Prologue
Twelve years ago…
“Hold her down!” The echo of a strange man roared in my ears. He wasn’t speaking to me. No, the command was for my mother. Her clammy hands were pinching my arms as she held me down on the floor. Her hot tears spilled off her face and onto my cheeks. “If I don’t get this right, we are all dead. There is too much oblivion in her, and this is the only way they won’t know. This is the last chance we have! Listen to me…it worked with the boy, and she?—”
The world faded in and out, and my head burned like someone was hitting it. I knew something was wrong when I came home from exploring the markets with my brother, and my mother had made a cake. The moment I ate a mouthful, a taste like ash stuck in the back of my throat, weighing down my chest,and I fell off the chair. There was a stranger, a smell of herbs in the air, and the taste of magic. This magic tasted like ash and moonlight, like the moment the world begins to burn into the stars. Like oblivion. Mother said all magic tastes different to us.
“They are coming, and we are all fucking dead if you don’t keep her still!” The strange man with grey hair looked to my older brother, who was pale and shaking in a chair as he watched this happen to me.
“Help me,” I pleaded. They all ignored me. I was so weak I couldn’t even lift my head.
“Boy, get in here and make sure she doesn’t make a sound!” The man lifted a knife, the blade flashing in the dim light from the fireplace. “Why did this happen so soon? She isn’t of age! This shouldn’t have happened here!”
The world blackened again until I woke with a scream. The stranger continued to cut into the skin on my stomach, and I screamed until my throat was stinging, even with my older brother’s hand clamped down on my mouth. His eyes were closed, his golden hair shining, and tears streamed down his face.
The pain didn’t stop, neither did the man as he continued to cut me. It was my birthday. My eighth birthday, and it seemed pointless to want anything, but I wanted to watch the stars burn at midnight, like they did every year on my birthday. Every single star burns, swirls and casts out a brilliant aurora light across the night sky. The Fallenstar Day, the day I was born, and the day it is said the Mother, Maiden and Crone goddesses are closest to our world.
The room was spinning, and I could barely see my mother’s face, but I knew she was crying, because I felt the wet drops on my cheek. I focused on her face, focused on anything but the pain. “I’m sorry, this… It’s the only way you can stay out of their?—”
A crash echoed and a smack not long after, which I thought was a door coming off the hinges.
“NO!” Someone screamed in agony. I thought it was the strange man with the knife. It might have been my brother…but I didn’t know. I couldn’t open my eyes. I could barely feel my body.Am I dying?The smell of blood was thick in the air. I remember rolling over, reaching for my mother only to find her lying next to me, her eyes unseeing.Dead.
A wail ripped from my throat.
Horror and sickness filled my weak body as I struggled to reach for her hand, to clutch her, but I couldn’t save her. My body refused to move or do anything. Wolves’ growls echoed around me, followed by the snapping of bones, until there was a man standing over me. No, not aman. A shifter. One of them. Mother always said we had to hide from the wolves and never let them see us. With every bit of strength I could manage, every muscle as my body screamed, I crawled over my mother’s body, protecting her. I looked up at the man with long grey hair and dark eyes. “Do-on’t you touch her!”
“A human, nothing more. Spirited, it seems. A damn shame she isn’t a shifter. They left her here with that thing.” The man grabbed me, and I kicked, I screamed, but it was useless. “Wipe her memories and throw her into the human district. Burn the bodies here and clean the place. We are done. I will tell the alpha there were no survivors.” I cried for my mother, for my brother, calling their names, begging for my life even as he dragged me away.
Death has followed me ever since, and it’s screamed oblivion.
Chapter One
“She clearly hates him.” Tannith leans on the counter next to me, both of us watching our high-tempered friend glare at the handsome wolf shifter who has come to the bar every night for two years—just to annoy her. It began with him growling at every male that went within a hair’s breadth of her existence, and it evolved into him outright standing in Illyia’s path when she ignored him and growling at her. All women hate men—well, I do. It’s only annoying when they look like literal gods. Which describes most shifters.
