A Vicious Game

Book 0: The Halfling Saga

by Melissa Blair

Genres: Fantasy Romance

Synopsis

The thrilling third entry in the high fantasy saga that started with BookTok sensation A Broken Blade.
 
“It seems fate has dealt me the same hand again. I know how to play it.” 
 
A new king is on the throne and the rebellion lies in ruins. Keera spends her days drinking and her nights avoiding the strange dreams that have haunted her since she returned from the capital.

Keera’s family in Myrelinth won’t let her go without a fight. With new intelligence about the magical seals left behind by Keera’s ancient kin, the Light Fae, she rallies to face her demons and unleash the formidable powers she inherited from her people. But a shocking truth is hiding in plain sight, one with the power to unravel the entire rebellion...

The pivotal third installment in the Halfling Saga will upend everything Keera thought she knew about her enemies . . . and her allies.
 
The third entry in the Halfling Saga, the epic tale of a deadly assassin with a mysterious past, set in a lush fantasy world of Mortals, Elves, Halflings, and Fae, A Vicious Game is perfect for readers who enjoyed the A Court of Thorns and Roses series and other romantic fantasy books, especially those seeking LGBTQ+ romance or BIPOC representation.

Release date: February 6, 2024

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Print pages: 448

Sample

A COLD WAVE CRASHED over me and drowned out my dreamless sleep. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time I’d been woken up, in a stable, by having a bucket of water poured on my head. “Do you have a death wish?” I seethed through my teeth as I reached for the dagger at my hip, but it wasn’t there.

Gerarda Vallaqar peered down at me with pure revulsion etched into her round cheeks and flat nose. If I didn’t feel like there was an ax sticking out of my skull, I might’ve found it unsettling. Gerarda was short for a Halfling; she hadn’t inherited any Elvish height from her immortal ancestors and was only as tall as a small Mortal woman. It might have been the first time she’d ever looked down at me in her entire life.

From her smug grin, I could tell she was enjoying it.

“This is pathetic, Keera.” She waved her hand over the stall that had been my bed for the night. I was propped against a watering trough with a saddle blanket strewn over my legs. There was no horse in the stall with me but the scent of its shit lingered on my clothes.

I rubbed my temples, which did nothing to quell the headache. There was only one thing that could. “You speak as if I meant to spend the night in the stables.”

Gerarda folded her arms over her chest. There was no longer any hint of a grin on her face. Only a stern expression that she’d learned from Hildegard, our mentor when we had trained together at the Order. I flinched and looked away. I didn’t need any more reminders that Hildegard was dead. Or that her death had been my fault.

“That only makes it more pathetic,” Gerarda mumbled. “You drank yourself into such a stupor that you couldn’t find your way back to your room?”

Every muscle in my stomach screamed as I pulled myself into an upright position. I patted the ground, feeling for my wineskin. “I knew where my burl was. It didn’t move.” Even the sound of my own voice rattled the ache in my skull. It wasn’t finding my burl that had been the problem, it was my inability to get up the Myram tree without falling to my death. If anything, I had been responsible. Not that Gerarda would give me the credit.

My fingers rubbed against something soft. I pulled the cork free from the skin and hung it over my mouth. A few droplets of rich Elvish wine splattered against my tongue and the burning in my throat eased a little. I let the wineskin drop to the floor of the stall and pulled myself up onto my feet. I slipped and whacked my entire body into the wall of roots.

Gerarda took a quick step backward. She made no move to help.

I closed my eyes and ignored the pain radiating from my ribs. They weren’t broken and the bruise would be mended by my healing gift before it had time to fully ink my skin. “If I’m such a disappointment, why are you here?”

Gerarda glanced down the aisle between the two rows of stables to where the root-packed ceiling gave way to the outside air. “The Shadow is digging a hole around the Myram with his pacing.” Gerarda shrugged. “He may be too cowardly to say that you’re a pathetic excuse for a savior, but I’m not. Your sorrows are not bigger than this war, Keera. Even if you’ve given up.”

I scoffed and slammed my hands on the top of the stable door. It rattled hard enough to shake the others in a series of metal clanks that echoed down the corridor. “Given up? We lost, Gerarda. I may be a drunk, but I am not a fool. I attended the same meetings as you.”

Gerarda’s black eyes narrowed. “So you choose to do nothing while our sisters are left at the mercy of Damien? Left to be farmed for their blood until they’re too weak to breathe?”

