KANE

I WAS SETTLING MYSELF AGAINST a long-ago overturned wagon half buried in snow, readying my pathetic mortal body for sleep, when a branch

snapped.

All the hairs on my body rose.

Snap. Another.

Whatever was hunting me was heavy-footed.

Exhausted irritation—not fear—fogged my gaze as I squinted into the moonlit tree line. I’d been without my lighte for less than four days and already it was more infuriating than anything else. Had I known I’d be stripped of my power, I’d have taken a horse or sled through Vorst. But I’d relied on my dragon’s wings to carry me through the region’s skies and now…now as I slept in ditches and trekked on foot through miles and miles of silent, blustering ice, it seemed the only real gift the Fae God had bestowed upon me was a near-constant urge to jerk my chin over my shoulder.

On my way from bleak, gray Vorst to Pearl’s capital, Carrus, I’d narrowly avoided snarling white leopards and lumbering grizzly bears. Animals I wouldn’t have batted an eye at a week ago. I’d taken a mixed approach of hiding, distraction, and the occasional hunter’s trap, but this thing…whatever snapped that branch, it had been tracking me.

I’d heard the sounds a few miles back, but kept moving until night sunk the temperature so low my breath crystalized in the air before it was halfway out my nose. As the daylight withered away, this decaying wheelbarrow had beckoned to me like a mirage in a desert of ice. Now, as I crouched behind it, its termite-laden wood was all that stood between me and whatever was out there.

Another branch snapped, followed by the rustle of scarce pines. Wind howled at my neck and I pulled my hood up in protection from the sting. Every layer of snow between my thick winter leathers and fur-lined cloak nudged me that much closer to frostbite.

Without making a sound, I stood and unsheathed my sword. Moonlight glinted off its shining surface. A bright harvest moon. For some inexplicable reason the otherworldly glow reflected in my steel made my chest tighten.

A bleak moan as something broke through the tree line was my only hint.

And then, she was shuffling toward me through the snow, her hobbling, disfigured feet facing backward. Matted white hair hung around her ghoulish face, lit by heavy moonlight.

A snow wraith.

I scrambled back on rocky ice, heart in my throat.

My skin was far too thin over my muscles. My breath too shallow sawing in and out of my lungs.

I’d never felt much empathy for mortals—not out of malice, I’d just never had the errant thought. But now…I’d never look at a mortal man the same. Each new day they woke up alive was nothing short of a miracle.

Fishing for the dagger in my boot, I careened over the wheelbarrow I’d thought might serve as my roof. The wraith moaned, unhinged jaw creaking with the force of her fury. My hands tightened on the hilt. Perhaps a straight shot through the head—

Before she could draw any closer I hurled the weapon at her skull.

And missed by a mile, my dagger landing in a mountain of fresh snow.

The skeletal undead woman didn’t even flinch.

F**k. No Fae strength. No Fae aim. I’d been reliant on my abilities my whole life—I wasn’t sure who I was without them.

I tightened my grip on my longsword. The frosty blade didn’t waver, even as my mortality became weighty in my grasp. This simple sword— carved of plain steel and brandished now by human arms—was all that stood between me and an undead witch hungering for my soul.

That was what they’d always assumed wraiths were. Witches who had died in tragic, inhumane ways. Who had screamed so loudly in their final minutes that the raw, broken moan carried over to their afterlife.

The wraith before me released another guttural howl, those twisted feet shuffling her forward, and I decided the folklore was true. Ancient, rageful, and wretched. Lolling tongue and gray flaking skin. Her weather-scarred belt and necklace threaded with human bones. A barbaric practice—the jewels of her kill.

When she charged me, I drove my sword clean through her heart. Sure, and straight. Not a quiver in my form, despite the way the ice-cold air funneled through my aching lungs.

The wraith howled. Her inky-black mouth wrenched open, that long gray tongue twitching. I twisted the blade and shoved it farther, cutting through brittle bone and old, leathery tissue.

