Chapter 1
Aimee
“Harder, Blaise. Faster. Go deeper,” I grunt in exhaustion.
“I don’t think I can honestly go any harder than that, kitty.”
Blaise stops altogether to catch his breath, a dollop of sweat trickling down his chiseled face.
“Don’t stop,” I grit through clenched teeth. “We can’t stop Blaise; I’m not there yet.”
Blaise straightens with a huff. “Fine, one last time.”
He throws all his force into the blow, but I sidestep graciously, catching his wrist in the process and twisting it behind his back, throwing him off balance and onto his back on the mat.
An oomph escapes his lips, and he makes no move to get up.
“I’m done for, Aimee. Please have mercy. Gods, you’re killing me since you got your powers.”
I lower myself onto the mat next to him, sitting cross-legged and playing with small tendrils of dark shadows weaving through my fingers.
“It’s not enough, Blaise. I need to be prepared for my sister. For war.”
I expect the first prickles of my anxiety to show their ugly heads, but the fear-feeding monster has quieted down to a muted whisper since I got my powers.
It’s like my shadows snuff out the darkness from inside my brain.
They keep the demons at bay. At moments, the silence of my once tumultuous thoughts is as disconcerting as the numb-inducing fear that used to plague me at all hours.
“It will never feel enough, Aimee. Not after what that bitch did to you.” Blaise gets up on one elbow, regarding me with his penetrating azure gaze.
I know what he’s thinking, but not saying.
After years of trauma endured at the hands of my twin, and last month’s revelation that she is in fact Morweena—the ominous being hell-bent on destroying the whole realm, I will never feel fully prepared to face her, no matter how much I train, no matter how powerful I am now.
“It’s enough for today, Aimee. You’ve been doing nothing but training for the last two weeks. Sometimes I wonder if you even sleep anymore, or you just faint on the mat, and then, when you come back to your senses, you just keep going. It’s a bit insane, kitty. You’ve got to stop.”
“I’ll stop when this war is over and we’ve won, Blaise. We have the onpyrs and the Fae against us. It’s no child’s play,” I say with a huff. “Besides, it’s not like I have anything else to do anymore, do I?”
I hate the way Blaise’s gaze softens, not with pity per se, but with empathy. He’s been trying to make Killian see reason, to no avail. That motherfucker Vampire King still won’t talk to me even after over two weeks. Even knowing we need each other in order to defeat my evil sister.
Fine. Whatever.
I don’t care anymore. If he wants to hate me for all eternity for withholding my sister’s sinister nature and what she did to me growing up, then so be it.
It’s not like I knew Aurora and Morweena were the same wretched creature.
All I knew was that my sister, the supposed savior of Imiryion, was a cruel, horrible person with no ounce of kindness in her bones.
She abused and tortured me for years on end, orchestrating my rape by her henchmen, killing my pup when we were nine, belittling me constantly, eroding my self-worth and drilling into me that I was not deserving of love.
So, excuse me if I wasn’t prepared to shout out my trauma from the crenels of Sangeries.
“He’ll come around, kitty. Just give him some time. For all his thousand years, he’s not necessarily the most-in-tune-with-his-emotions vampire.”
“Whatever, Blaise.” I scrunch up my nose in dismay.
“I fucked up, and I take responsibility. He hates me now, fine. I will not be pining in the corners of the castle for him, hoping one day he wakes up and decides I’m not bad.
There are more crucial matters to focus on, like preparing for whatever comes next.
I just hope he’ll realize we need to kill my sister together.
I’m convinced the prophecy speaks of our combined powers defeating Aurora. ”
My dark shadows tug under my skin, slithering up and down my arms in discontent.
The realization that my shadows and I have different opinions about Killian still baffles me.
They yearn for him with a blinding intensity that suffocates me most of the time.
I want to focus on squashing the onpyrs, while my newfound powers seem to only care about that maddening vampire.
It’s as if they stem from a part of my soul that can’t exist without him.
A flashback of that morning before everything went up in flames crosses my mind.
His heartbreakingly beautiful face swirls around my brain in vivid detail. That rugged jawline peppered with dark stubble. Those bottomless onyx depths, where one could get lost and beg the heavens never to be found again.
His dazzling smile as he peppered me with kisses and vowed his eternal affection.
So much for the eternal part.
Disappointment coils around my heart like a spiked shackle, clenching it in a painful grip at the fact that I was right.
His love was fickle, despite his swoon-worthy declarations of devotion.
The knowledge that I played my part in shattering that beautiful illusion doesn’t escape me, though. I’m not blameless, and I’m not pretending to be. But didn’t I deserve to be allowed an explanation at least? A chance to beg for forgiveness?
I’m past the begging part now.
“I will not tell you to stop acting like you don’t care, but we both know you do, Aimee.
I also won’t tell you to go easy on him when he finally gets his head out of his ass, because I will enjoy tremendously seeing him grovel at your feet.
Just make sure I have a front-row seat for said groveling.
I’ll even give you pointers if you need me to,” Blaise says in his typical singsong voice.
A very unladylike snort escapes my lips, and we both start laughing despite the heavy dread that permeates the castle walls and my mind constantly.
At least I have Blaise in my corner. I couldn’t have wished for a better friend.
