Kassio and I crept through the shadows beneath the arching bridge that led to the inner keep. Once through, we used the shadows to walk up the wall to the roof of the guard house, keeping the celebratory music and laughter, the wild dancing in the courtyard below, just out of sight. Reflections of firelight danced across colored glass in the capital city’s windows. Silhouettes twirled. Banners fluttered. The river we had just crossed bubbled and pulsed through the city like life’s blood.
Life danced with joy all around us, every note of song, every tinkle of fae laughter, made my body burn with hunger. I had to find Lady Myrienna. Being in the capital, surrounded by so much magic, had made my condition worse. I doubted I would last the night.
I pressed my hand to the stone wall, feeling the ancient ley-lines thrumming beneath the city. Singing next to them, humming from every dark corner, every flickering shadow? Ancient magic. Dark magic. “She’s there. In the tower above the Queen’s Hall. I can feel her magic.”
“And how, exactly, do you intend to climb a wall covered in royal protection sigils and thorny fae wards?” Kassio asked, arching one elegant brow. “Turn into smoke and pray you don’t get caught in a wind ward?”
“If I must.” If I shifted to smoke and shadow, wild fae magic, wind magic, could tear me to pieces and scatter my remains across the city.
“You are mad,” he said with fondness. Then, quieter, “You are also running out of time.”
I knew that better than anyone.
And yet… I paused.
A whisper tickled my mind, silken and strange. Not the hunger. Not the ache. Something else. A pull.
I straightened.
“What is it?” Kassio asked, drawing his black daggers.
I didn’t answer. My gaze swept the outer courtyard below, past the golden light and chaos of celebration, past the laughing dancers and drunk fools, until?—
There.
She moved like a shadow. Hood drawn low, cloak brushing against the curve of her calves. A slip of a girl, ordinary in the way a lightning bolt might seem ordinary until it struck the earth. Her body glowed with magic; a bright arc of power surrounded her that I doubted many could see. Not wild magic like the fae. Not vampiric or shifter. Not the magic of death and shadows.
Unique. Cold, like glittering diamonds. My breath caught and my cock went rock hard.
I couldn’t see her face. Not clearly. But my magic—my soul—recognized her.
The spark hit like a thunderclap, violent and sudden. A jolt of heat, followed by the deep, aching echo of something ancient. Something lost. Iwantedher, when I’d desired nothing for decades. Ineededto touch her. Know her. Let her magic devour me.
She looked up.
Our eyes met.
And the world stopped.
Silver and flame. Her gaze struck me like a blade to the chest. Not just beauty—not just attraction. This was claiming. This was bonding. The threads of fate lashed tight around my soul and refused to let go.
A Death Mage does not feel warmth. We are not granted light. We exist in shadow, in silence, in the still places between one breath and the next.
But in that moment, I felt everything.
I felt alive.
The hunger that gnawed at my soul surged, not with pain, but with longing.Mine, the curse whispered.She is mine.
And she was running away.
I moved before I could think. Stepped forward to follow her?—
Kassio grabbed my arm.
“What is it?” he hissed. “What do you see?”
“Her.”
