PROLOGUE
-CONTENT WARNING-
This book contains themes that may be triggering for some readers. There is violence, explicit language, sexually explicit scenes, and non-consensual sex (there is a trigger warning in the chapter before this scene occurs, so you can skip it if you choose). Reader discretion is advised.
Please Note: This book was written for your entertainment, not historical accuracy.
-GUIN-
Three Years Earlier
Istumbled through the Standing Stones, expecting death.
Crossing them meant a horrible ending—that your body would turn itself inside out. But staying in Logres meant burning as a witch. So I chose the unknown.
I crossed through the stones into the forbidden realm of Annwyn.
And I lived.
But now I faced a world that defied every law I knew.
Annwyn wrapped around me like velvet fog, dense and alien. There was no sun here, no moon—only a constant dusky glow that turned everything violet and silver, as if the light had been filtered through amethyst. The sky stretched above in shades of deep purple and midnight blue, scattered with stars that seemed too bright, too close, pulsing with a strange rhythm.
Shadows stretched too far, defying the laws of light and distance. They pooled beneath trees and rocks like spilled ink, some moving independently of their sources, writhing and shifting when I wasn't looking directly at them. Trees appeared taller—ancient giants that soared incredibly high, their trunks wide enough to house entire families, branches disappearing into the violet-tinged mist above. Luminescent flowers dotted their bark in spiraling patterns, glowing soft blues and greens that provided the only reliable light in this eternal dusk.
But it was the strangeness of the air that hit me the hardest—it shimmered, like heat waves rising from sun-baked stones, but cold instead of warm, leaving my skin tingling, every nerve ending alive and sensitive. Magic. That's what this was—raw, untamed magic saturating everything, so thick I could almost taste it, something both metallic and wild.
Still, I was running.Alwaysrunning.
Through the Whispering Wilds—woods that were rumored to be haunted. But I would take ghosts over the Iron Hounds any day.
You are beyond the stones,I told myself.The King's Guard can no longer reach you.
Yet my heart didn't let up. I could still hear the Iron Hounds on my heels—huge beasts with scaled hides, molten eyes, andsteel-trap jaws. Though Arthur had outlawed magic, the beasts were animated by exactly that—proof of the king's hypocrisy. Half beast, half machine, they were built for ripping witches apart.
And I was considered a witch now, wasn’t I?
After what had happened in the marketplace? Yes.
The marketplace.
The memory hit me, making me stumble against a tree whose bark pulsed with glowing veins.
The stall.
I could still smell the dust kicked up by cartwheels, still hear the haggling voices of merchants and the bleating of livestock from the pens nearby.
That smug vendor who was trying to cheat me.
His face swam before my eyes—deeply weathered and pockmarked from years of poor living, with yellowed teeth that gleamed like old bone. I could still smell the stale ale on his breath, still recall the way he'd looked at me. The lewd things he'd said.
The heat in my chest.
It started as anger—righteous and familiar. But then something else stirred beneath it, something that made my fingertips tingle and my vision blur. The air around me grew thick, charged with an energy I didn't understand.
The water barrels erupting.
Three massive oak barrels lined up behind the man's stall exploded simultaneously, sending torrents of water across the marketplace stones. The water moved with purpose, coiling and twisting like it was alive—like it was reacting to my own outrage.
