I lay on frost-covered flagstones, staring up at a jet-black sky in which impossibly large light-blue stars shimmered like diamonds in velvet. My breath frosted.
Wincing, I forced myself onto my jean-covered knees and gasped. Torches hung from black metal posts, their light flickering on the flagstones. It looked like I’d landed in the courtyard of a medieval castle. What thehell?
"There! An intruder!"
Heavy footsteps pounded across stone. Men wearing metal armor and fur and holding swords charged at me.
Okay, now I knew why Aunt Maureen had lied to me. The box actuallyhadmade me crazy!
"Shit!" I scrambled backward, my hand closing around the crowbar. I swung it wildly as the first guard lunged for me, catching him in the side and sending him staggering.
My blood slicked the crowbar, but I held it tight. “Get away from me, assholes!”
"She's armed!" one of them shouted, his voice echoing strangely in the frigid air.
Another guard rushed me from the side. I pivoted and swung, but he ducked beneath my swing. A third guard circled behind me, and suddenly I was surrounded by five of them closing in with swords that gleamed in the torchlight.
I had to get out of here. Pulse racing, I swung the crowbar again as another guard rushed me. A second guard darted out and caught my wrist in an ironlike grip.
Pain shot up my arm. A third guard backhanded me across the face with an armored glove. Stars exploded behind my eyes, and my head snapped back and smashed into the ground. The crowbar clattered from my grip.
Rough hands seized my arms and twisted them painfully behind my back. My vision swam, blood trickling from my split lip. One of the guards lifted his sword as if preparing to chop off my head.
“Halt!” a deep voice thundered over the courtyard. The voice seemed to cut straight through me, and a strange tugging pulled within my chest. “Bring the intruder here.”
CHAPTER 2
Kai
Hot trepidation ran down my spine as my heavy leather boots thudded against the cool gray stones. The icy wind whipped across my face, and the smell of blood and smoke clung to my hunting leathers.
I strode through the fortified steel palace gates, my younger half-brother, Ashren, beside me, his brow furrowed and his cheeks chafed red by the wind. His bow was slung across his back and his quiver still half full. I was relieved that we’d had a successful hunt, having brought down two ice boars and a mountain goat. Servants were now dragging the carcasses to the kitchen while others tended our caribou and the hounds.
The final rays of light were fading from the indigo-black sky. My blood thrummed. In each daily cycle, my court and I used our magic to stretch dusk out as long as possible, but though it came to our court last, night always arrived. At least the stars were out, shining bright silver-blue and confirming that there was no sign of a powerful attack from the Night Court.
Yet.
But give them time. They’d attack soon, either with a blunt display of force in which their magic blotted out the stars, or bya sneak attack, built up slowly over the nights to avoid triggering any alarms.
Somethingwashappening though, and I was unnerved. I couldn’t strategize against unknowns.
Awareness prickled up and down my spine and tightened my shoulders as my stomach flipped again. It had been building inside me all day, and now I wanted to crawl out of my skin.
The air turned bitter, and another odd sensation tugged at my chest. I stopped short.
Thatsomethinghad changed.
Shouts of surprise rose from the inner courtyard. Metal clanked, and boots thudded.
I exchanged looks with Ashren and hurried toward the reinforced doors that separated the inner courtyard from the outer. A portal couldn’t have opened, could it? There were only four courts and three main portals that connected the others to Dusk. We'd cut off the Night Court, the Day Court was dead, and everyone in the Aurora Court was still sleeping. If the Aurora Court had awakened, there would have been other signs.
I thrust the doors open and strode through. The guards had all clustered in the center of the courtyard, and one of my men—Folge—was holding a sword aloft as a woman with wavy blonde hair thrashed in the hold of two guards.
My legs continued moving, despite me not giving them permission to. What in the frozen barrens was this fresh hell? “Halt!”
Folge’s shoulders jerked, and he lowered his sword. His brow lifted, but he nodded, then sheathed the sword.
“Bring the intruder here,” I ordered. The tugging sensation intensified as the guards hauled her upright, and I got a better look at her. My stomach dropped, and my heart skipped a beat.
