CHAPTER ONE
Gods play with fate, but they cannot alter history.
Iam not evil. I am not broken. I am not the kind of woman who crumbles when everyone she loves betrays her. If I say it often enough, will it make it true?
“Cora, wait.” Hudson growled low, fighting the hold Donn had on him while his golden gaze bored into mine. “The memories we took were to protect you, not cage you.”
Memories? Whole chunks of time? Did they alter them or erase them?
Hudson’s eyes bored into mine. He was pleading his case. He wanted the opportunity to explain and make excuses, but I needed a moment to process away from my lying, overbearing mate.
I dug for that entity, searching for reassurance. Indigo may be a part of me, but she was a part I’d created to embody the elements of my psyche I found hard to accept.
Donn’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Let’s take this somewhere more private.” The world re-formed around me in a rush of cold, and I spun in a circle.
My wings flared wide with the motion, the tips clipping one of the obsidian walls. Icy blue light shimmered on every feather, making them blaze like I was wearing the night sky on my back. I staggered, unbalanced by the sheer size, the weight dragging at my shoulders as though they belonged to someone else.
“Clumsy for an angel,” Donn observed, his tone threaded with amusement. He reached out a hand, not to steady me but to brush the air just above the wings. “I could teach you how to fold them away, if you wish.”
I stiffened and raised my chin, tugging them tighter to my spine, but they refused to disappear. Just what I need—a new appendage to contend with. “I’ll figure them out.”
He arched a brow, mercury eyes flashing with knowing. “Stubbornness has always been a Roberts’ trait.”
How many Roberts has he known? Didn’t he just get back from his centuries-long god vacation? I ignored him, though heat still burned in my cheeks as the wings shuddered and settled to drag on the floor behind me.
“Where are we?”
He swept out his arms and grinned. “My home.”
Light bent around him, unwilling to touch his imposing figure. Donn’s face was a study in contradictions, sculpted elegance and quiet menace, the artistry of creation meeting the cruelty of decay. His hair, black as the void between stars, moved in a phantom breeze, and those mercurial eyes gleamed with cruel amusement. There were no flaws to find, no weaknesses to mark, only the unsettling perfection of a god who had never known the struggle of mortality.
I spun in a slow circle, my heart racing with the unfathomable knowledge that we weren’t anywhere on Earth. I felt untethered, free, the torments of humanity shrinking and the burden to save them paling into the background of the universe. Freedom had never looked more seductive or dangerous. I would need to grasp on to those threads that bound me to home or risk losing myself.
The walls arched into a ceiling so high it seemed to swallow the sky itself. The stone wasn’t inert—it breathed, marbled with silver fissures that pulsed like veins of starlight. Every echo of my heels skittered too long, as though sound itself didn’t obey the same rules.
A chandelier dripped from the ceiling like a frozen waterfall, light trapped inside each shard—not warm firelight, but the pale luster of stars at the moment of their death, fractured into diamond sparks that slid across the walls. Shadows pooled in the corners, thicker than ink, stretching toward me like they might be sentient.
“Come, we have much to discuss,” Donn demanded before stalking away.
The air carried the faint tang of iron and flowers, metallic and sweet in a way that pressed on my lungs. White and black calla lilies and chrysanthemums draped over the railing ofthe sweeping staircase, never wilting, suspended forever in the breath before decay.
This wasn’t just a home. It was a mausoleum of power. A jewel box. A prison. Beautiful enough to lull you into forgetting you’d been trapped.
As I moved, I glimpsed slivers of detail. The glass table ahead of us wasn’t glass at all, but volcanic crystal polished to transparency, constellations flickering inside it as if I were staring down into another night sky. The empty throne beyond shifted with every heartbeat, sometimes carved bone, sometimes smooth obsidian, sometimes a pair of shadowed wings stretched wide.
Indigo stirred in my chest, whispering her approval.“This is the marrow of the world,”she purred.“Our marrow.”
I shivered and squared my shoulders. No, not ours.His.This is more like my expectation of what an ancient god lived in.
I hurried after him, my dress skimming the floor and my heels tapping in a rapid staccato. We ascended to the next floor and through a set of double doors, revealing a long glass table that gleamed with silverware and crystal glasses.
The god of death pulled out a chair next to the one at the head of the table and arched a brow. I froze. To sit, or not to sit?
He chuckled low and knowing. I felt it down to my bones, and it stirred a rumbling of power in my veins.Remember who you are. If he had wanted to hurt you, he would have done so already.
Cora Roberts—daughter of death and queen of wishful thinking.
Donn’s inky hair lifted in an unseen breeze to reveal his sharp cheekbones. His skin was pale, free from blemishes, and his eyes swirled like liquid mercury.
