This dark, frostbitten place wasn’t the court I knew. Sinister energy crawled along the walls, tracking our every move, prickling my nerve endings and forcing my witchcraft to surge to the surface, ready to shield at a moment’s notice.
The sea… it was still. No waves crashed against the castle walls, no breeze pushed through the wide windows to cleanse the putrid air. That familiar whistle was gone. The sea was here in body, but its spirit had retreated. Its magic… it wasn’t there.
My pulse stuttered as I took in the surrounding destruction. This couldn’t be undone with hushed prayers for the dead, nor by cleansing or rebuilding the castle. The ground had soaked up enough blood to turn unholy. Enough to develop a taste for it.
We moved deeper inside, and my boot struck something. It crunched underfoot without breaking. A bracelet. Crystal pendants hung from it, some chipped, blood caught in their crevices like crimson streaks of lightning.
A blade pierced through a bronze heart. I knew this pendant.
My chest tightened. It belonged to Rosalie, one of Willow’s ladies-in-waiting. They had been friends since school. Was she among the decaying corpses? I remembered the day Willow bought it from a merchant at some air festival—the same one she had helped me sneak out to. Things had been different then.
Truthfully, I had never understood how a girl as gentle as Rosalie could have been raised in this court of schemes and endless greed. Perhaps her pure witch heritage set her apart—there weren’t many like her within the castle grounds.For good reason. How she and Willow had become friends was beyond me.
A thought crossed my mind, and shame followed close behind. I would never say it aloud, but between the two of them… the realm would have been better off if Alec had found Rosalie alive. Her heart had been purer.
The fact my mind could even go there…
Chapter Three
Willow
There was an emptiness I had never known before. It stretched through my body, from head to toe, where my powers used to be. Even as I lay with my eyes closed—my eyelids too heavy to move—it bothered me that I couldn’t reach for either one of them.
Forcing myself to peel them open, I expected to find myself in a rigid hospital bed. Instead, I was greeted by some weirdo watching me sleep in an unfamiliar room. ‘Who the hell are you?’
Taking a step back from hovering above me, he smirked, obviously full of himself. ‘Alec,’ he said, like that should mean something.
Assessing his physique, it seemed he could be dangerous, especially in my state. Though he didn’t appear outwardly violent, his obsessive eyes suggested a load of mental problems. ‘Is there something wrong with you,Alec?’
‘Why would there be something wrong with me?’ The bewilderment in his tone appeared genuine, which earned him an eye roll.
Propping myself up on my elbows, I ignored the pain and commented on the obvious, ‘Do you usually stand over women watching them breathe?’
The man’s eyebrows furrowed as he took a slight step back. ‘I’m watching to see if you improve.’
With him at a safer distance, I dared a peek at my abdomen. I was surprised there wasn’t more damage. Everything throbbed. The wound on my left side wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it felt as though the flesh was still torn. ‘Are you a healer? You’ve done a shitty job.’
Alec’s eyes narrowed at my words, a muscle in his cheek twitching as he assessed my injury. ‘I’m not, and according to the healers, they’ve done all they could; it’s a matter of time now.’
Incompetent fools. My healers would have repaired me in a matter of minutes. The subpar skills meant one thing.
This wasn’t Ortensia.
Shit.
‘What the hell is this place?’ I asked, looking around. It wasn’t a complete shithole, but I could no longer hear the waves.
My nearly nonexistent water magic demanded closeness to the sea. As weak as I was now, I tried to use it to locate the nearest pool, but emptiness greeted me.
I wasn’t used to powerlessness. Worry clawed through my mind as I realised I was at the stranger’s mercy.
‘Shadow Isles,’ the dark-haired fella answered, making me wince.
‘I want to go home.’
His eyes softened as he took a seat in the chair beside my bed and spoke gently, ‘Your home is currently riddled with corpses, so I doubt that’s agood idea.’
That really happened? How many days had I survived lying on that cold floor? Whatever they did to me wrecked me to the very core. Snatched the livelihood and replaced it with lead. I was certain I would die there.
