Prologue
Leon
Humans always fear the night, the time when the great god Ralus swaths the sun in his starry cloak and darkness falls upon the world. They dread what lurks in the gloom, what they can’t see or understand. They huddle around the firelight, thinking it’ll keep the monsters at bay.
But what if youarethe monster in the night?
The hooves of my unit’s horses softly thud around me as we crest the ridge and get our first glimpse of the Trovian border. I can’t help but sneer at the sight of this gods-cursed land. I never wanted to return here, but the choice has already been made for me.
“Should we go the north way?” one of my soldiers asks.
“Of course.” The Temple of Ethira’s territory lies to the south, and the less I have to deal with their vile clerics, the better—for them and for me.
The last time I was here, I ripped their land apart and left a thousand weeping humans in my wake. I thought that would be the end of things. But these humans live short lives, and it’s easy for them to forget. Now is the time to remind them what their fae neighbors have to offer.
Not quite yet, however. We have work to do first.
We ride on, the watchful eyes of the gods twinkling down upon us. I love this time, between sunset and sunrise, when the world is shrouded in silence and shadow. Though I can understand why the humans fear it so much.
The night is my playground, and I’m not known for playing nice.
Chapter1
Morgana
Remember, this is keeping you alive.
I choke down a bitter mouthful of crimson potion, trying to ignore the way it burns all the way down to my stomach. A comforting hand rests on my back, rubbing soothing circles as I breathe through the ordeal.
This is the price I pay for being too weak. Too weak to live in the capital with my parents, too weak to have any magic at all. Every day my body is in a fight to survive, a battle I can only win with help. That’s what I remind myself in these moments, when I brace to swallow and fight the urge to vomit.
Without this medicine, I’m dead.
“Well done,” my nursemaid, Etusca, says, like clockwork.
When I was a child, she used to have to hold me down to make me take the mixture as I screamed and sobbed, fat tears staining my bedsheets. She cried with me, but she still held firm, giving me no choice but to take the medicine I needed, the potion she crafted herself to save me. Now, I don’t remember the last time I cried, with or without taking it.
Etusca starts to lift the goblet from my white-knuckled grasp, but I tilt it away from her.
“I can do it,” I say, my voice calm. She doesn’t argue—but she never does these days. She doesn’t think twice as I rise and carry the cup across to the wash basin beside my bed. She simply brushes her jade-colored hair out of her face and drifts across to the window.
Once her back is turned, I slide a jar out from beneath my bed with one foot and tip the remains of the goblet’s potion into it, coughing to cover the telltale trickling noise. This is what Etusca didn’t see, the few thimblefuls left at the bottom of the cup. I wish I was able to reserve more, but I have to make sure I keep drinking most of the potion.
The last drop collected, I nudge the jar back beneath the bed with practiced swiftness. The whole process takes mere seconds, and then I’m rinsing the goblet in the wash basin and setting it neatly back down in its spot, ready for tomorrow.
Later, when Etusca isn’t around, I’ll replace the lid on the jar, making sure to keep my precious stash safe, but for now I try to act natural, turning to see my nursemaid’s pale eyes still on the window. I know she doesn’t truly see anything beyond the glass. She’s many miles away from this place—we both wish we were. She’s longing for the homeland she hasn’t seen for decades, and me? I just want to be anywhere but here.
Beyond this bedroom, there’s no loving family awaiting me, no parents or siblings, only quiet, diligent staff and guards with glinting swords at their hips. I was thirteen by the time I understood Gallawing Manor isn’t truly my home. It’s my prison.
When I got old enough to ask Etusca why my parents sent me here when I was born, she explained that they were important nobles living in the capital of Elmere, near the royal court. They had too many enemies to risk keeping such a weak child close, so they arranged this household in secret for their fragile, sickly daughter. Of course, I was much older before I understood that should hardly stop them coming to visit me if they truly wanted. They must not have, because I’ve only ever seen them once, from afar.
I was nine. Etusca had sent me out to play in the gardens when an unfamiliar carriage rattled up the driveway. It was so rare that we received visitors, I was dying to know who had arrived, but I was met with only stony silence when I begged the guards to let me inside. The most I got was a brief glimpse of their two faces, staring out of the manor windows at me. I guessed immediately who they were and forced Etusca to admit it when they’d gone. They left without saying a word to me.
I’d vowed that I wouldn’t cry over them, and I’d managed to hold myself to that until I was alone in bed that night. Then the tears came. Large fat ones dripped onto my pillow until it was soaked as I cried myself to sleep. But by the time I woke up the next morning, the pillow was dry, and I was resolved not to let them get to me again.
I’ve tried to forget that day. What else is there to do about two people who have so clearly forgottenme? I learned to plaster on a fake smile through every forgotten birthday and holiday absence even if I lost a small part of myself every time.
Etusca—part nursemaid, part surrogate parent—did the best she could and I’ll always be grateful for her consistent presence in my life. She was the one who taught me to read and encouraged me to explore the library to understand the real world that wasn’t available to me beyond the manor walls. And when I lay there in agony every morning, the medicine feeling like it was burning a hole inside me, she would tell me stories to distract me. But for how much longer?
