LOGINEvander
Water pours down the walls in steady, frigid streams. My head aches, and the smell of blood hangs thick in the air as I try to open my eyes for the fourth time in the last five minutes.
I think my skull might be cracked. I reach up to rub my throbbing temples but wince when I flex my hands.
My fingers are shattered.
“Syd?” I croak into the darkness.
“I’m still alive,” he replies groggily.
I open my eyes to slits. Faint light fills my vision. It’s enough to cause a searing pain to ripple through my brain. “Where do you think we are?”
“One-hundred-percent underground,” he answers shortly somewhere beside me.
I reach for him, unsure how far away he is, but the manacles binding each wrist to heavy chains only allow me to stretch my arms so far.
We’ve been here for a day at least. No food or drink
ArisThe Next SummerVeiled Valley bakes under the glare of early summer sunlight. It’s around noon, I think, as I stumble up the stairs to my room, fumbling with the suitcase I haven’t even seen in probably five years, let alone used in that time. It’s been a while since I’ve gone anywhere for an extended amount of time–just to be somewhere else. Normally, all I need are my ghost-issued gloves that turn into a full suit of armor and the clothes on my back. It’s not like I can’t just, I don’t know, snap my fingers and be somewhere else whenever I want to. I’m giving that a rest this summer. This summer, I’m just Aris. Not the Shadowsynger heir. Not the Prince of Veiled Valley. Not an Alpha in the making. Just me.My bedroom door opens on a phantom wind, thanks to the ever lingering spirit of the house, and my room expands around me–a wash of deep blues, silver, purples, and blacks. It’s a lair of masculine darkness–every Shadowsyngers’ dream. A four-poster bed with a satin bedspread
LexaSpringKaleb’s hand is a solid, warm presence on my lower back as we move through Aunt Sarah’s rose garden. Most of the flowers are in bloom, which is the doing of her powers, or someone’s powers, seeing as the air still feels crisp, and the grass is a sharp, neon green–fresh and slightly crunchy. The deep emerald green satin of my gown stretches to its limits over the swell of my belly. My skin aches and itches, and it’s taking all of my strength not to scratch. I fill my lungs, letting a breath out slow. We move through the haze of spring greens surrounded by the soft scent of roses, but Kaleb’s fingers curl into a fist against my lower spine, pressing just enough to relieve some of the pressure there. “I’m going to find you somewhere to sit down,” he whispers through the hum of conversation taking place all around us. “I’m okay, really,” I insist, glancing around at familiar, and not so familiar, faces. There’re a lot of people here. More strangers than I’ve seen since the T
KalebA Few Weeks Later“Has anyone seen my wife?” Logan asks as he parts a small crowd gathered around one of the many open fires scattered across the festival grounds. The tall, dark-haired man with eyes so similar to mine it’s almost like looking in a mirror has his son, Kieran, on his shoulders, as he sidesteps to where Lexa is perched on my thigh while I rest on a bale of hay. He sinks down beside us, unceremoniously dumping his son onto the hay bales stacked behind us, and Kieran shrieks with laughter, scrambling and begging to do it again. I’m not used to this yet. This many people just milling about for fun. I recognize so many of the faces, even if they weren’t in the Glade with us because we’re… one people. We always have been, just separated by an ocean, by magic and invisible chains. “I think Brie’s hiding from him.” Lexa smirks, jabbing a thumb in Kieran’s direction. Her hair is loose and falling down her back in spiraling curls beneath a hat of pure white rabbit fur. A
LexaTime is a construct in my mind with no beginning and no end. I remember being dragged onto the baking sand, my fingers slipping free from Kaleb’s. I remember being carried and laid on hard metal, hazy figures hovering over me dressed in white, like angels, their masked faces haloed by blinding fluorescent light. I have a feeling there were times when I was awake, when I’d open my eyes to slits and catch Kaleb’s scent all around me, my cheek pressed to his chest. I remember swaying. Constantly swaying. “We’ve kept her mostly sedated,” says a voice I don’t recognize, and suddenly I’m being lifted again, my body little more than skin and bones as a scent I haven’t encountered in ages hits me like a brute force directly to the chest. “And her man? I was told she has a mate now. Where is he? Was he on that boat?” Logan’s voice is rich and stern as he shouts the question over a barrage of overlapping voices. If there is a reply, I don’t hear it. I curl my fingers in Logan’s shirt, my
MariannaThe first frost of the season blankets Crescent Falls on the morning twelve ships come into view off the shore of Tarsian. Josie, Misty’s daughter, is weaving Skye’s hair into two braids by the hearth where Maddy keeps watch, occasionally and discreetly checking the dainty watch on her wrist. I stand near the window, watching golden and red leaves tremble on the trees along the wall of the garden before they sway down to the shimmering, silver grass. The sun rises on Crescent Falls, then Eastonia, on what I know will be a historic day. We got the news about the ships headed back in our direction a week ago. Since then, every member of the family has been debating next moves. Aviva and Ryan are readying the Deadlands for the arrival of what Maeve said would be approximately three thousand people, including hundreds of children, none of them in good shape. They need food and medicine. Kenna is there now, setting up clinics in Teshka and Endova, preparing to accept the new arr
LexaI was only sixteen when I came into my wolf gifts. It happened overnight, jarring me out of my sleep. My dad and his brother were the same–early bloomers. But the same week I got my wolf and started training with my parents on how to use it, I found myself in a forest with my dad, my great-uncle Ryatt, and my grandfather, Isaac on a hunt that changed everything. Dad was sulking, in the worst mood I’ve ever seen him in. His foul energy radiated off him, and I felt so uncertain and off kilter that I thought something was seriously wrong. He didn’t want to be out there with us, with me. I didn’t understand why until years later. I’m like him. Like my grandfather, too. I am not just a wolf. It takes only a small spark of emotion to turn that wolf into something heinous and even more deadly. Like a fucking fire melting the thick, otherwise impenetrable gate separating me from the Glade. Like a mate–a dead one–lying prone while my cousin sends the entire kingdom to the ground, lik







