I stood, once again glad firearmswerebanned in Everenne—a law the Houses ruthlessly upheld—because the upcoming strikewould be bloody enough.
A sudden, noiseless percussion of power picked me up and threw me across the graveyard into a tree, shaking the trunk until leaves fell down around me. At my back, the subtle hum of streetlamps outside the stone walls of the cemetery died.Ifwe'dallowed cars in Everenne, they wouldhavestopped as well.
Silence. Awful silence, andthenthe impression of a tearing veil, a wrathful being stepping fully into this realm. Sharp, focusedawareness.
Seeking.
A gaze turning towards me, turning.
My fingers dug involuntarily into the dirt. My heart rate tripped, then scrambled into a gallop as every fear I’d nursed for the five years since my twenty-first birthday flooded my mind.
Ancient, arresting grief snatches me from a dreamless sleep. I fall out of bed, keening.
Bendingover, I press my forehead to the cool oak planks of my bedroom floor, my nails scratching my skin as I try to shield myself.
I’ve neverfeltsomething like this.
Not when the sleepingPrince killed my mother in the House war between Faronne and Montague,notwhenLordBaroun captured my brother.
CertainlynotwhenHigh LordEmbry Gauthier, son of thePrince, lay dying in my arms last week, his blood soaking my lap and turning his pale hair scarlet, vengeance ashes in my mouth.
Irises of the purest cerulean had stared up at me.“Don't blame yourself, Aerinne,”he'dmurmured, this maleI’venever encountered in person though he said my name like he knew me, his lids closing.“Butdon't hide from theconsequences. Power withoutconsequencesmakes nightmares. The Dark Fae never learn.”
His eyes will haunt me until I take my last breath.
I'dtargeted him,killedhimin revenge for my mother.
Killingdoesn’t bother me, but that? That was murder. The weight of the secret is driving me mad.I dread the day the Prince returns to living and discovers what I’vedone. I expect no mercy.
I push to my feet, wiping rivulets of tears from my cheeks. Outside my windows, streetlamps flicker. On, off, as if the hybrid solar and electrical grid supporting Everenne is overloaded. Fear uncoils in my gut. The invasive tidal wave of grief. . .what Fae could propel a psychic emotion of that strength across an entire city?
Only one.
In the morning when I speak to my family, they stare at me blankly. No onefeltit but me.
No one but me suspects what it heralds.
Renaud,Princeof Everenne and High Lord of House Montague, my sworn enemy, stirs. He must nowknowhis only son is missing and presumed dead.
Why am I the only one whofeelsthePrincerising?
Darkan?I need you.
No response. Hehasn’t spoken to me since Embry died.
I blinked out of the five-year-old memory, tasting blood in my mouth, and dragged myself to my feet, shuddering as my body tried to curl in on itself to hide from the predator. Then Iran.
Somethingwasawake.
I think. . .itwas triggeredby my prayer.
“Aerinne.” Juliette's hawk-eyed gaze zeroed in on me when I arrived at the rendezvous point, the basement op room of a small safehouse in our district where my eight person team gathered for tonight’s strike. She wore black combat gear, blades at her back and side, her honey blonde braid draped over her shoulder.
She strode forward with her usual edgy energy and grabbed my bicep. “Did youfeelthe power concussion?”
It was a rhetorical question. Every Fae would have felt it.
Numair approached more slowly. A familiar pang assaulted me. There’d been a third once, but she languished in the palace dungeons.