She moaned again, and a sick foreboding curled low in my gut. She was…not dying.

Not weakened in the slightest.

In fact, as my heartbeat rattled my ribs, and true, punishing fear wormed through my clenched jaw, the snow wraith wrapped her hands, both missing more than half their fingers, around the blade and pulled it deeper.

Dragging herself closer to me, reaching that venomous, lethal tongue toward me again.

If it reached my face—my mouth—

I wasn’t sure how much of a soul I had left after losing Arwen, but whatever scraps were buried inside my heart this wraith would surely unearth and devour with her kiss.

I yanked the sword back, trying to extricate it, and was reminded once more how little power I held as a mortal.

The sword was lodged too snugly inside her chest.

I yanked and tugged, dodging her stumped fingers and unhinged jaw. Her breath washed over my face—no warmth, as no blood pumped in those reanimated veins—and the stench…like carrion piled high in the sweltering sun. Like death, stolen from its peaceful void and forced to wander and search for eternity.

Stark understanding brought my eyes back up to the savage, frozen witch. The talismans and bone relics hanging around her neck. Tokens from a past life. And her sorrowful cloudy eyes…the unbearable, unending pain there.

The wraith released a viscerally unholy moan and lunged, faster now—

I recoiled too fast and landed on my ass, crawling backward as the wraith threw herself over the wheelbarrow, landing even farther onto the sword and eliciting another low, guttural sound.

Too close, too close—

Righting myself, I lurched up and back, fighting to keep that gap between us as wide as I could. I’d never outrun her, she’d never grow tired…and my only two weapons—one deep in the endless snow and the other lodged inside her body. One more step backward slammed my spine against the trunk of a tree, and I didn’t think as I spun and climbed.

Didn’t think, didn’t breathe, as I dug one foot after another into bark. Up and up and up. Not as my hands grew raw and stiff from cold, burning and numb at once. Nor as pines and ice and bark cut through my vision and into my eyes.

Some voice in my mind, sunny and bright, pointed out that had I not climbed that wall of ice over and over, I’d never have the muscle memory to make it this high. That all my hard work had not entirely been for nothing.

Fair point, bird.

Up and up and up I rose as those desolate moans grew fainter. Higher still, as the snow wraith wailed, begging at the base of the tree for one taste,

one lick of my soul.

When I was sure my hope had been proven true—that the wraith could not climb up behind me—I nestled myself between two branches spread in a V and sucked in lungful after lungful of freezing air.

That blur of matted white hair moaned from the ground, my steel shooting up through her back. Devastated. Brokenhearted. More sorrowful than I could bear to listen to. The earsplitting bellow of pain was too familiar.

Hours and hours passed.

The night grew from cold to frigid. Owls hooted. Snow fell. My face was so numb the flakes that landed didn’t melt.

At some point my shivering became a hazard to my position in the branches, and I tied myself to the narrow trunk with my belt in case I passed out. But sleep never came. My adrenaline too insistent on my survival. That still-wailing wraith too ravenous at the base of the tree.

And no sleep—no sleep meant hours on hours of wretched thoughts.

Gutting memories. Imagined conversations that hacked at my heart.

“I can’t live like this.”

Her full lips turn down. “I know.” “Are you in pain?”

“No. I’m happier here.”

I reach for her warm, soft skin, but all I feel is night. “Are you lying, my little bird?”

“Do you want me to lie?”

By the time the sky lightened to a dull, barren gray—the only color of daylight in Gods-forsaken Vorst—I’d lost sight of the ground altogether. Everything had blurred—the white of fresh snow, the white of the wraith’s thick hair, the white of the clouds that misted across the peak.

But her wails had ceased and I knew that meant she’d abandoned me. For the wraith would never stop moaning. She’d wander these barren, frostbitten lands eternally. Stumbling through each day and night and day again. Sobbing for the life she’d lost. Begging for a soul to share. A

mournful, weeping husk with a thick steel sword lodged clean through her heart.

