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
PoseyI lean on the door and take several aching breaths as Aris’s muffled voice replies to Morgan’s incessant questions. “I wanted you, and you didn’t want me.” I close my eyes against the memory of his omission, but the words bounce through my skull, funneling deep into my gray matter, where hurt blooms into regret. To make matters worse, knowing what I know now… I hear Aris say, “What can I do to please you, Morgan?” and it wrecks me more than anything I’ve ever felt or ever known. He sounds so defeated. So tired and broken, and it’s my fault. But I can’t tell him the truth. It would hurt us both even further, and I don’t think I’m strong enough for that.I slink away from the door, carefully gliding down the stone steps in the thin, slipper-like shoes that match my dress. The air feels unnervingly cold until I reach the kitchen again and round the island, telling myself I’m here to check on the fawn and not to burst into tears without anyone seeing me. I crouch to run my finge
ArisCrisp, clear moonlight snakes between the gnarled, frost covered trees. My paws pound shallow snow, but I don’t feel the cold bite. I needed this. Desperately. I needed to be out in my wolf form while leaving the rest of the world behind, even if just for a moment. The castle fades into the distance. I race over hills and into shallow valleys, following the curve of a mountain creek, still burbling. Ice glimmers on the water's surface and starts to solidify the higher I climb, but the silver surface begins to darken, which catches my attention after an hour spent running, barely thinking, unable to form a single rational thought. The human side of me spots blood before my wolf senses catch up to what I’m seeing. I skid to a stop next to the creek, taking in the rich, iron scent. I follow the trail–bloody droplets at first, then a puddle, then a path where something large was dragged several yards into a clearing. It’s a deer. I halt at the edge of the clearing, hackles raise
Posey“You’re lying to me about something,” Aris says. My back hits the wall of the alcove. He braces a hand against the wall beside my head, tsking, his hooded eyes meeting mine under the cover of his lashes. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, you know? You felt like you didn’t have any options when it came to the trajectory of your life, and I offered you an out.” The words brush over my temple.“You offered to marry me, Aris.”“And?”“You don’t love me. Doesn’t that matter to you?”He arches a brow. He smells like whiskey and smoke. Like he’s been resting in front of a fire staring into the flames for hours. “I’m fucking engaged to someone I’ve met once. You tell me.”“You’re drunk,” I accuse him, and he smiles wryly, his brows arched. “How’d you figure that one out?”I lick my lips as his scent curls around my senses. Memories flash before me–a moment just like this, his body inches from mine, but his eyes had been dark with something other than hatred then. This is the side of
PoseyWillow’s voice is soft. I press my phone to my ear with my shoulder, the recesses of the archives spanning out before me in dusty shelves and varying shades of black. I’m at least four levels underground, and the air is thin and murky as I zigzag, trying to find the table I claimed for myself earlier this morning.“So, wait, you’re staying with Aris?”“Yeah,” I murmur, trying to keep my voice low even though I might be the first person to take an interest in this section of the archives in like a thousand years. I balance the heavy books, standing on my toes to peer over the shorter shelves toward the lamplight that seems like it’s leagues away. “It wasn’t my decision.”“Tell me again about this Morgan chick. She sounds awful.”“She’s… gorgeous. Tall and lean, you know, like the models in your fashion magazines.”Willow snorts. “Come on, Posey. Their engagement is all over the news, but the royals haven’t uttered a word about it. Is he for real?”“I think so. I haven’t spoken to
ArisPosey’s cloaked in gray as she approaches the castle. I watch her through the window in my study, the way she’s swallowed by the faint moonlight. The last remnants of sunset have been washed from the sky, driven back by the stars, but it does nothing to light her path after a day spent doing whatever the hell she does at the temple archives. I haven’t asked in the few days she’s been here. I haven’t spoken to her at all since she arrived. She takes her meals in her room, just like me.Seeing her again was startling. Seeing her here, lit by silver shadows? She looks like she is meant for this place, which is only making this worse. The newspaper on my desk rustles as the house refills my glass of whiskey. I glance at the paper, at the headline on the front page, and stuff my fist in my pocket as I look away. “Prince Aris of Veiled Valley engaged to Princess Morgan Ravenswood of Celestoria.”I was not the one to announce it. Neither was my family. Which begs me to believe her idi
PoseySnow coats the ancient cobblestone in wet streaks of silver. Flakes stick to my gray wool cloak, the hood pulled over my hair, which is braided down my back. I blend with the landscape in shades of steel and ash, but my black boots catch the gleam of lantern light swirling a familiar magic that settles in my bones and turns my heart to dust. Roman walks beside me in silence, his phone screen illuminating the space between us in artificial blue-hued light. I try to swallow, but the knot of nerves pressing against my vocal chords makes it impossible. “He knows I’m coming, right?” I ask in a croak that sounds like a toad. Roman nods, shrugging a shoulder like this isn’t the end of the world as I know it. Like I haven’t spent three months in a purgatory of my own making because of the man who lives in the castle now casting us in its snowy shadow. The castle itself is something out of a gothic fever dream. At least a half-dozen spires stretch into the thick clouds, and four towers







