Chapter 1
Andrian Laurent’s reflection looked back at him with a dark, rueful smirk.
So much was painfully familiar: the black hair, the high cheekbones, the purple-blue eyes. A face he’d thought was so like his mother’s—a woman who’d been sweet and kind and gentle. A woman incapable of making a birth pact with a fallen sun god.
Andrian truly shouldn’t have been surprised.
When had anything in his life gone the way he’d wanted it to?
His reflection wavered, blurring slightly around the edges. It moved, and he moved with it, until it wasn’t just the reflection changing but his surroundings themselves.
Andrian was now in the corner of an unfamiliar room. A fireplace roared in a great stone hearth before a billowing canopied bed. His mirror-self stood in the room, too, beside the bed.
His stomach lurched, his heart giving a painful, hammered thump in his chest. He and his mirror were not alone.
Long, dark hair woven through with bits of gold. Sweeping expanses of tanned, glowing skin. Shimmering forest-green eyes, playful light dancing in the irises.
Mariah. Here. She wore only scraps of black lace, the sight of her enough to choke the air from his lungs, threatening to push him to his knees.
He tried desperately to lunge to her. To see if she was real, to bury his hands in the thickness of her tresses, to press his nose against the hollow of her throat, inhaling lungfuls of her cloying cedarwood and jasmine scent.
But he was rooted to the floor. Unable to move, unable to cry out, no matter how much he thrashed about and roared in agonized despair.
His mirror self, though, was not bound. He moved toward her, the figure that was him-but-not-him, recognizable smirk dancing across his lips.
Andrian’s heart skipped another beat when Mariah smiled back, giving the other him that playful grin he loved so much.
A memory, he thought. That’s what this was: a memory. Something that could be endured because he’d lived it, and it was his.
As he watched the scene and took in more of the room, though, he knew he was lying to himself.
This was no memory; or, at least, not one of his own. But it was undeniable that the girl was Mariah, and the other him was him.
So even though he knew he shouldn’t, Andrian couldn’t help but watch.
His mirror-self slid a hand possessively around Mariah’s neck. She went soft and pliant in his grip, long lashes fluttering closed with a whispered sigh. The other him swept his nose up her neck—just like the real him wanted desperately to do—and murmured something in her ear.
Something that made her smile widen and turn hungry.
“Whatever you want. Take it from me.”
Even from his corner, Andrian heard her throaty words.
The way she rasped them against his mirror-self’s temple, her hand sliding over his shoulder, nails tightening into his skin.
His real body shivered, remembering how it felt to be touched by her like that.
Like madness and lust and love and all the good he never deserved.
His mirror-self’s grip tightened, body tensing, as if he were a predator ready to pounce.
He dragged her off the edge of the bed in a blur of movement, spinning her around until she was wedged between him and the canopy banister.
Mariah’s eyes were still open, half-lidded and heavy, and even though she now faced the real Andrian in his corner, it was like she stared right through him.
As if the mirror-him behind her was the only reality, and he was subjected to being a bystander in his own life and happiness. Forced to watch but never experience.
His mirror-self brushed his mouth along the curve of her ear, down the column of her neck, across the sweep of her shoulder.
His hand slid down her body, across the glorious plane of her stomach.
Her weight had returned, the evidence of her time in Khento’s dungeons washed away.
No more hard edges and lines; only soft curves and smooth skin.
Mariah’s eyes finally fluttered closed when Andrian’s mirror-self slipped his hand beneath the black lace. Her body shuddered against his, a low groan slipping past her lips, her fingers tightening around the wood of the banister.
There was no teasing, no playing. His mirror-self worked her hard and fast. Each dip of his fingers sent a knife deeper into his real heart, stabbing it and ripping it with stinging, loathsome want.
This was his life now. His future. To constantly crave something he would never have again—to wish vehemently for a destiny he knew he would never deserve.
And because Andrian craved his own torment more than anything, he did not look away as the love of his life came undone around his mirror-self’s fingers.
Her soft gasps and moans filled the room, as much a torture to him as any physical prison. Her cheeks flushed that perfect shade of pink, lips tilted up in a wicked, wild smile. Just as Andrian was about to hang his head in defeat, his mirror lifted his.
When Andrian saw the mirror’s eyes, his universe froze.
