CHAPTER ONE
VESPER
Alone in the throne room, Vesper glowered at his shattered reflection.
The red-rimmed eyes he could credit to his sleepless nights, but gods only knew how he’d gotten that split, purple cheek.
Through his drunken stupor he barely felt the mirror shards skewered into his fists, though he wished the pain would distract him, because as Emmery’s voice rang through his head, he sank inwards, deeper and deeper.
I know. I know everything now.
He bared his teeth as his fist connected with the mirror.
The glass gave way, splintering into his hand beneath the sheer force of his anger.
He had to put it somewhere, expel it from his body, or it would eat him alive.
A mottled mess of flesh and crimson soaked the wall, but he couldn’t be bothered to care.
He reared back and struck it once more.
Twice.
He threw his entire weight into the third. The whole thing shattered, and glass rained down around him in a stupidly poetic reflection of his world falling to pieces. Of all the moronic choices he’d made, what he’d done to Emmery was the worst. To say he fucked up was putting it lightly.
That sinking feeling only grew as his eyes fixed on the gold-flecked bloodstained floor—a reminder of the day he’d stumbled into Castle Dusk and his world had halted.
Stopped entirely. Crumbled to irreparable pieces.
When the marriage bond had torn him in two, it fractured something irreparable inside him.
Now each time he saw the stain, it aggravated that aged wound.
But when he found Emmery across the gate again, and she looked straight through him, it split wide open, messy, gruesome, and guilt riddled. Because, with her memories gone, it was like meeting a stranger’s eyes. A ghost.
All this time he’d thought her dead, stolen from him like Izzy and his kingdom. Even Fionn had kept her whereabouts a secret, which he was still bloody pissed about. But the absolute worst part of this situation was how fucking badly the world had hurt her.
And he hadn’t been there to protect her. Not that she needed protecting. It was Emmery after all. The woman could reduce a man to ash with a single glance. Yet, it’d been his duty to look after her. Protect her. Fuck the marriage bond, he’d promised her that long before.
At least, he had before she’d torched Ellynne.
Since then, almost a century had passed. Things had changed.
He had changed.
Vesper’s head lolled and his pulse thudded angrily in his ears as Asaella’s crest, seared into the top of his hand, glared back at him. A future favour, Destonne had declared. What demented nonsense would he demand?
Fuck him. Fuck the king and all his lies and manipulation and all those years Destonne stole from him.
He wanted to take a knife and carve the pactum from his skin, but he couldn’t escape this. Destonne had dangled everything Vesper ever wanted in front of him. Made him choose. And, like an imbecile, Vesper had let him win. Had given in so fucking easily.
He had told himself it would be simple: bring Emmery to safety, use her for Izzy’s spell, and then hand her over.
He’d somehow convinced himself in his pea-sized, prick of a brain that betraying Emmery was a fair price to pay for everything he ever wanted.
That she deserved it after what she’d done.
He was so bloody wrong.
They’d spent all that time apart, her memories erased, and yet the glimmer of the girl he once knew haunted him each time their eyes met.
And he fucking hated it. Hated the throb in his chest that wouldn’t ebb. Wouldn’t stop breaking.
His father was right.
He was weak.
Vesper shrank away from the shattered mirrors and turned to the obsidian monstrosity of a throne. It berated him in a voice echoing his father’s.
This will be yours once I’m gone.
As if he’d asked for any of this. Ellynne belonged to Izzy, not him.
Be better, Vesper. Be the man I’m proud to call my son.
He never would be and it was too late now.
Since childhood, the world had splintered around him.
The problems were bigger than him. Bigger than all of them.
Their roots ran deeper than the Trees of Eternal Blood.
His father had been the first Hollow King in history, and he still couldn’t liberate them.
Now only Vesper remained to save them from Destonne’s tyrant rule.
His head swam, maybe from the drinks or his empty stomach. When did he last eat, or rather, when was he last hungry? He couldn’t remember. Food tasted like soot now, and he’d been on a liquid diet of sorts.
He meandered to the last untouched mirror.
His father had always cherished these bloody things, meant to symbolize the mirrored part of the soul.
A talking piece for entertaining company.
Every time Vesper looked into them, he only thought of his father, and how fucking disappointed he would be.
Because if they reflected Vesper’s soul now, it would be a shrivelled pile of Hollowhound shit.
He rubbed his eyes and sighed. He needed to pull himself together. Emmery would likely never forgive him for what he did, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t watch over her. He’d figure out a way to get her back, sort through all of this prophecy nonsense, and make this up to her somehow.
With a sharp whistle through his teeth, Vesper summoned Quill. The raven, all shiny black wings and glossy feathers, emerged out of swirling black wisps then perched on Vesper’s outstretched arm. Four purple eyes brimmed with questions.
“I’m fine,” Vesper said, but his voice quivered like the pluck of a guitar string.
The raven nipped at the air in disbelief.
“Really, Quill, I’m fine. It’s fine.” After he eased his tension through a long breath, he asked, “Can you make sure Emmery’s safe for me?”
