2
The Girl, the Witch, and the Ghost
Blair
Whoa, it’s dark. I blink against the night.
Blackness. All-consuming blackness, like a sea I’m drowning in. It’s so dark that even my night vision needs a moment to adjust. That strange kind of greedy darkness that absorbs life itself. It reminds me of Caryan’s magic—of the blackness of his wings.
Before him, I’d never seen such a deep, endless black.
Caryan. Of course. As if a day could pass without me thinking about him. Grand. Not even when I’m half-dead, it seems. Sprawled inelegantly on hard forest ground.
I reach for my head with a silver-clawed hand. Caked blood. The wound’s already closed, thanks to my fae healing—but I must’ve hit my head, hard.
Well, not hard enough, apparently.
I sit up, instinctively willing my magic to flare out—before I remember. Right. I have none. Not anymore.
Fuck…
I jerk my head up, my sore muscles screaming in protest. I scan the dark while I’m pushing through the pain. What the heck happened?
Nefarians. Right.
The renegade warriors hiding in the Black Forest’s endless dark. I bet my ass that the demon’s fire hasn’t gotten all of them. And knowing my luck, they’ll come again. Soon.
I claw myself upright, fingers digging into the bark of a tree. Every inch of me aches.
Hells, ever since Caryan drank all my magic out of me, I’ve felt my body in ways I never wanted to. My muscles scream at the tiniest effort. Even my own weight feels heavy, damn it—and fine, I’m not slim, but I’ve never felt moving took this much effort before.
I stifle a laugh. Yeah, I finally feel like a human, just as I always wanted.
And now that I do, it’s awful. Sure, I’ve still got my fae strength and fae healing, but I’ve fallen from apex predator right to the miserable bottom of the damn food chain.
Karma finally came to bite me in the ass.
But sweet hells—how do humans survive even a day like this? I rub my stiff neck and bare my teeth as my bones click and crack into place again. My dazed head and inner voice snares at the word human. Shit. The half-human. Melody. And the demon. Are they still alive?
My dizziness fades and my ears strain for the faintest sound—but the forest is a gods-damned vacuum. This darkness devours even silence.
The Black Forest.
Nothing else is so dark. So hopeless. Not even the Blacklands.
Fine, my mind maybe, but apart from that, this forest creeps me out.
I stretch, cracking my neck one more time.
I’ve got to find that girl. My head’s still in a vise as I start walking, the thrumming in my head pounding in sync with my steps while I try to be as quiet as possible.
This damn forest is deadly to any witch on a good day.
For a witch with no magic and no weapons?
Walking here is practically suicide. And Melody—half-human or not—she’s as good as dead out here too.
Spell-breaker or ward-cleaver or whatever she is, or not.
Yet the way she broke through Caryan’s wall with almost no effort….
Unheard of.
A skill like that could change everything .
Break a city’s wards in hours. Build new ones in minutes. Wards that take master magicians weeks, if not months, to weave. And then there are her other talents. No wonder the Nefarians want her dead.
A crack behind me makes me flinch. I turn my head too fast and pull a damn muscle. Ouch.
Shit—those Nefarians. They know these woods better than anyone. They’ve lived in them for decades, hiding out here from the world until it believed they were dead. Melody’s their chance to redeem themselves. To flip the coin of luck in their favor. They’ll be searching already.
I should hide. Or run. Or probably both in equal measures. Now. But that girl—the half-human, half-silver elf—she’s my last shot at redemption too. Maybe the witches would even take me back. Even without my magic. If I deliver the girl. Queen Perenilla still wants her. Badly.
Abyss, fucking everyone wants her.
If I arrive with her in tow, I’ll be tolerated. Even as a traitor. Even as a disgraced, miserable, magicless witch. I’d get spat at, sure, but better that than being expelled and thrown to the wolves. Or maybe I won’t bring her to Perenilla but straight to Palisandre.
That girl is my personal lottery ticket to surviving, and creep-king Lorvil would kiss my damn toes for it.
With her, I might be able to buy myself a new life.
I would be tolerated by every ruler if I arrive with that girl—even as a hated and feared witch.
That girl is my ticket to something better.
The only ticket, because as a fae without magic, I’m nothing other than prey.
I tell myself that’s why I start running—not toward the shore, but deeper into the forest.
The woods around me are alive. I can feel their hungry eyes on me, following my every step.