My shoulders sunk to the ground. Gerarda spoke as if being haunted by what had happened to the Shades wasn’t the very reason I needed to pull myself into that familiar oblivion each night. “The Shades haven’t been spotted since Damien crowned himself king.” Two moons had passed since then. I didn’t say the rest aloud. If Gerarda had any hope that the Shades were still alive, I would not be the one to take it from her. Even when I knew there was no hope to be found.

Their helpless screams rung in my ears. I shivered at the memory. My throat dried as I swallowed down the truth. Gerarda would come to accept their deaths in her own time. I didn’t need to give her the details.

She folded her arms. I could have recited the script of her argument before her lips even opened. I thought it was best if we skipped to the end. “What is there left to do?” I threw my arms into the air. “Damien has raised an army larger than this continent has ever seen and adds more swords to it still. The Light Fae are gone. They are never coming back, and neither is their magic. The Shades are—” I stopped myself and kicked the door of the stable. A strong gust of wind blew down the corridor hard enough that Gerarda had to grab a root to stay upright.

I took a deep breath and tried to get my newfound powers under control. “Any mission to free the Shades would only end with more lives lost. Don’t blame me for stating a truth you refuse to name.”

Gerarda stretched up on the tips of her toes but she still didn’t reach my chin. There was nothing but cold disgust on her face as she glowered at me. “Are you calling me a coward?”

I shook my head, already exhausted from the argument. “We can’t rescue the Shades with a team of two, Gerarda. So who would you ask? Who would you call to sacrifice themselves for a fruitless mission purely to assuage your guilt?”

She pursed her brown lips as she fell back on her feet.

I didn’t give her time to answer; my words were hot steam that I needed off my tongue. “I hope you never need to become as practiced at measuring the weight of people’s lives as I have, but I didn’t just give up. The numbers are against us. We have no great army and our swords and arrows can’t match the weapons Damien has created. The best we can hope for is that he doesn’t try to take the Faeland to prove himself a better conqueror than his father. We must try to find a way to be content spending our days here.”

And forgetting what happens at night. I pulled a small vial of spare wine from my pocket and drank it in a single swallow.

Gerarda’s teeth snapped together. “But we have magic.”

“Barely.” My eyes crossed as they adjusted to the sunlight peering in from the outer meadow.

Gerarda raised a pointed brow. The movement was so quick and precise it reminded me of the throwing knives she’d always carried with her as the Dagger. They weren’t with her now. Perhaps she’d left them behind along with her title when we fled the capital. She jutted her head to the side. “We have a dozen magic wielders.”

Of course Gerarda was arrogant enough to count all the Fae when Feron had yet to decide to join the rebellion.

It took every ounce of will I had not to grab her by the arms and shake her. “We have eleven. And that’s including me and a Dark Fae who can barely control our powers, let alone use them.” I couldn’t bring myself to say Riven’s name. Even knowing that he was outside somewhere in the city waiting for me made me feel sick enough to want to drown myself in the watering trough.

Gerarda lifted her hands in exasperation and yanked open the stable door. I didn’t know if she was letting me out or preparing to fight me inside. “You haven’t even attempted to train your powers!”

“I hardly see how that concerns you.”

Gerarda pulsed her fist over and over again, refusing to get out of my way. “Once the seals are broken, magic will be returned to its full strength. A dozen—”

I raised a brow.

Gerarda rolled her eyes. “Eleven wielders will be more than enough to halt Damien’s plans. Enough to protect the Halflings we left behind.”

I didn’t hold in my laugh, though the sting of pain in Gerarda’s eyes cut it short. “You and Vrail have been working on the seals for weeks. It’s time for you to accept that we missed our shot at bringing the magic back.”

I had been so close. When I found that Elder birch in the Rift, I thought it had been the final step to bring the Light Fae home.

My mother’s kin.

My kin.

But they were gone. All that remained was their magic, which they had locked away in different parts of Elverath to keep Aemon from using it to kill the rest of the Fae. It had worked, but at great cost to this land and its people.

All that magic could’ve been unlocked with one single pierce of my bloodstone dagger through Aemon’s heart. But Damien had gotten there first and now the magic was out of reach.

Gerarda blinked up at me like I was a violet moon. “You truly have given up.”