The raven studied him like he inspected each thread of Vesper’s soul and picked him raw. This unexplained connection had always existed between them, ever since the day Quill found him in the woods outside Castle Dusk. When he’d embedded himself under Vesper’s skin. The sneaky, avian bastard.
Seemingly satisfied with whatever he’d seen, the raven took flight.
Quill echoed the request in a perfect mimic of Vesper’s voice, then sang a playful chirp of an old tune.
The song lived in Vesper’s heart, like his mother sang it to him and Izzy in the womb, but he rarely hummed it.
Mostly because it only made him sad. Nostalgic.
Then Quill melded into the air as if he’d never appeared in the shattered throne room at all.
Left to the tangle of his own thoughts, Vesper studied the bloody scraps of skin and exposed tendons in his hands.
The effects of his drink dwindled by the second, and his pain began to surface like wine soaking through rags.
But he didn’t retreat from it. He welcomed it by clenching his fists until the bones of his knuckles punched through.
He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Briar’s gasp before she hissed, “What in Deimos’s name did you do? You're lucky it’s me and not Marlys. She’d have your head.” Briar scoffed in distaste. “There’s glass everywhere.”
Her heavy booted footsteps echoed off the throne room walls, now spiderwebbed in broken glass.
Briar rounded him then froze, her face hard as stone until she met his eyes.
That vein that always scared the shit out of him pulsed in her forehead, but he must have looked like he’d been dragged through the deepest pit of the Hollow because pity replaced her anger.
Vesper tore his gaze away and stared at the floor, not ready to face her, or anyone else, for that matter.
Briar crouched, careful of the glass shards, and slipped her red-tipped fingers under his. “Merciful Deimos—your hands, Ves.”
The touch made his eyes burn, and he sucked air through his teeth. White speckled his vision as she bent his fingers, testing each one like she enjoyed his pain just a little.
“I’m fine,” he gritted out, the words numb.
“Did you sleep on a tavern floor?” Briar clapped a hand over her nose and groaned. “Lick it too? Ugh, you reek.”
“I’ve only had a few,” he replied, but his slurred speech did little to help his case.
He’d frequented several taverns in the last several days, then finished his night with a bottle of liquor in bed.
The other weeks of his, for lack of a better term, bender, blurred into a mindless barrage of gods only knew what.
Briar sighed and raked a hand through her navy hair. “What spurred the urge to redecorate? Maybe next time just move a few pictures, huh?” She offered a small smirk, then surveyed the shattered mirrors lining the throne room. “Malachai would be furious,” she muttered, almost to herself.
Vesper choked on a humourless laugh and picked at the glass lodged in his knuckles, only making it worse.
His father wouldn’t have been furious.
He would’ve disowned Vesper.
Shame clogged his throat. He wasn’t sure when he had become … this. Whatever this was. With what he’d done, he was worse than Destonne. He’d sent their only hope of staunching this fever into the hands of a madman and destroyed, well, everything.
He tried a tiny, numb smile to curb the guilt, but when it didn’t work, he studied his boots. “I fucked up. And I’m sorry I kept secrets from you, Bri. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to rearrange my face. I’ll even let you take a swing. Avoid the nose though, my profile just won’t look right.”
Briar flicked the tip of his nose. “Would you stop? I’m trying to be mad at you.” She settled on the floor and butted her hip against his. “Though this wounded prince act is filling me with all sorts of forgiveness, you’ve been a complete ass. And you owe Emmery so much more than an apology.”
“I know. We need to get her back. She’s not safe with him.
” Vesper rubbed his face though he barely felt it through the boozy haze.
“He’s a bloody lunatic. I served him for a century, I know what he’s like, and I could tell when I went to Blackdawn castle, he’s already wormed his way under her skin.
” Vesper grit his teeth. “He’s so full of shit, he’s a walking pig pen.
He mutilated Izzy, murdered his father, and he’ll—fuck, when he’s done with her, he’ll kill her too. ”
“For now, Emmery can handle herself. She’s stronger than you give her credit for.
But I’ll write a letter and request a visit to that shithole of a kingdom.
To see Fionn, too.” Briar gently squeezed his wrist then glanced around the room, the home he’d traded for his friendship with Emmery.
She asked, her voice low, “Was it all worth it?”
He fixated on the bloodstain. “What do you think?”
“This isn’t just about Emmery, is it?” Briar built the question with each word, like a precariously constructed house of cards.
“No,” he said simply.
Vesper wrenched a large shard of glass free from his hand. Though he barely felt it, the answering steady stream of blood made him grit his teeth. He clamped a hand over the wound. His mind tangled in a mess of thoughts and emotions, and in the inebriated fog he couldn’t sift through them.
“I need to do something. I need to … I don’t know. I don’t know how to make this right.”
He couldn’t take it back. Any of it. Not only had he lost Izzy again, but her part in the prophecy now lay incomplete too. Without her and Emmery, this fever among their people would rage forever like some bloody nightmare.
Briar patted his back and pursed her lips as she studied his hands. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Everything else can wait.”
And though he promised himself he would get sober and deal with the mountains of shit piled on his desk, the next day Vesper rode to Malheim.