“Thank you, Blaise. For not giving up on me like he did. For being here day in and day out and letting me kick your ass on the mat when I’m sure you have better things to do. Spy things.”
“I love you think so highly of me, kitty cat, as to believe I’m letting you win on purpose.
But you’re beating me all on your own. You’re a force to be reckoned with.
You just need to work a bit more on that confidence, mmm?
” he says with a knowing smirk painting his lips, before standing up and offering gallantly a hand for me to rise as well.
I accept his help and get up before dusting off my leather-covered thighs.
“Same time tomorrow, then?” Blaise asks before straightening and turning towards the exit.
“Actually, there’s one more thing I wanted to talk to you about. A favor,” I say sheepishly.
“Anything for you, Aimee.”
I wring my hands together nervously, my palms suddenly clammy, before gathering the courage to speak.
“How dangerous do you think it is now to conduct an extraction operation in the Fae lands?” I ask with precaution.
“Very. But if there’s one vampire that can do it, that would be me,” he says smugly. “Who do you want me to kidnap?”
“Not kidnap, Blaise!” I splutter. “Extract.”
“You say tomayto, I hear tomahto, kitty cat. Who?” Blaise says without an ounce of care.
“You remember my friend Sariah, the one I told you about before?”
“The mind always in the gutter, pixie Fae?” Blaise wiggles his eyebrows mischievously. “Color me intrigued, kitty.”
“It’s not safe in Ryawarath anymore, Blaise. She was my closest friend before all of this.” A heavy sigh breaks free from the confines of my soul. “I wish she were here beside me. Safe. As safe as any of us can be during these turbulent times.”
“Consider it done.” Blaise nods solemnly.
“But don’t be brutish about it, Blaise. Not like you were with me,” I add as an afterthought.
“I would never!” He clutches his chest in mock indignation. “Leave the kidnapping to me, cariad. You’ll have your friend here in no time.”
“Cariad?” I frown at the unfamiliar nickname. “What does that mean?”
A shadow of a flush pinkens Blaise’s cheeks for a hot second. “Nothing. Just a silly moniker I would have called you in an alternate timeline.”
He swiftly takes his leave, almost as if he’s running away, before I can probe further.
What alternate timeline?
“Come find me, my child. Bring him with you.”
I wake up with a gasp, rattled by the eerie voice that keeps invading my dreams lately. It’s not really a nightmare, but I always wake up in sensory overload, my brain trying hard to piece together a puzzle I have no recollection of.
A nagging feeling that there’s something paramount locked up in my mind, trying to dig its way out, keeps shattering any attempt at peaceful slumber.
These dreams, they started after I got my shadows. At first, it was just a whisper in the dead of night, like a secret waiting to be unraveled. But each day, they grow more urgent—a vehement plea, almost commanding.
Where have I heard that voice before?
Why can’t I remember?
Sometimes, flashes of images that make no sense assault my consciousness. A tip of a silvered fang peeking out from a lush mouth. Otherworldly argent eyes, glowing from within. A sharp, curled fingernail looming above my head, reaching to touch me.
As much as I try to cling to any smidgen of information, it all vanishes into a nebulous fog. The words are all that remain.
Come find me.
Come find me.
I groan as a dull ache forms between my eyebrows. There’s no way I’m falling back asleep now. Might as well drag myself out of the warm comfort of my plush bed and go back to training.
Blaise is right.
I’ve been spending way too much time in the training hall, but it’s better than staying here and obsessing over a mystery that won’t reveal itself to me in its entirety.
Or worse. Thinking about him.
I slip on my combat leathers with haste and turn towards the doors, tangling my fingers in my long curls, fighting to tame my chocolate mane into a messy braid.
There’s a lone crimson tendril swishing in the narrow space between the door and the stone floor, rushing to dissipate back into the hallway.
What the fuck?
I pull the doorknob hard, and I catch just a glimpse of blood-red mist before it vanishes into thin air.
I sit there dumbfounded, blinking slowly to adjust my sight to the low glow of the candlelit torches that barely illuminate the corridor.
Was Killian just here?
Why would he be lurking in the shadows outside my bedchamber?
He was very adamant—he did not want to see or hear from me.
He all but spelled it out the last time I saw him, the day the missive from Ryawarath arrived announcing that Prince Noahlin had ascended to be the new Fae King and his new wife was the Fae Queen. My fucking sister, Aurora.
He didn’t relent for even one second. Didn’t give me the chance to tell him how sorry I was for everything that transpired. For my part in it by withholding my twin’s malevolent nature.
He stared at me with obsidian eyes devoid of any emotion and told Blaise to keep me out of his sight. I was no longer banished from his castle, but I wasn’t forgiven, nor were my lies forgotten.
I must be imagining things.
My longing for him, which I’m trying my damnedest to suppress, must be so all-encompassing that I’ve started hallucinating his presence.
No, he most definitely wasn’t here just now.
He hates me.
And I’d better accept that once and for all.
Whatever we had for a brief moment in time was just that—an ephemeral daydream that couldn’t withstand the harsh reality.
My dark shadows coil around my limbs in mourning. The stubborn things won’t abandon the reverie so easily, but eventually they’ll give up on him just as he gave up on us.