My throat seared but I didn’t bother answering her question. No one knew the exact locations of the seals. Vrail had come to the same conclusion I had that day in the Rift with my mother. Five groups of Light Fae sacrificed themselves to create five siphons that drained the mainland of all its magic. But magic couldn’t be destroyed, only stored. The Light Fae had used water as a barrier to protect each siphon and the seal that kept the magic stored within it, but there were countless islands where each could be. Vrail had yet to find one of them, let alone discover if the seal could even be broken after Aemon’s death. I stepped around her and into the aisle between the stalls. Killian’s horse poked his head over his pen, his glassy, bored eyes staring at us.

Gerarda followed me out of the stables, right on my heels. I sighed and stopped mid-stride. She spun in front of me, her hair fanning out in a black wave before settling along her jaw. “Hildegard died believing you had a plan.”

My breath caught with such force it was as if the air had turned to water and filled my lungs. Gerarda’s eyes were sharp and piercing like a blade pressed to my throat, daring me to breathe again. I refused to recoil. “I had a plan. It failed.”

Gerarda lifted her chin. “Then help us craft a new one. You’re meant to save us—”

The wind outside whipped violently at the ground as I stepped toward Gerarda. “And I failed at that too.” Hot air burned through my nostrils like fire smoke as I tried to rein in my gusts. “I never claimed that title. No matter what my mother wanted, what Hildegard wanted, whatever plans this guild of yours had for me.”

Gerarda’s jaw tightened, but her lips stayed shut.

“Perhaps the true mistake was you all putting your trust in me. Where I go, death follows.” The heaviness of those words was almost enough to knock me to the ground, but I did not drop my gaze from Gerarda’s face, even as my magic flicked black hair across her freckled cheeks.

She glanced down at the strands and I could hear her thought as plainly as if she had voiced it. Imagine what you could train this to do to him.

A small part of me—the trained soldier who still yearned to protect her kin—shuffled in the depths of my despair. But I knew the truth. I had seen it. The skin along my arm itched from it.

Magic or no, the Crown could not be defeated.

Damien had proven himself to be more bloodthirsty than his father. It wasn’t enough for him to rule over Halflings, he had begun to use their blood to make magical weapons that would wreak havoc on anyone who thought to oppose him. And the weapons he didn’t need, he sold to the highest bidder. And those bidders had paid for an army so large there was no chance we could take them, even if every soul in the Faeland joined the fight.

All we could do was survive and I wouldn’t be judged on how I planned on doing so.

“I thought you were better,” Gerarda whispered, more to herself than to me.

I plucked a piece of grass from the tangle of my braid and let it drift to the ground, my gusts finally settling. I thought of all those Shades who had never made it off that island. Whose last days had been spent in cruel misery at Damien’s command. My throat seared as I thought of the young initiates I had helped train. Their lives had been ended before they’d had the chance to begin.

My fists shook beside me as I met Gerarda’s gaze once more. “I don’t have anything to be better for anymore.”

I thought Gerarda had been exaggerating, but Riven had left a flattened, brown line around the Myram tree. He spotted me the moment I stepped into the clearing and halted. I dropped my gaze back to the brown ring, so I didn’t have to see the wave of disappointment that crashed across Riven’s face.

I shielded my eyes with my hands as I looked up to where the tall groves swung against the sky. The suns had already reached midday.

I spotted two familiar figures walking along one of the bridges of twisted branches just above our heads. Vrail was chattering away while Syrra stared down at me. This had become our routine. I pretended she wasn’t perched above me like a bird and she kept her mouth shut.

“If you’re wanting to lecture me, Gerarda already did.” I dropped my hands and continued toward one of the five branches that curved down from the top of the Myram and sunk into the hidden city below. I wanted to swipe a casket of wine from the cellars while I still had enough wits to carry it up to my burl by faelight.

Riven did not take a step toward me, he just stopped. I could feel the grass around him relax. Sweat hung from his thick brow, down to his neck. His long mane of raven silk was tied back, though not in its usual half braid, like he hadn’t found the time to weave it. “We need to talk.” He flexed his jaw. There was no warmth in his face, none of the usual kindness that he always reserved for me. Instead, his expression was one of pure resolve.

I had become another thing for him to fight.

“No, we don’t.” I kept walking, but my throat tightened until my breath was nothing more than a wheeze. I had been avoiding Riven for weeks and being the kind Fae he was, he kept his distance, though his burl was lit each night.

That was part of the reason I was finding other places to sleep in the little spurts I allowed myself. I didn’t need the constant reminder of his goodness in the face of my emptiness.

