CHAPTER ONE
There you are, little butterfly.
No one mourns the insect trapped in silken strands.
Unnoticed. Overlooked.
Struggle as it might, it would only tire itself in time.
Nature simply running its course.
Serrik reached out and draped a single golden thread between two points, carefully arranging it to bejust so.
His spell would need to be meticulous, for he sought to reach outside the walls of his twice-deep prison. A cage within a cage, locked three times over. The temptation was to rush. For he had not been prepared, and this little butterfly was flitting in the breeze, her wings so colorful and delicate.
But he could not. One misstep, and it would all go awry. It would take an effort that would leave him tapped and exhausted. It would leave his prey vulnerable to the jaws of all the other fiends and predators who had come to call his prisontheirsas well.
Yet it had been so long since his last attempt. He could not let this one go. Another strand of gold thread, stretched between the ornately carved wooden frame before him.
He could see her in his minds’ eye. Walking in the rain, weeping. Destitute. Distraught. Destroyed. Her long dark hair was soaked, hanging in strands around her face, fighting to maintain their curls despite it all. Her tears were mixing with the deluge of the storm. She had a backpack over her shoulder, and her clothing would have perhaps been more dry if she had been tossed into the surf.
Human contraptions that Serrik did not recognize—things of transportation, by his guess—whipped past her at alarming speed, their occupants blissfully unaware or callously choosing to ignore her agony.
Even in the darkness of the storm, he could see her eyes were a beautiful shade of gray-green.
A butterfly with gossamer wings the world would never miss.
A third strand, and a pattern was emerging—a web that spoke of both potential, disaster, and pain.
How long had it been since his last attempt? How long since Gregor had learned the lesson of what it meant to disappoint him?Decades?Centuries? It did not matter. Time blurred in this place.
But it had not blurred his skill.
A vision danced over Serrik’s mind. One of her standing up on a great bridge rock. She gazed out into the black, starless night, before leaping into the nothingness.
Oh, yes. You will do nicely.
The last of the threads, and his work was done. With a whisper of words, his spell flared to life. The walls of his prison pressed back—as was their purpose. But he had long since studied its hairline cracks. Their slightest faults.
He knew them by heart.
For he had designed them, after all.
The barriers bent—just enough.Just enough.Like pressing his ear to a door to eavesdrop on a conversation, he could but barely eke out enough influence to rustle the leaves upon a tree.
She was so close he could almost taste her sorrow. Her rage at being abandoned. Rejected. The agony of having nowhere that she belonged. Her desperation tomatterand the hopelessness that came with knowing that she simply…did not.
Each was a thread upon which he could pull. Each was a strand that he could press his will upon.
Here, you shall matter.
Here, you can have purpose.
Here, you will have a home.
Her steps slowed. She stopped. Her gaze tracked toward the woods beside her. She furrowed her brow, as though she saw something in the woods that she did not understand.
Come to me.