I sighed, exhaustion and misery weighing heavy on my mind and thick on my tongue. My foot maneuvered to the nearest branch below to guide me down—

And missed.

F**k, fuck—

Grasping at pines and branches, arms flailing, I fell— And landed with a crack atop the capsized wheelbarrow.

The pain that radiated through my back and side was nauseating. So much so, I rolled over and heaved twice into the fresh, new snow. Nothing came out. I hadn’t eaten in days.

If I didn’t reach Carrus before sundown, I’d have to kill my dinner with my hands.

I stood on weak legs, body screaming, and scanned the dim morning on the mountainside.

No wraith. No creatures.

Just a sprawling, hostile ocean of stark white snow.

As I trekked, dawn slipped into early morning, and unfamiliar sunlight blanketed the simple mountain pass in prismatic, near-blinding white. That unfiltered sun—the clearing of those soupy, constant clouds—meant I was drawing closer to the capital. I traipsed farther, willing my legs not to collapse in relief or fatigue.

On and on, through billowing, gentle clouds like freshly spun cotton, and down trails that I’d noticed were now marked by droopy-headed snowdrops. And then…cobblestone. Sturdy, merciful cobblestone.

And cheery brick storefronts. The scent of hot breakfast rolls, and gardens of crocus and hellebore. The temperature now a pleasant winter chill, with snowflakes that melted along my sleeves. Genially grunting oxen with wings drifted through the skies above—jolly patrons with satchels of groceries at their saddles.

Finally, blessedly, I’d arrived in Carrus.

The floating kingdom’s capital was like a wonderland—a jolly, bustling town of wooden cottages and flowerpots and cozy brick chimneys. All built into the tallest peak of the kingdom’s floating mountains.

I ducked under an archway overflowing with bunches of ethereal winter hydrangea, each leaf dripping icicles that sparkled like clean diamonds. The ancient temples I passed were gilded by golden sunlight. Elegant swans drifted under their tea bridges and across glittering, clear ponds.

And while I appreciated the safety that came with candy-pink clouds and ruddy-cheeked children, each dainty, snow-tipped flower or winged animal…all of it only made me think of her.

I had the disturbing thought somewhere between a cart selling warmth elixirs and a sprawling ice plain tinged by the afternoon light that if I were left alone too long with my thoughts anywhere, I’d suffer similarly. Every brunette tree would conjure her hair. Every ray of sunlight, her generous power—

By the time I reached Carrus’s sky docks—the wide planks held by sturdy, white rope and burnished supports—my mood was almost as wrecked as my body. The port, which hung staggeringly in midair, was hewn of some shiny white stone and dropped right off into violet sunset clouds. Burly dockhands helped townsfolk bundled in so much fur they looked like precious packages onto woolly, winged oxen—luftalvors— which took off into the skies below, one after another. Each luftalvor in flight sent senseless envy through my bones and an aching where my wings used to sprout.

“Excuse me,” I called over to the stationmaster, though it came out like a grunt. The man’s eyes cast down to my feet, and I realized my boots had lost their soles. “I need to sail for Onyx Kingdom.”

The gruff man that turned had thick hair and an even thicker beard, with the dry, cracked lips and dulled eyes of someone who’d spent the last three decades whipping through arid skies.

“We don’t fly there,” he said, as if I should have known as much. “I have coin. I’ll pay triple your going rate.”

“I said,” he grumbled, turning back to his luftalvors and their low, fussy bellows, “we don’t fly there. Now get. No peasants loitering on the docks.”

It didn’t seem worth explaining to him that, despite my overall disheveled, frozen appearance, I wasn’t a peasant, and in fact had more coin to offer than he’d know what to do with.