“Keera.” He took a step toward me as his shadows circled around my ankles.

I ignored them and kept walking.

Riven only quickened his pace. “There are things you need to know.” His words were strained and breathy.

“I’m not interested in hearing them.” I had missed the last three meetings with the other rebels. I had no energy left for planning and plotting. My jaw flexed as I stepped by him, pointedly avoiding his pleading gaze.

Riven grabbed my arm.

“Don’t.” I spun around to face him and a gust of wind shot from my hand. It collided with Riven’s chest and threw him onto his back. I stared at my open hand but I didn’t apologize.

When Riven’s surprise settled, he looked up at me with the worst expression of all.

Pity.

“Keera—”

I closed my eyes. “I don’t want to hear whatever you have to tell me, Riven. I don’t have enough strength for hope and I don’t have enough wine for any more disappointment. When you need someone dead, come find me.”

Riven stood and his shadows flared out in every direction along the ground. The usually soft curves had turned sharp as they always did when he was angry. Riven’s face was hard as he stared at me. My breath hitched and for the briefest moment I thought Riven might move to strike. Not to maim, but to spar. I readied myself for a battle but Riven didn’t budge.

Instead, his shoulders collapsed and he rubbed his brow. “I don’t know how to help you, diizra.”

My heart twinged at his special name for me, but it was nothing compared to the burning in my throat or the hollow ache in my core. The fresh screams that fueled my nightmares echoed through the grove for only my ears to hear.

I turned away from him, knowing there was nothing Riven could do to quiet them. “I don’t want you to help me.”

I don’t want help at all.

I DIDN’T BOTHER SHOWERING before I made my way to the kitchens. Stinking of horse and shit only gave others more of a reason to keep their distance. I stalked down the spiral staircase of one of the Myram’s branches and descended into the city of faelight below. I crossed the grand hall with its root-packed ceiling echoing my footsteps from thirteen stories above. Lunch had already been served so the hall was quiet. The children were playing out in the sunlight while their parents finished their duties. The only ones still there were the older Elverin seated along the shallow pool cooling their calves.

Their boisterous chatting echoed through the circular hall but they went silent as soon as I entered. I clenched my jaw and ignored their stares. Part of me longed for the days when my presence was met with fear and caution instead of pity and disgust.

Familiar voices sounded from the kitchens, and my stomach dropped. I hadn’t expected to encounter anyone in the kitchen so far from supper. I softened my steps and slipped into the storeroom across the hall. A small faelight floated by my shoulder, illuminating the jars of nuts and crates of fresh berries and dried meat. The caskets of wine that usually covered the floor were gone.

My heartbeat quickened as I rummaged through the shelves looking for anything that resembled wine. All I found were two glass bottles, dusty and forgotten on a bottom shelf. There was a small pop as I pulled a cork of one bottle free and sipped the liquid inside. I spat the oil from my mouth and wiped the rest off my lips with my sleeve.

I grabbed the other bottle, but it was empty.

My skin rippled with heat as the onslaught of rage focused my vision. I grabbed the empty bottle by its neck and stalked into the kitchens. Lash’raelth was standing by one of the giant hearths at the middle of the room. His violet eyes were full of laughter as he towered over Pirmiith, who sat across the stone counter next to Nikolai.

“What did you do with it?” I bellowed, ignoring the way they all flinched at the desperate rasp of my voice.

“Do with what?” Pirmiith asked, tucking one of his tiny braids behind his ear in a transparent attempt of ignorance. My eyes narrowed. Whatever loyalty I had for the Elf who had saved my life from the Unnamed Ones had disappeared.

Just like my wine.

I stalked toward him like a hungry bear. “You know exactly what I am talking about.”

Lash stepped around the counter, placing himself between me and the others. The fire in the hearth roared brighter, the dancing flames reflecting dangerously in his purple eyes. A reminder that Lash would use his powers if needed.

Nikolai smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles on his silk jacket. He raised a manicured brow as he finally looked at me, peering out from behind his Fae guard. “Pirmiith didn’t hide the wine. I did.” He tucked his head back behind Lash, tugging at his hair. “And you will find everyone intends to follow my lead.”

I tilted my chin up at the mountain of a Fae. I could force the truth from Nikolai if needed but Lash was another matter. “Where is it?” I shouted, flinging the empty wine bottle in my hand across the room.

