Prologue
100 years ago
Dust.
Dust was everywhere and it continued to sprinkle down from the sunlit sky, so thick in the air that I could scarcely breathe without inhaling the grit fully in my lungs. Yet here I stood, on a half crumbled balcony.
Waiting. I was waiting.
Sunlight broke through the thick air, highlighting the utter destruction of my home. The capital, the City of Light—it was gone.
A harsh rattling breath escaped me as I took in the desolation. Gone were the elegant shops, luscious gardens, sparkling fountains. Just crumbled marble, tints of gold, and lush splintered wood covered our oncesacred city.
Worse, there was no sound. No cries of pain, no harsh sobs of loss, no chickadees trilling wildly looking for the comfort of their perches. Even the corrupted inner city, where the most wicked fae resided was silent, buried beneath the rubble.
Waiting. I was still waiting.
Desperate for just one cry…to know that one pitiful soul still lived—stillexisted.
It just couldn’t be.
I was part of an already dying race. Abandoned by our goddess and cursed with infertility after a long bloody war over a thousand years ago. Our extinction was inevitable but it could have been slow. I could have made sure that what was left of the fae lived a long, prosperous, and happy existence.
Except…I failed.
I was their hope, their salvation, their dark hero…and I failed. And yet, I felt nothing. Nothing but hollow emptiness. I wasn’t even able to feel the warmth of the sun's mocking rays.
Waiting. I was still waiting.
Not for hope. It was clear that time had passed.
A dark, inky blackness oozed from the ruined city and gathered like a plume of smoke from a campfire.
Finally, they were here.
Infinite.
Ominous.
Dark.
Shadows.
So life-like, they moved through the air with a sentient purpose—a deadly power unlike anything this world had ever seen.
And they weremine.
Instinctively, I reached outward to their darkness allowing them to swarm my hand before wrapping themselves around my body as if to thaw the now frozen heart inside of me.
“She is gone.” I whispered to them and closed my eyes that burned with unshed tears. She was just dust now, forever gone just like the rest of the fae that lived here.
Opening my eyes, I took one last look at the city I had dutifully served and destroyed. I was not the general they had hoped for and I sure as goddess was not the heroine they had loved.
I never deserved such love anyway.
After all, monsters never did.
And I was the worst monster around.