“How can I get to Willowridge?” I said, each word a true effort. “Nobody in Carrus will fly you there,” he growled between the

impenetrable bristles of his beard. “Onyx’s nasty creatures will eat these guys out of the sky.” He motioned back at the fluffy white luftalvors in their pen behind him. Two of the winged oxen gave me plaintive looks and a third shuffled over, feathered wings brushing against coiled fur as it licked its friend’s face. “Maybe the captains in Sleetcliff, but I can’t say for sure.”

“Where is Sleetcliff?”

The stationmaster coughed up a wad in the back of his throat and spit it onto the iridescent white stone at his feet. “About a fortnight from here.”

My teeth fused together. “Can one of your captains fly me to Sleetcliff?” “We don’t fly there.”

“Where the fuck do you fly?”

“Watch your tone,” he snapped, drawing a gleaming dagger from his scabbard. I reached for my own. I’d make this simpleton crawl on his knees and beg to fly me anywhere he’d be allowed to keep his balls.

My fingers grasped around nothing and my heart sank. Right, no dagger.

No sword.

“Now,” he growled. “Get off my fucking dock.”

I sized up the captain. Likely in his midforties. Strong from years of flying and handling hefty luftalvors. If I’d eaten anything in the last three days, or slept at all, or had a weapon, or fewer injuries…even then I’d give my mortal self a fifty-fifty chance.

Without another word I shuffled out of his way.

Sleigh bells rang through the busy town as I rounded a tavern. Rosemary and bay leaves scented the air and my stomach turned on itself. The vivid alpenglow cast the surrounding mountaintops in shades of clementine and carnation pink.

It would be night soon. I’d have to spend another night away from Shadowhold, wasting time, withering—

“You get kicked off the docks, too?”

I jerked my chin toward the voice and found a kid, scuffed and tattered and far too pale, sitting on the ground. He reclined against the brick wall of the tavern, feet folded beneath him.

“Yes, actually,” I replied, wary.

“They think we’ll toss ourselves off the edge. Wouldn’t be good for business, I guess.” He shrugged, picking something off his filthy pants. “I just like the view.”

But the peasant child had given me an idea. “Any interest in helping me with something?”

SCREAMS SPLIT THE HAPPY, WINTRY town. They bleated out from the sky docks

—begging for someone, anyone, to save the little peasant boy from his own impending death.

“Come any closer,” the kid vowed, somewhere past the thickening crowd, “and I’ll jump!”

He was a marvelous actor. Perhaps using true pain and fear—the injustice of living on the streets—to power his performance. Too bad, then. With the amount of coin I’d given the kid, he’d spend the rest of his life fat and warm and perhaps thus untalented.

My assumption that the stationmaster wouldn’t let a boy off himself on his dock was correct—not for any noble reason, but simply for the optics. I watched from behind the tavern as the bearded, panicked man pushed through throngs of onlookers craning their necks in both fear and fascination.

On brutally aching legs I curved through the crowd until I reached the luftalvor pen, hopped the wooden gate, and climbed atop the first one I could find that was awake.

“Come on, buddy.” I grunted. “Let’s go.”

The winged ox didn’t even stir.

“Let go of me!”

They’d caught the kid.

I’d only have minutes—seconds—until the stationmaster returned. “Up.” I kicked at the creature once. “Off!”

He only snorted.

But he had wings.

And I’d had wings once, too. And nothing sent me flying like—

I wrapped my hand around a plume of the luftalvor’s feathers and gripped, yanking them back toward me.

The ox shot into the sky so fast I nearly rolled clean off and plunged to my mortal death. But my hands—as if still imbued with some Fae instincts

—wrapped around the reins with a stronger grip than I’d ever exerted, and I held myself to the creature.

Inhaling the first real breath I’d taken since I left that Fae God in his enchanted hovel, I watched as the cheery, elevated capital of Carrus became a speck among towering white mountaintops, and then watercolor clouds swallowed the kingdom whole.