“The darkness,” he choked out. “In the barracks.”
The guard barracks. Tightly packed. Males and females lodging together.
All fae.
The darkness had come to Baylaur.
2
VEYKA
The perfectly round pebbles crunched under my boots with each step, grating over my already frayed nerves.
Already?
That implied that they’d been intact at some point in recent memory.
Well, that wasn’t fucking true.
Frayed, damaged, broken. Words too mild to describe the state of my mind and heart.
I was shattered.
Entire pieces of myself were missing.
An entire half of my soul.
More, maybe.
Arran was more than half of me. Loving him, being his mate—itwasme. My power. My heart. My sanity.
The latter was teetering dangerously close to oblivion.
I planted my feet on the beach, ignoring the melodic lapping of waves at the toes of my boots, and turned to face the ominous rolling mists.
“Morgyn! Get your skinny ass out here!”
Nothing happened.
I gave her exactly one minute, counting out each heartbeat.
The mists did not budge.
I closed my eyes, summoning the ember of power inside of me, ready to step through the void—
“I have not given consent for you to visit the Sacred Isle.”
The human realm materialized around me. My magic groaned, protesting the leash as I pulled it back sharply. But it had only a fraction of my attention.
Everything else was focused on the wraith-like female hovering in the mists a few yards away. I hated the familiar arch of her neck. And the way she tilted her head to the side when she was contemplating. I hated that I’d seen both of those actions in the mirror more times than I could count. How was it possible that she could exist? How was it fair that I’d lost my brother only to discover a sister both foreign and eerily familiar?
I did not pray to the Ancestors or make an errant appeal for guidance.
The Ancestors had failed me in every imaginable way. They had been dead for seven thousand years, and I was done resurrecting them with foolish pleas.
They hadn’t protected Arran.
Couldn’t protect him, not from me.
