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Sablefyre. An ancient element of the gods, forged eons ago in Aethyria’s fiery heart. A single touch could turn a body to ash, and blood to stone. And she had arrived to offer up Zevander, her second-born son, to it.
His appearance was the result of having performed the Emberforge ritual on himself, the same ritual he intended for her son. A rite that only young children were believed to tolerate without any permanent disfigurement, seeing as they hadn’t yet gone through their Ascendency.
because once the black flame entered the body, it destroyed all natural blood magic.
in his attempt to harm her son, he’d somehow suffered pain himself.
He reached for Zevander, running his finger over the marking on his chest, a curious black swirl that’d seemed to anger Cadavros. On closer examination, there seemed to be words written in ancient Primyrian embedded in the swirl in a way that reminded Lady Rydainn of a wax seal across his heart. Branimir’s lips twisted to a snarl as he whispered the words that stabbed her conscience. “Il captris nith reviris.” What is taken will never return.
The Eating Woods never returned what was given.
I was no more than a few days old when I’d been found abandoned before that cursed arch in a wicker basket, a single black rose upon my chest. No one knew who’d left me there, but every villager speculated that, whoever they were, they must have hoped the woods would eat me, as well.
Emotions I was forced to keep hidden for fear of looking possessed by evil, as girls were often perceived when they felt too much.
I’d learned at too early an age that the sound of a girl’s scream drew nothing more than apathy.
I’ve certainly no intentions of suffering the burden of your cursed existence, waiting for your knight in black armor to come and sweep you off.
foreshadowing!
It was sickening that it took a suitor to spare my reputation, my future. How tragic that a woman’s worth equated to the depth of a man’s pockets.
“I also know that the delicate black rose doesn’t grow well in these parts. Our winters are far too cold for its fragile roots.”
“They guide the soul to the after, and you share its blood now,” she explained, shoving barley straw into a netted bag. “You walk between realms of the dead and living. The world you’ve known, and the one that has remained hidden from you.”
I was about to tell him he was free to go to hell, but he lifted his head, and I caught sight of his face for the first time. Moonlight struck him just enough that I could make out the features otherwise hidden by the hood of his cloak. A black mask with metallic embellishments covered the lower half of his face, but even with his disguise, I recognized him. I’d seen those unusual eyes before, in what had seemed like a dream. The burnt orange and bright gold that surrounded his pupil, like an explosion of light, nearly glowing from the depths of his hood.
He dropped the last bits across her nape and smoothed it into her skin before it could drip on the sheets. She let out a quiet moan, and godsblood, the sound of it strummed his muscles like the quiver of a spider’s web.
“Your sister was right. You are a tyrant beast!” He snarled as he wiped chunks of grain from his face. “And you are vexatious, yet by some mystery of the gods, you still have your tongue.”
“You never answered my question. What does Lunamiszka mean?” He leaned back against the stony wall behind him, his stance more relaxed. Casual. Devastating, how brutal and aristocratic he could look at the same time. “It means you’re persistently frustrating and you ask too many questions.” “All that in a single word?” “We like brevity. And silence.” “Are you speaking for all of your personalities?” The way his mask moved, I could tell he was grinding his jaw.
He glanced over his shoulder, and I jerked my head up so fast, I nearly toppled backward. “Perhaps you should walk alongside me, unless you insist on staring at my ass the whole way.” A scorching heat warmed my cheeks, cooled only by the icy anger of having been humiliated. “Perhaps you shouldn’t walk like you’ve got two snapping turtles attached to your ass.”
“Don’t you feel just a small bit of guilt locking me in?” “No.” The obnoxious turn of the key emphasized his point. “Your heart must be the smallest organ you possess.” “And your mouth must be the largest.” Oooh, what I wouldn’t have given to smack him across the face!
Turning and turning, I kept the song going, until it stopped and the box clicked louder than before. I looked at the arrangement of glyphs. The spine lined up to a scorpion. Aeryz to flame. The two halves of the moons united at the top and bottom of the clockface to form one full moon.
Inside, lay a black rose, perfectly intact, as if it’d recently been picked. I plucked it from the box, noting the beautiful, metallic silver edges along every petal. After inspecting the flower, I turned the page for the next part of the story. What looked to be Morsana, as she appeared on the first page of the puzzle book, stood over a baby lying in a bassinet, holding a rose similar to the one I clutched right then. When I ran my fingers over the page, the scene came to life. Morsana placed the rose on the baby’s chest, and ravens flocked around the bassinet. Another brush of my finger
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“Goodnight.” “Goodnight, Lunamiszka.” “Do I still annoy you?” she asked. “Endlessly.”