Gone were the purple-blue eyes of his mother’s people. The tanzanite was swallowed up by a ring of flame. Red-gold burned back at him from within his own face, the once-familiar smirk pulling darker and more sinister.
Kol—the demon-god who’d spawned him—released a wicked laugh as he pulled his fingers from Mariah and licked them clean.
The world went black, tunneling him through a vortex of malice and loathing and darkness. Andrian slammed back into his body, wrenched from the nightmare.
His chest heaved as he blinked away the dark daze of his torment. He was seated in a chair in the middle of Khento’s great hall, with that same dark god seated on the dais above him, that same malevolent smile still spread across his dangerously familiar face.
“My,” Kol said with a low chuckle. “That was the most fun I’ve had in someone’s head in a millennium.”
Andrian’s skin was sticky and drenched with sweat.
He remembered now, everything rushing back.
The summons to the hall. The gathering of the Royals and lords.
The order for the great houses of Onita to kneel and swear obedience and fealty to their new Emperor, to follow the God of the Sun across the continent as he took it back from the moon goddesses and brought the world to heel.
Andrian, with spit and a snarl, had refused.
“If your memories are even but a fraction of the real thing,” Kol continued, sounding slightly bored, “then I can understand why you are so resistant. Anything for a chance to have that again.”
Nervous, hesitant laughs answered the dark god. Andrian, still fighting to control his breaths and his racing heart, let his gaze drift around the room, past Kol’s makeshift throne. Around the raised platform stood the five Royal Lords: Shawth, Cordaro, Beauchamp, Campion, and Hareth.
The sixth would not be joining them. Even Royals were not immune to the fallen god’s wrath.
Not even a Royal who’d raised a son of that fallen god as his own, no matter how brutal that upbringing might’ve been.
He should have avoided antagonizing Kol, but at this point, he didn’t fucking care. He had a feeling he was more useful to Kol alive, anyway.
A fact he hated, but one he might as well take advantage of.
Priestesses stood behind the dais, heads bowed. They filled Andrian with the same slimy, nauseous dread they had the first time he’d seen them.
The usual modest pale-gold robes that marked a priestess of Qhohena were gone. Instead, the girls were clad in sheer, drab white, held together by two small clips at their shoulders. The clothing was loose, the outline of their bodies visible with each flicker of the allume lighting the hall.
Andrian had to fight back the flood of rage at their haunted and broken expressions. They mocked everything his queen was fighting for, right there in this hall.
Wrong. So much of this was wrong—
“You think it’s wrong, but that’s only because I haven’t yet shown you how right it all is.” Kol shifted back in his seat, a wisp of shadow winding around his finger. “Or, rather, how right it will be, once I accomplish what I was crafted by the Crieré to do.”
The what?
“Get…the fuck…out of my head.” Andrian’s fists clenched, so tight they might break the skin. A bead of sweat dripped from his brow.
Kol leaned forward, a delighted look on his face. “Now, why would I do that? After all, I think it’s well past time for some quality father-son time, don’t you agree?”
“I am not your son,” Andrian snarled, his own shadows pushing against his skin. They cowered in Kol’s presence, unwilling to spill forth, but gods fucking damnit, Andrian would make them obey.
They were the embodiment of this cursed life he now led; the least they could fucking do was help him out from time to time.
Kol’s eyes still twinkled, but just as he opened his mouth, a figure appeared behind the high back of his chair. A middle-aged woman, muted, gray-streaked blonde hair coiled high atop her head in a perfect nest, snow-white robes pristine and clinging to her form.
Andrian could hardly keep the flash of disgusted loathing from his face as Ksee slinked her way beside Kol, lashes fluttering.
He definitely couldn’t hide his revulsion when she leaned into Kol, molding her body to his side.
“Having fun, Your Excellency?” Ksee purred, hand winding around Kol’s shoulders.
Something flashed in Kol’s eyes, unreadably fleeting. He turned his sharp grin up to the priestess, hand smoothly sliding around her body and grabbing the flesh of her rear.
Andrian gagged. “Traitorous bitch,” he seethed.
The hall fell silent. Even Lord Cordaro’s heavy, strained breathing halted.
Ksee glared at him down the thin bridge of her nose, flames dancing in her eyes. “How dare you, you miserable little letch—”