More rocks slipped down the mountain face, the heavy stones grating against the ice and echoing across the fjords.
Mira dropped her chin. The heavens followed her cue, storm clouds swirling and swollen, threatening rain. Another bolt splintered the sky; the light flickered off her soft features. Thunder growled like a ravenous cave troll in the distance.
“A legion of archangels is on their way,” Gaia pressed. “We can’t give up now.”
“Dear Gaia”—the elf queen’s voice cracked, raspy from the battle calls she’d made to her elven army over the clash of blades and violent rips of flesh—“I have nothing left to give.”
An icy wind blew across the grounds, biting the cheeks of the angels so they were red and raw, whipping loose strands of Hildur’s strawberry blonde hair out of her braid.
She returned to the pile of bodies, quelling a sob that was dying to be let out.
Bringing her middle and pointer finger to her lips, she sealed each visible dead elf with a kiss before shakily grabbing a nearby torch and igniting the makeshift pyre. Heat pressed against her armor as she finished her prayer. This time the angels stayed quiet. She deserved as much—to mourn her people, her land, in peace.
For ten short minutes, nothing but the crackle of the fire made it to Hildur’s ears. Then she moved, her legs leaden, thighs screaming. The bones littering the ground snapped like sticks beneath the defeated drags of her feet.
A single tear slipped down her cheek as the flames grew behind her, and she went to leave the battlefield for the final time.
“Hildur!” Gaia shouted.
“We are done,” the queen seethed. She didn’t bother to turn around; her eyes remained fixed on the glacier in the distance, on her castle wavering like a mirage, and the snowcapped mountain behind it.
It wasn’t the first war the elves had been dragged into, but as Hildur walked away, she vowed it would be their last.
Part I
Angel of Ruin
Chapter 1
“Alright River, now climb onto his back.”
I stared at Shanley, then back at the werewolf—the one I supposedly needed to climb. “Ex-excuse me?”
“Haul yourself up his side and situate yourself between his shoulder blades. Here…” Shanley tilted her head towards the beast’s jowls—which I wouldn’t be caught anywhere near—and pitched her very human voice to the low whine of a canine, giving what I assumed to be a command.
With a chuff from his snout, the wolf crouched a little lower.
Wide blue eyes, freckled honey-beige cheeks, and golden-brown hair reflected in his midnight stare, the only pieces of me that might have remained the same after discovering I was half-angel—Nephilim—and the heiress of the Angel of Water.
“There, should be easier now.” Rolling up her sleeves, my friend dropped to a knee and interlaced her fingers, the cup of her palms ready to hoist me up. Her skin was dry from long days at the coffee shop, and calloused by the repeated transition from hands to paws.
Little grooves indented her forearm—bite marks. The ones near her wrist were definitely new. I’d worked countless shifts with her at Kona Koffee before I got fired, and she had a story for every scar: boozy late-night wrestling, unlucky run-ins with vampires, and simply Turning at the wrong place, wrong time.
But these marks… these ones she tried to cover with her flannel sleeves. These ones she wasn’t proud of, didn’t joke about.
These were from tending to a beast far worse than a grumpy customer.
These were from Chet Jennings.
Forget the claws and fangs and godlike strength he’d been granted after being bitten at the full moon party earlier that summer—just his name sent a chill down my spine. The thought of facing him tonight…as not only a witness to his carnage, but a victim of it long before…was enough to make my pulse thrum off beat.
A wail erupted from the thick of the forest, curdling the mist. It couldn’t be Chet: he’d already be at Crescent Rock under the watchful eyes of the Council of the Moon—the Elders who made up the governing body of all the local werewolf packs—impatiently waiting for his trial to begin.
But Chet wasn’t the only thing that lurked in the night, wasn’t the only monster who’d made it their sole mission to destroy me.
Shadows coiled in the darkness as if they were living, breathing things. Without the light of the moon, it was damn near impossible to see.
Breath a wisp in the air, I glanced behind me. Nothing but fur and trees. The steel gazes of Shanley’s pack tracked my movement.
