Chapter 1
Chapter
One
I t was silent in the training room, apart from the soft whistle of my blade flying through the air. With its thick clay walls, the manor on the Adraeis River felt more like a fortress than a house, and though all sorts of creatures prowled the corridors, the quiet was deafening.
Thuck.
The tip of my dagger sank into the wooden target just a pinkie’s width shy of where I’d intended it to land.
Good, but I could do better. Would have to do better if I had any chance of slaying the godsforsaken demon prince who held me captive.
I threw another dagger, wincing at the painful tug along my ribs.
The movement aggravated the freshly healed wounds along my sides — injuries that would have proven fatal were it not for the magical tonics and tinctures Kaden’s servants had been giving me day and night.
All that remained from my fight with Silas and those demons were a few angry pink lines down my ribs and crisscrossing my arms .
Thuck .
If Kaden was telling the truth, dragging me to Adraeis had been the only way to save my life. Neither the mortal world nor the Otherworld, Adraeis was considered something of a waypoint for lost souls. Or so I’d been told.
The male who’d saved me from his father’s monsters was the demon prince himself.
Kaden was only half fae, which meant the iridescent wings, the pointed ears — everything he’d told me — had only been half the truth.
He’d used the apokropos stone to conceal the demon half of his magic: night-black wings tipped with sharp talons and the foreboding darkness that rolled off him like clouds gathering before a storm.
His inability to lie, another faerie trait, had been a convenient smokescreen that had kept me from questioning who he was.
I’d been a fool.
Thuck.
This time, when my dagger landed, it splintered the wood near the top of the target. I loosed two more blades in rapid succession, each throw sloppier than the last.
Throwing knives at a stationary target wasn’t enough to dampen the furious energy humming inside me. Nor did it do anything to shrink the lump that rose in my throat every time Imogen’s face flashed through my mind.
I needed to meet an opponent blade to blade, to feel the burn of my straining muscles and the strike reverberate through my bones.
I needed to plunge my dagger into the rotting black pit where Kaden’s heart should have been.
As if awakened by the murderous impulse festering inside me, my fingers twitched toward my weapons holster. But the sheath that normally held my witchwood blade was empty.
Though I kept all my knives honed to razor sharpness, my mundane daggers and swords would do nothing against a demon. The blade I’d inherited from my witch mother was the only weapon that could kill a demon, so I hadn’t been surprised when it wasn’t returned to me with the rest of my cache.
How could I have been so careless?
I’d trusted Kaden, and in doing so, I’d made myself vulnerable. I’d allowed him to peel back my defenses one by one, as easily as I’d shed my clothes for him after our journey to the in-between.
The demon who’d dragged my mother to Dorthus to be enslaved by the Dark King and then taken her life.
Shaking with rage, I crossed the room and started yanking my daggers out of the wooden dummy, sheathing them at my thighs.
Target practice was doing nothing to quell the destructive force of my fury and grief, so I went to work on the heavy bag hanging from a chain in the corner of the room, relishing the burn of my knuckles against canvas as I sank punch after punch.
Soon I’d sweated through the stone-colored linen top and pants I’d been given to wear. A few strands of dark hair had escaped my hasty braid and stuck to the sides of my face.
Apparently, the leather pants and jacket I’d arrived in had been so badly mangled in the fight with Silas that the servants had thrown them out. The armoire in the room I’d awoken in had been full of light, billowy garments more appropriate to the balmy climate of Adraeis .
The clothes would have been terrible in a real fight, but I had to admit they were more comfortable than my leathers.
Once my knuckles were red and raw, I switched to kicks and elbows. The punching bag swung rhythmically with my strikes, the rattling of the chain echoing in the huge, windowless room.
Exhausted, I flopped down on the straw mat intended for sparring and flung an arm over my face, chest heaving. Hot, angry tears burned in my throat, but I refused to let them fall.
Kaden might have wanted to end his father’s reign, but the demon prince was no better. He was the Taker of Souls, who’d spent centuries collecting souls to feed the Dark King’s insatiable greed.
If Anvalyn was being consumed by some horrible darkness, then it was Kaden’s own fault.
He wasn’t going to hand me over to his father. Not when I was the only one who could slay the demon king. A witchwood blade was lethal to a demon, but the runes that imbued my dagger with its magic meant it could only be wielded by a Coranthe witch — a line that had all but died out.
I would kill Semphrys and escape back to the mortal world. But first, I would kill the prince.
It wouldn’t be easy. Kaden hadn’t survived five centuries by placing his trust in huntresses with a vendetta. I’d have to bide my time and wait for the perfect opportunity.
Until then, I’d be a thorn in his fucking ass.
Satisfied, I hauled my sore body off the mat and crossed to the heavy wooden doors that led out of the training room. I flung them open, half hoping I might smack my prison warden in the face, but the Morkahlf stood several paces back, eyeing me warily as I strode into the hallway .
“I’m hungry,” I announced, planting my hands on my hips and looking up at him expectantly.
The prince’s royal guard — Adriel — had been assigned as my personal shadow. He’d been standing guard outside my chamber, and he’d tailed me silently throughout my self-guided tour of the manor.
Though his wings were tipped in talons like Kaden’s, he had the pointed ears of the fae. The harsh, angular lines of his face were accentuated by choppy tarnished copper locks that grazed his chiseled jawline.
I might have said the male was beautiful if he weren’t the bane of my existence.
“He’s waiting for you in the dining room,” Adriel rumbled, fixing me with a pair of sharp hazel eyes. Not the beetle-black eyes of a demon.
Adriel wasn’t a demon, I reminded myself. He was a Morkahlf — whatever that was.
“Seriously?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
A small crease appeared between his brows, as if he couldn’t fathom being anything but serious.
