste the bitterness of my betrayal hanging in the air between us.

For a long moment, the only sound was her thundering heartbeat and the rustle of wind in the trees.