CHAPTER ONE
Snow exploded beneath Tristan Saros’s feet as he landed in a forest overlooking the bone-white cliffs of Tartarus.
Across the lifeless valley, a swirling tempest of black shrouded the continent’s legendary prison.
He stretched his aching wings as he trudged to a clearing, the icy wind plucking at his feathers. It was one of the few forces besides light that could penetrate the prison’s powerful wards.
He suspected he wouldn’t be able to breach them. But he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t at leasttry.
Cassandra Fortin—his Daredevil, hisma’anyu, the brave, selfless little idiot who’d sacrificed her freedom—was trapped behind those wards.
The prison’s intake tower stood atop a rocky outcropping, a lonely red-black spire at the edge of the known world. And no one in Ethyrios, save the damned, knew what lay within the obsidian mists beyond.
The weapons Tristan carried had been stolen from an Imperial soldier at a hostel in Cernodas. Tristan had left the male in pieces—a fleeting satisfaction—then stripped him of a Typhon broadsword, a stun pistol, and a snakebite. High-Gods-willing, the plum-sized bomb crafted with wind magic andDeathstalker venom would be powerful enough to tear a hole through the wards.
The frozen air needled his lungs as he summoned the wind and speared across the valley, the wards nipping at his power.
He pushed harder, his back muscles screaming. Warnings blared through his head to stop, to turn back before he plummeted to the valley floor. He ignored them, sights narrowed on that tower.
As he approached, his wind sputtered. He tucked his wings, barreling like a bullet toward the cliff-edge and smashing into it with nearly the same force.
Clinging to the rock, he began his climb. He dug his hands and feet into the cracks, trying to ignore the pain in his wrists, ankles, and shoulders. He grunted, inching slowly upward, the weight of his wings an increasingly heavy burden.
Once he reached the top, he dragged his grief-laden body up over the ledge, struggling to catch his breath.
The intake tower was a silent sentinel against the fading sun, several thousand paces ahead. As he heaved himself to his feet, he spied not a single individual, neither through the windows nor in the boulder-strewn yard. Was no one there? Or were the wards masking their presence?
He wondered how many had stood here before him. Had anyone, in the seven centuries of the prison’s existence, ever been fool enough to breakintoTartarus?
Tristan crunched toward the wards, noting a slight distortion in the air like looking through a thin wall of water. It buzzed against his hand as he pushed against their teasing pliability.
He unsheathed the Typhon broadsword from his back, then stabbed it into the wards. The air distorted around the tip, and for one relief-filled moment, Tristan could’ve sworn he saw a tiny tear forming. He pushed harder, but the wards fought back,the tear restitching as a red glow pulsed brighter at the contact point.
Tristan was blasted backward in an eruption of crimson sparks, his feet skidding through the gravel.
He peered into the yard, wondering if anyone could see him out here. He knew there were no guards—thewardswere the guards—but could the prisoners sense him?
Couldshesense him?
He pulled the snakebite from his pocket, then shot a tiny gust of wind—all he had left—into the bomb before tossing it toward the edge of the wards. He dashed off the cliff, grabbing the edge as he dangled over the side and nearly losing his grip when the ground-shaking explosion threw stones against his fingers.
As the smoke cleared, he pulled himself up—and his final ember of hope was snuffed out.
The snakebite had failed, evidenced by the perfect semi-circle of scorched dirt above which the shimmering wards were still intact.
Fuck.
He threw his head back and roared to the sky, then barreled into the wards, banging his fists, feet, head and shoulders against them.
He refused to believe he couldn’t break through, couldn’t get to her.
Seconds, minutes, hours ticked by as he beat himself against the impenetrable shield, the indifferent moon above the only witness to his crushing failure.
Until a burst of rainbow light flashed in his peripheral vision.
“You won’t get to her that way.”
The soft voice of Ione Saros, leader of the Teles Chrysos rebels—and his former lover—did nothing to quell his rage.