The glass shattered against the wall and someone gasped. It wasn’t a scream or anything close to a word, but I recognized the tone of her breath all the same. My body froze, arm still extended like the hand of a compass pointing directly at Gwyn.

Her head was pinned against the table, shielded by her arms and mane of red curls, both now covered in bits of glass. They fell to the floor as she stood and were ground to dust as she stared at me with nothing but vitriol in her eyes.

My throat tightened until it hurt to breathe. “Gwyn. I didn’t know you were there,” I mumbled, fully aware of how pathetic I sounded. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Gwyn’s lip curled back as she shook the rest of the glass over of her shoulders. There was no hint of the young girl who had once hovered around my chambers for hours. Damien had taken so much more than her childhood when he had sliced into her. Her smile had yet to be seen in the Faeland, and no one here had heard Gwyn speak, let alone laugh. I worried that wouldn’t change no matter how many moons passed.

Gwyn grabbed the book she had been reading from the table and signed something at the others with the slow movements of unpracticed fingers. Nikolai nodded glumly and she started out the door.

I gritted my teeth and turned back to Nikolai. “Where is the wine?”

Lash shook his head in disbelief and threw a tray of pastries into the oven. Pirmiith wisely turned around, knowing the conversation no longer concerned him.

“Are you going to throw something at my head next?” Nikolai crossed his arms.

Guilt flared across my face like one of Lash’s fire tendrils. I dropped my gaze to the floor and stormed out of the room.

I didn’t turn around as he called after me. I didn’t look as the Elverin in the hall whispered as I stalked toward the faelight.

Every ounce of energy I had was being spent on keeping my newfound powers controlled. My muscles ached from the tension as I climbed onto a large ball of covered faelight and was carried to the highest burls in Myrelinth.

My vision blurred from the pain and nausea as I stepped through the door. The full force of my cravings had returned as soon as that first bottle had touched my lips six weeks earlier. I had been so naïve to think I could control them. So desperate to think that I could keep the cost hidden from anyone but me.

I rummaged through my clothes with shaky hands, feeling for the soft skin on my leather pouch. I found it under a soiled tunic. I threw the shirt over my shoulder and onto the floor with the rest of my unwashed clothes and unused blades. It took three tries to untie the drawstrings and dump the contents onto my lap.

A flash of gold sent a shiver along my unmarked skin. But this was not a craving that could be settled with my mage pen. I picked up the vial of black liquid—the same elixir that Hildegard had given me to help with the cravings—and unstoppered the top.

The scent of winvra relaxed my shoulders. I had never needed more than a few drops to lessen the cravings before, but that wasn’t all I needed. Guilt had already exhausted my body and I needed to sleep.

But to sleep, I needed oblivion.

I brought the vial to my lips and swallowed what was left of Hildegard’s gift.

The memory of that first night haunted me as I fell asleep. It replayed in my mind like I was living through it for the very first time:

I tumbled onto a field of grass with no recollection of where I’d fallen from. I groaned with the little bit of air left in my lungs but there was no pain. No broken bones or split skin from the fall.

I stared down at my sleeve; the top of the jagged scar along my forearm was peeking out over the cuff. The sudden urge to pull it back into place overtook me and I tugged the linen before I gathered my bearings.

I never walked into a field. I had just been underground dropping Gwyn off at the infirmary in Myrelinth. The healers had swarmed around her the moment I lay her on the cot.

Riven had been there and told me to lie down too, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off Gwyn. She had taken ill again as we passed the boundary into the Faelinth and nothing I did seemed to help. I needed to know she was okay. I needed to know that I hadn’t hurt her by using my healing gift to stitch her belly back together.

Riven pulled me into his chest. “You brought her here alive, diizra,” he whispered so quietly only I could hear him. “You don’t need to worry now. She’s safe and she will stay that way.”

Somehow his words penetrated my fear enough for the exhaustion to blanket me. My brows creased along the grass, trying to place the rest of the memories, the journey to the field, but there were none. Moments before Riven had lifted me into his arms to carry me to his burl, but then I had tumbled out of them into a field I didn’t recognize.

A soft breeze blew hair across my face, but it carried no scent. No hint of birch or florals, no spray of sea in the air. I shifted against the soft earth and strained to hear something out in the distance. No crashing waves, no birdsong or carriage wheels. It was as if the field existed in a world of its very own.

Something shifted behind me, loud as thunder in the eerie silence.

