Crown of the Nymph King

Chapter 1

The Drasil wand pulsed, a raw, staggering force that drove Imani’s palms against the rough bark of a towering Draswood tree.

Behind her, the slip sealed itself in a shimmer of collapsing light as she cried.

The forest swallowed the sound. Massive trunks surrounded her, soaring toward the sky, ancient and watchful, as if they had been waiting for her return.

A roar boomed in the distance, vibrating faintly through the trunks before fading. It was too deep for any ordinary beast and too far away to signal an immediate attack, but the force behind it carried across the forest, enough to raise the hair along Imani’s arms.

Breath coming fast now, she whipped her head up and listened. Nothing followed. Whatever had made the sound was still far away, but it was large enough that the Draswood had carried its warning to her.

Imani remained frozen as she tried to steady her breathing.

The air in the Draswood Forest was denser than Niflheim’s mountains and threaded with wild magic that refused to bend to simple will.

Its signature pressed against Imani’s senses the way another witch’s might, only less focused, running through root, bark, moss, and soil instead of a single body.

The forest was alive but not in the way a person was.

It reacted by instinct, opening around what belonged and resisting what it perceived as a threat.

No resistance hit her magic signature now. She was Norn, born from the same magic that had shaped these woods, and the Draswood recognized that kinship. It was the same as the last time she’d been here as a little girl, though it didn't erase the dangers the forest still held.

She couldn’t look back at Niflheim, even though the space where the slip had been called to her. To look back was to remember, and hesitation was how queens lost everything.

The Crown of Life’s branches dug into her brow, its briars burying themselves deep beneath her skin. Stripped of its illusion, the true crown revealed its terrible glory. The roots dug into her skull, anchoring themselves as if they had always known where they belonged.

She lifted her chin and let the power swell through her.

It felt good. Too good. A magical power that moved like something alive, not only amplifying her magic but also honing it into a deadly edge.

Imani stood, brushing leaves and burrs off her dress.

Around her, the Draswood rose in a vast, shadowed silence, its roots twisting beneath bioluminescent flora.

Above the canopy, the Fabric shimmered. Imani squinted at the sky.

The magic was moving… wrong. It caught and snagged where it should have flowed smoothly, then snapped forward violently, like a gasp forced from crushed lungs.

Every invisible fracture was visible as she stared longer.

Another roar sounded. Imani held her wand tighter and darted her eyes around.

She was more than a fugitive moving between kingdoms now; she was also prey in contested territory. Given the rugged terrain, she had landed near the eastern Neshuin coast. A town lay about four hours away, and she had no time to waste.

Tanyl would execute her for the Crown of Life. Kiran would chain her for it.

Either path led to subjugation. They would strip her down until she became just her power, her shadows… and the bond she could not sever. She refused to become merely useful.

Wiping the lingering dampness from her cheeks, Imani started making her way through the woods. The girl who had begged her heartmate for mercy had burned in the Niflheim castle. What remained was forged in betrayal. Her heart was now sharp-edged, whetted by survival rather than by hope.

Shadows gathered unbidden at her feet, cloaking her as if the Draswood recognized her magic. Roots shifted beneath the loam, welcoming her presence. The crown pulsed a warning, its instincts familiar and safe.

Then a tremor rippled through the Fabric overhead, vibrating into her muscles. A massive shadow eclipsed the moonlight, and dragon wings carved a slow arc across the sky.

Kiran had found her. The dragon banking above the canopy was unmistakably him.

His body was broad through the chest and shoulders, built with the same powerful proportions he carried as a man, while black scales covered him from snout to tail and swallowed most of the moonlight.

Even at this distance, Imani could make out the mismatched eyes that made him impossible to mistake.

One burned green, while the other was an unnatural black.

Both were wild with the same restless intensity that always seemed to live beneath his skin.

All she could do was breathe for a few seconds. She needed to hide. The shadows would heed her call, but the question was whether she could call them back.

She couldn’t risk it. Instead, she scrambled through the knotted roots and pine needles, pressing herself into a dense cluster of ancient trunks.