Running is too noisy, I know, waking creatures no one should want to wake.
At that very thought, a guttural growl rips through the silence.
Every hair on my body rises in answer, just as I spot the imprint of an enormous taloned claw pressed into the wet soil at my feet.
Yeah, I should be quiet. Not to even mention my hair. Fucking hells.
With hair the color of moonlight, I might as well scream “Come snatch me up, I taste better than bacon!” to every predator within five miles. A little midnight snack, bright as starlight.
They say this forest used to be lush—like the Emerald Forest, alive and blooming, when forest sprites still guarded the woods.
Until my aunt, Queen Gatilla, shattered it with her merciless wars, laying waste to all that was bright and kind, draining the world of its beauty, its strength, and every trace of goodness that once lived within it.
And then her hoarded magic corrupted everything.
She buried that stolen power deep beneath her damn amethyst tower Windscar, and the balance of the world tilted once and for all.
Rips opened between worlds.
Demons poured in. Monsters slipped through.
And the forest, among others, died.
I slow my pace, finally choosing stealth over speed, quiet over distance. No one really knows what’s in these woods, because no one ever comes out to tell. And running just paints a huge, red target on my back screaming EAT ME.
As I sneak like a creep from tree to tree, I try to slow my breathing just as my mothers taught me to.
Then I hunt for a mud puddle, letting my nose guide me.
Sure enough, I find a boar wallow not far off.
I step in, sinking into it up to my knees, then I roll in it until I’m caked in pig-shit and mud from head to toe.
Doing so recalls a painful memory. My mothers.
How the three of us, not so long ago, sat together in that inn at the crossroads, and Sofya retold the story of when I had been a child and rolled myself in pig-shit to hide my scent.
How they had to use up all of Aurora’s precious lavender soap to scrub me clean afterward.
Fuck. All I had to do was hand Melody over to Perenilla when I had the chance to, and my mothers would have been safe.
Why didn’t I?
Because that girl saved my life. More than once.
Because I’m a fucking failure. Always have been.
Because every decision I’ve ever made has been stupid.
Now I’ve doomed my mothers and lost my magic to the bastard I used to love.
Yep. I’m officially all kinds of fucked up. I can only pray that Perenilla, the new witch queen, really believes me dead and won’t bother my mothers now that I’m gone.
I swallow hard. Thinking of them, and that I’ll probably never see them again, makes a part of me want to curl into a ball and never get up again.
“Oh, Blair, then just do it. Might be the better way, dying like that. You have always been a disappointment, and everyone might be better off without you.”
My head jerks up at that voice. I’d know it anywhere.
Caryan.
A spike of cold rakes down my spine like claws, and my heartbeat surges in answer. I whip around, blood rushing in my ears.
There, right between the columns of trees, illuminated by a shaft of cold, glittering moonlight that looks surreal in the darkness, stands Caryan. The immortal angel. The Dark King. More beautiful than ever, his ever-changing eyes right now the red of fresh blood.
I always found his eyes the most intriguing.
Demonic eyes, all black save for the various colors of his irises, as black as his pupils in the middle.
As if they were worlds drifting through the darkness of the universe.
They are even more stunning than his god-like body with his wings—and hells, his body is stunning, and I have been with a lot of fae men, one more beautiful than the rest. Planes and ripples of muscle, chiseled and honed to perfection, adorned with two massive wings.
The feathers of those magnificent wings, as black as the deepest night, are ruffled by a light breeze I can’t even feel.
My heart stops—he is that beautiful. Too beautiful to run from. But I did, once.
I blink back to reality, forcing myself to snap out of it.
How could he be here? How did he find me so fast?
Well, trust an angel and his instincts, I suppose.
They are the strongest fae, their senses unmatched, like their power.
The forest might be dangerous and deadly, but nothing is deadlier than Caryan.
Indeed, he looks like the Dark King—and the Black Forest like his secret, demonic kingdom, bowing to him as he sets a foot toward me.
He will kill me. He promised me as much the last time on that mountaintop, and only the promise Melody wrung from him stilled his hand then.
“A failure,” he drawls lazily, his haughty face set, casually cruel. Like him. Always.
It makes me want to lash out. I force down a breath, force my chin to lift, call to that feeling of hot anger and let it run through my veins like fire as I hiss, “You don’t fucking know a thing about me.”