All of her features matched those of the death goddess I’d recently learned about. “Morsana. Am I dead?” “No, sweet girl. You have much to do before you die. But should you ever need me, I am here. You can find me in this dark space.”
The second I let go, it started to fall, but he quickly pressed his palms to the tops of my hands, and an intense heat pulsed through my wrists. Black smoke drifted upward from our joined hands while the stick remained spinning in the air by itself. A breath of a laugh escaped me, as it hovered in front of me, spinning faster and faster. “Is it me doing this, or you?” “I’m supplying the power, but it’s you who commands it.” Me commanding his power.
“The ability to kill doesn’t make you a killer.” “These were fairly deadly concoctions.” “Everything is poison with the proper dose. Even you.” I bit my lip to stifle a smile. “I’m not sure if that’s an insult, or compliment,” I said, keeping my gaze from his, despite knowing the answer to that was probably written in his expression right then. “You’re implying too much of me is deadly?” He shrugged. “Depends on one’s tolerance for poison.” Linking my fingers behind my back I nodded. “Hmmm. It seems most would choose to avoid the risk all together. How unfortunate for me.” “I wouldn’t call it
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“I wouldn’t have guessed a man like you believed in fate.” The gentle caress of his thumb across my throat stifled my breath. “I don’t. That’s what troubles me. I require both precision and predictability.” The way he stared at my lips stirred a restless and wanton ache that had me clenching my thighs. “The whims of fate are an irksome intrusion, and yet …” He canted toward me, as if to kiss me, his lips mere inches from mine. “Who could’ve predicted that one touch of your pounding pulse would be so disarming.”
“What wicked spells you weave, little witch.”
Zevander frowned back at him. “You so much as breathe across her neck, and I will take pleasure in skewering your skull before I set it aflame.”
“Do you know how the scorpion chooses his mate?” Rykaia whispered in my ear. “Promenade à deux. By asking her to dance.”
She was chaos wrapped in fine silk. The embodiment of trouble that’d nearly brought him to his fucking knees when he’d first laid eyes on her across the ballroom. So achingly beautiful, his chest hurt.
“Your king brought this upon himself, when he chose not to destroy Cadavros all those centuries ago. King Jeret isn’t willing to risk the lives of his people, as Sagaerin has chosen to do.”
“Fuck it all, you stubborn bastard. She’s your mate, Zevander!” Dolion’s words brought him to a grinding halt, and eyes narrowed, Zevander turned to face him. “What did you just say?” “I said she is your mate. I saw it in a vision. She wore your sigil, the mark of your scorpion. As did your son.”
“Some women are fire in your veins and hell between your teeth, Brother. Accept that Maevyth will never be safe. And no one will be safe from you because of it. Now, go find her, or by gods, I will make every day of your life a tribulation.”
Zevander looked at me as if I were something more than the disparaging word that’d been hammered into me since I was found by the edge of the woods: unwanted. Lorn. He looked at me as if I was worthy of being seen.
The magic and heat between us warned of something explosive. Something I’d never find in another so long as I lived. A sensation that would inevitably consume me like those wicked black flames he wielded. Better to have experienced that passion and watched it fade like a dying star than to have never known it at all.
He quickly captured my retreating hand and held it to his chest, as if to assure me it wasn’t rejection. “I want you. I want you so desperately that I’d kill anything with a pulse just to have you for one night. This insatiable craving I feel …” A muscle in his jaw twitched with the tension in his words and he squeezed my hand. “I can’t fucking breathe. I ache for you, Maevyth. Believe me when I say this.”
His mate. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. Mates were for those who believed in fate, who gazed at the stars with a longing to capture them. He’d lived too long with the practicality of knowing the stars were too far out of reach, and yet, in his arms lay the brightest of them all. The girl with the moon in her eyes and fire in her soul. Damn the gods for sending him one so beautiful, with a heart so pure. So fragile.
She was his. Lunamiszka. My little moon witch.
“You are mine, moon witch. For all eternity and whatever lies beyond it. No soul has ever been more intricately woven into mine than yours.” My heart lurched with his words, the cynical creature inside of me loosening its grip. I ran my fingertips over his cheek and the wretched black scar there. “And you are mine,” I whispered.