As his dragon circled overhead, unease rippled through the Draswood’s signature. The woods had judged him a threat, and their instinct was to close around her.

Wrapping her hands around the bark, she drew on the Draswood’s comforting magic. Hide me, she prayed.

A response came through the ground before she saw it. Roots shifted beneath her boots, pressing closer around the hollow between the trunks, while branches overhead drew inward, thickening the cover above her.

Her shadows always began inside her. She could follow them from her body into the darkness.

The Draswood’s magic was different, though.

It arrived beneath her feet and beyond her reach, a force she could provoke or influence but not command.

The Draswood recognized the difference between a Norn elf…

and everyone else. Imani belonged here, but Kiran did not.

Circling once, then again, Imani could tell that the dragon’s search was anything but mindless. She had a sickening feeling that the beast had narrowed its focus as it hunted, and she hugged the tree even tighter.

Even the Draswood emanated a wariness that touched Imani’s magic signature, its branches ruffling in time with the beat of its wings. Bioluminescent moss dimmed beneath the passing shadow, and the canopy drew tighter overhead.

Silence shattered with a violent rush of displaced air. The ground shuddered as something immense struck the earth, too close to her hiding place.

Boots crunched over pine needles as the man stepped into the darkness.

She knew the cadence of his stride before she saw him—unhurried, always terrifyingly certain.

Kiran emerged between the trunks covered in bits of leaves and twigs, like something the forest had tried and failed to bury.

He was tall and broad through the shoulders, his black shirt stretched taut across the powerful frame Imani knew far too well.

Thick dark hair had been thrown into disorder by the flight, short strands falling over his brow and lifting again in the breeze.

His face remained infuriatingly handsome despite everything she now knew about him, made more unsettling by the mismatched eyes—fixed on the trees—that gave Kiran a look half a breath away from either laughter or bloodshed.

His onyx crown caught the faint moonlight as he paused a few paces away. Coiled power radiated from it in quiet waves, making the air feel dangerously thin.

Imani’s pulse thundered in her ears. Despite the horror of what he had done, the treacherous heartmate bond flared to life, a sickening wave of relief washing over her at the mere thought of him being nearby.

She shoved the instinct down, disgusted with herself.

How could her body still crave him when he had condemned innocent people to a scorching death?

After his dismissive cruelty? She stayed rooted, feeding her rage until it smothered the bond’s desperate pull.

He tilted his head, inhaling slowly as if tasting her scent in the air.

“I know you’re here, darling,” he whispered.

Trembling, Imani pressed harder against the bark. She wove an invisibility illusion over herself, reinforcing it with shadow and smoothing every edge until she was nothing but a tremor in the darkness.

“Run,” he murmured, a dark amusement threading his voice. “Let me chase you.”

The words slid beneath her skin. Rage flared like a lit torch in her chest. He wanted to use their heartmagic on her, the magic that would let him steal her power from the cursed tether between them. But she would die before she let him wield even a single ounce of her shadows.

He took another step.

Imani almost dropped the illusion to wipe the arrogant hunger from his face. But she held still. She understood him now. He wanted her owned, not dead. If she surrendered even an inch of weakness, he would never let her go.

Frustration tightened his features. He dragged a hand through his windswept hair and paced across the clearing. “I can feel you,” he growled.

The forest trembled faintly in response. Imani squeezed her eyes shut. Hold. If he found her now, it would be a war she was not yet strong enough to win.

After a long, simmering moment, he stepped back. His gaze lingered on her cluster of trees one last time before he turned and stalked away, his shadow swallowing his departure until only the echo of his presence remained.

Imani did not move until the forest resumed its slow breathing, pulsing the surrounding Fabric in an even tempo. It was a temporary retreat. Next time, he would not find the frightened girl he expected. She would see him on his knees before her throne. The thought was a fierce, satisfying promise.

As she stepped away from the trees, the crown thrummed twice.

Imani turned her head, catching a new scent on the breeze. Elves.

She knew something Kiran did not. He was not the only one hunting her.