“Seriously.”
I scoffed. He had a lot of fucking nerve. “I will not be eating with the spawn of Semphrys. Just . . . point me toward the kitchen.”
Adriel’s mouth became a thin line, and the groove between his eyebrows deepened. “I have explicit instructions to bring you to the dining room for lunch with —”
“That sounds like your problem,” I broke in, sidestepping the Morkahlf and heading down the corridor.
The kitchen had to be around here somewhere. I’d find it with or without his help .
But I hadn’t taken two full steps before my prison warden was in front of me again.
“Maybe I wasn’t clear,” he bit out. “You eat with him in the dining room, or you don’t eat at all.”
I blinked, drawing myself up to my full height. I still only reached Adriel’s collarbones. “Is he seriously giving me that ultimatum?”
I’d expected the demon prince to make my life a living hell, but withholding food was hardly original.
The Morkahlf shook his head. “ He isn’t. I am.”
My hands curled into fists, knuckles stinging from my earlier workout. “Is that so?”
“Yes.” He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “There are . . . things you do not understand. Things that you should know.”
“And whose fault is that?” I snapped. “Kaden’s been lying to me from the very beginning.”
“He never lied.”
“Well, he only gave me half the truth, and the half he omitted was pretty important.”
Not to mention that he’d taken my mother to be used as the demon king’s pawn, then dumped her in the Quarter to be brutalized by a vampire.
“Which is why you two need to talk,” said Adriel.
“We did talk. And it did not go well.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked, and Adriel leaned into my space. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper, and yet it sent a shiver down my spine. “You know, Kaden may be motivated to keep you alive, but I am . . . less enthusiastic.”
“Likewise.”
For a long moment, we glared at one another, and I wondered how many lives the Morkahlf had taken. He might not have been a demon, but he was the prince’s right hand for a reason.
Adriel didn’t reach for a weapon. He didn’t threaten or attempt to use force. He didn’t so much as blink. The corner of his mouth just twitched in a cruel, feline smirk.
We both knew he didn’t need a weapon. He could crush me with a thought.
Furious, I turned and stalked down the corridor toward the dizzying staircase that led up to my chamber.
If he planned to deny me food for refusing to grant the demon prince an audience, fine. I’d spent five years under Silas’s command. I’d been starved, cut, and beaten within an inch of my life. I could deal with a few hunger pangs.
Even my warden had to sleep sometime, and when he did, I would slip out of my room and find the damned kitchen.
The soft shuffle of boots against stone let me know that Adriel had followed. I already knew the male could move without making a sound. The fact that he made noise at all told me he wanted me to be aware of his presence.
Asshole .
My memory of what had happened at Silas’s was fuzzy, but I had a vague recollection of a struggle — of the Morkahlf swooping in and admonishing the blood demon for draining me of my power.
Ironically, Adriel might have been the reason I was still alive. But only because Kaden needed me.
Even in my fit of rage, I couldn’t help but gape at the staggering works of art that lined the walls of the manor. While everything else in Adraeis seemed to be some muted shade of bone or clay, the paintings that decorated the house were rich and vibrant .
Landscapes were painted with expert strokes in shades I didn’t have names for. They were colors that didn’t exist in the mortal world, and I found myself staring at the artwork, trying to relate the striking hues to shades I was familiar with.
All throughout the house, servants quietly went about their work.
A female swept a broom back and forth along the corridor but never seemed to collect any dust. Children dressed in the same style of linen garments I wore chased each other from room to room.
In one antechamber we passed, a maiden cloaked in shadow strummed a giant harp.
None of them so much as looked up as I passed. They seemed oblivious, or at least indifferent, to my presence.
“Who are these people?” I asked in a whisper, knowing that Adriel would be able to hear me.
“Residents of Adraeis.”
I took another few steps, glancing behind me as a tow-headed fae child shrieked in delight. “Are they . . . dead ?”
“Not exactly. They’re here because their souls haven’t yet passed on. Or because Kaden saved them from a fate worse than death.”
“Having their souls consumed by the demon king,” I guessed.
“Yes.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, as if the thousands of souls Kaden had stolen for his father meant nothing.
“Why can’t they see me?”
“They can see you,” said Adriel. “They just . . . have little interest in the living.”
I swallowed. So I wasn’t dead. That was a small comfort. “And you?” I asked, only half joking.
“I have little interest in anyone, apart from the prince.”
“Are you two, like, a thing? ”
I wasn’t sure why I was asking. I certainly had no interest in the love life of one as despicable as the Taker of Souls.
“No.”
“More like brothers?” I guessed.
“I am the prince’s royal guard,” he said simply. “But beyond that, I owe my very existence to him.”
I raised my eyebrows but didn’t say another word as we ascended the seemingly endless staircase that led up to my chamber. On every landing, golden light spilled from an identical small arched window, each of which looked out on the Adraeis River glistening in the distance.
My heart dropped as I reached my room, and the reality of my situation sank in. I was Kaden’s prisoner, trapped in a land between realms. Imogen was dead, and it was all my fault.
Imogen .
Just the thought of her made my knees wobble. I wanted to sink down onto the floor and never get up. Or crawl beneath the covers and hide from the world. But she would’ve said that was weak.
“He isn’t the male you think he is,” said Adriel when we finally reached my chamber.
“He’s shown me what he is,” I said wearily, retreating inside and turning to slam the door in my warden’s face.
“ What he is isn’t important once you see who he is.”
“All I see when I look at him is the demon who took my mother from me and then deceived me for his own ends.”
Something unreadable flashed in the Morkahlf’s eyes — an expression verging on human. But it was gone before I could decipher it, his stony mask sliding back into place. “Let me know when you get hungry enough to grant the prince an audience. I’ll be just outside your door.”