Tonight, it seems she has finally had enough of his wolf-possessive shit. Illyia is shouting at him for leaving food outside her apartment and knowing all the foods she likes but often cannot afford.
“I’m not seeing the yearning you’ve been going on about. You read too much, Mere,” Tannith says, shaking her head.
I tap my fingers on my book, which I stopped reading for this debate. It’s my break, and I have fifteen minutes before our boss will come and check I’m back working. The pub is quiet tonight though, and I might get an extra five minutes to dive into my book and pray to the goddess that I’m a secret princess, rich as fuck, and that some insanely hot male is in love with me.A girl can dream. Or read in my case.
“Come on, it’s the human district. Why else would a shifter guard waste his time in this shithole pub when he could be in the pack district’s much nicer pubs? Why else would she bother arguing with him every single night? She wants him back.” I watch as she stands up to him, her red hair falling down her back in waves I’m jealous of, as she pokes his chest with her finger. He grins at the contact, and I roll my eyes. “He wants her, she knows it, but she doesn’t want to date a shifter. She can’t leave the human district to be with him unless…”
I drift off, uncomfortable with the truth of what has to happen to a human like us to be welcomed into their packs. Tannith pales too. No thank you. I’d rather die.A quick death, I’m not insane.I have no interest in suffering. All my friends are human, and I know they feel exactly the same about the pack lands. I’ve seen humans in the Crone district to the north, just once when I was sixteen, and it was enough to scare me away for the rest of my life.
We both watch for a bit longer, seeing the tension bouncing off them like it’s a living, breathing thing, and for a moment, a betraying moment, I wonder what that is like. To have someoneburnfor you. Then again, I’d have to deal with someone invading my space. Tannith, who knows me better than I know myself, sears me with a knowing look. “You could try dating, Meredith Crone, if you want to find someone outside your books. That one kiss with the human boy doesn’t count.” Shecasts her eyes around the pub. There was another kiss, but we don’t talk about him. “There are potentials here, and?—”
“I don’t date, and you know exactly why I don’t bother. It would mess with my plans.” I purse my lips at the frown she gives me. It’s not exactly a lie, but the real reason will make her shout at me.
Tannith is my sister, well, not by blood, but by the strings of fate—or divine destiny of the triple goddesses—she is my person. We ended up at the human district orphanage on the same day, and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her. I don’t remember a single moment of my life before I was eight, or around that age, and I was a depressed mess who had given up wanting to live when I’d been dumped there.
The older kids enjoyed beating the crap out of us younger ones, a sick treat for them before they aged out of the orphanage, and I had gotten to the point that all my food was stolen and I had nothing and no one. That’s when Tannith stepped in, grabbed my hand, and told me we’d make our own family starting right then and there. She had a black eye that matched mine, and we both made a plan that night to get back at our bullies and get some food. We bonded over our dark humour and literal no care about if we died or not.
Now, twelve years later, we have gotten a job, a shitty apartment we share, and a life that isn’t too bad. The pub is warm; we get some gold each month to pay rent and buy food. Any tips we get and manage to hide from our boss, we give to the young ones in the orphanage. Maiden only knows they need every bit of gold they can get, and I learnt that from experience. It’s a far better life than the one we had in the orphanage, and I have a solid long-term plan that Tannith thinks is the ramblings of a virgin who needs to get laid. After five more years of studying, I can apply to the triple goddesses academies to learn to be a priestess. I’d be protected from the shifters, have moneyto give to Tannith so she can have a good life, and I’d be helping people until the end of my time.
A relationship would mess with that plan, and besides, males can’t be trusted. I learnt that lesson young too. A flash of images flicker through my mind, with the phantom smell of smoke, and I close my eyes.He is dead. I’m safe.A clatter of glasses makes me jump, and I shake my head, focusing on my friend. “You should explore those potentials, Tan, and then tell meeverything. I live through you.”And my books—goddess above—and the males in them who would die for their loves.
Tannith sighs, pushing off the bar and heading to a man who has sat down and is waiting to order. I lift my book, diving into the world at my fingertips. After all, they’re my only escape from reality, and I need them to breathe. And cake. I need cake, or life isn’t worth it.