My chest tightened. The hair on the back of my neck raised as I pulled myself off the ground and slowly turned. Damien stood tall with his hands tucked behind his back. He was not dressed in his usual undone tunic, but instead in new finery: his shirt was pressed and buttoned to its high collar, as black as the night sky, paired with a jacket of interlocking buttons that formed a jagged, inky pattern down the length of him. The only color on his person was the jade eye patch he wore to cover what Gwyn had done to him.

I lurched back at the sight of him, reaching for weapons that were not hanging from my hips. Damien’s eye flared. A deep crease appeared between his brow and patch for the briefest moment, but then it was gone.

“Where have you taken me?” I hissed, fear and anger igniting in my chest.

Damien waved his hand over a patch of grass and a gold throne appeared out of nothing. He sat down, his back perfectly straight instead of slumped over the armrest the way he used to as crown prince. Perhaps that had all been part of his ruse.

“I haven’t taken you anywhere.” Damien’s cold gaze sliced right through me, accentuated by the short cut of his hair. This was not the rowdy prince in front of me, but the king. Someone entirely new. My muscles tightened sensing something else in his stare. It was stern and hard in a way the prince’s had never been. But I could recognize the contempt he had for me in the slight curl of his lip. And below his hatred and disdain, there was the calculating observer that Damien had spent years hiding away. Now that I knew it was there, Damien couldn’t mask that side of him any longer.

A chill ran down my spine. For the first time, I could see the resemblance between Damien and his brother, Killian. A new wave of fear crashed over me. This was not the aloof prince who spent his time entertaining gentlefolk in his bedchambers and drinking until dawn, this was a patient, strategic mind that had spent decades crafting his plot to seize the crown.

“You have magic?” I asked, pointing to the throne.

Damien gave a stoic nod. “Of a kind.”

Confusion stirred inside me, thoughts whirling in my mind, too fast and too many to catch. My hand rose, feeling my upper arm where Damien had plunged his needle into it before ordering his guards to take me from the throne room, and the whirlwind stopped. “The injection …”

“Another experiment of mine,” Damien answered with no expression and a hard edge to his voice. Both his hands were wrapped tightly around the ends of his armrests. “There is much to be learned from the arts of Fae.”

I blinked. Damien had found a way to cultivate enough magic to mimic the Fae gifts. He had been using that knowledge to fuel his newfound weapons economy, but it was clear he had other inventions he’d been keeping just for himself. I cleared my throat, already knowing what magical gift Damien had gotten inspiration from. “Mindwalking.”

Damien nodded, his back even straighter. “What better way to forge a connection between two minds.” He drummed his fingers along the armrest and bit the inside of his cheek. The hollow under his eye patch darkened.

Nausea gurgled in my stomach. “You experimented on me?”

Damien’s jaw pulsed. “That seems apparent.”

“Why?” The question was off my tongue before I could think the better of it.

Damien’s mouth was a straight line, but there was a ghost of his wicked grin in his eye. “Insurance.”

I straightened my back, sensing the threat but not knowing what form it would take. “You wanted a way to search through my memories?” I lifted my hands uselessly. Whatever this place was, I doubted I could hurt Damien here.

“No.” The first smirk appeared on his lips. “I wanted to show you mine.”

I swallowed down the bile in my throat at the thought of everything Damien might delight in showing me. “Your speech was enough. I don’t need to see how you hung Curringham and Tarvelle. Or what you—”

Damien lifted his chin in victory. “How I killed your chambermaid?”

My breath caught. Both at the idea of seeing Gwyn being cut open by Damien’s own hand, from his own mind, but also because Damien had revealed so much in five simple words.

He didn’t know Gwyn had survived.

I feigned a flinch, pretending the thought of Gwyn’s death was too much to bear. Damien’s thin lip twitched upward.

“Perhaps another time.” Damien tilted his head and I knew he was imagining the pleasure of giving me such pain.

“Then what did you bring me here for?”

Damien stared at me for several long moments, trapping me in his unblinking gaze. When he decided to answer, his tone was hard. “I wanted to show you the consequences of your actions.”

I scoffed, crossing my arms.

Damien’s eye patch shifted as he raised his brows. “Don’t you recognize this place?”

I shrugged, refusing to answer him.

“It is a bit unfinished”—Damien raised his hand and the edge of the small field began to expand—“but I’m surprised you don’t recognize it. It is home after all.”

A strong gust of sea spray filled the air as the Order took shape in front of us. The three towers held us in their shadows, each topped wit