Adelaide Forrest

“What?” I whispered, staring at him in surprise. His expression was ominous as he turned his focus up to Melian. I followed his stare, watching as she spun back around and looked at the ruined city with her brow furrowed.

Beck was gone.

Melian continued to spin, searching for the man who had been ahead of her only a few moments before. There wasn’t any sign of him, and I watched her hand slowly reach toward the sword secured at her waist.

“Did you hear that?” she asked, turning to face us directly. With the rubble of one of the buildings at her side, she glanced across the broken cobblestone street. I listened, trying not to breathe as Caelum kept his grip tight on me.

There was nothing, not even the rustle of trees in the distance, or birds or other wildlife scurrying through the ashes of what had once been a prosperous tribute the God of the Dead.

“Melian…” I hated the distance between us, and Caelum’s grip that kept me from going to her. His body was as rigid as a statue in the moments before he took swift strides toward the courageous woman who led the Resistance.

I moved at his side, hurrying to close the distance to Melian so we could stand together against what would come. I had to hope it was the Fae Marked and whatever security they’d implemented, but the concern on her face made me think otherwise.

She took a few steps away from us, shaking her head to deter us from following and holding out a hand in a signal to wait. I stopped at Caelum’s side when he followed the order.

She looked at her feet, watching the debris blow across the street with a sudden burst of wind. Then her eyes rose to mine, her brow furrowing in confusion. “I must be hearing thin—” her words cut off abruptly.

Melian gurgled, blood trickling at the corner of her mouth and dripping down her chin as she glanced down to her chest.

To the tip of the sword that slowly skewered her alive, puncturing through her ribcage and gleaming in the sunlight with the stain of her blood as it dripped onto the ground at her feet.

It pulled back as slowly as it had appeared, leaving her to crumple to the stone and debris beneath her. A woman’s scream erupted through the air, accentuating the death with the sound of a banshee wailing.

But there was no banshee to be found.

There was only me.

“NO!” Caelum roared, the sound causing the hair on my arms to stand on end. The Mist Guard swung his blade downward.

But it stopped a foot above my chest, halted in place by the pulse of absolute power that washed over the Ruined City. It exploded out from the epicenter at my right, distracting the man standing over me.

I followed his horrified stare over to where the power had come from, to where Caelum had been fighting with the other Mist Guard.

They all lay dead at his feet as Caelum stepped over them without a second glance. He walked forward, striding down the street as quickly as he could but never running, unconcerned with the soldiers racing his way, their attention focused solely on him.

Magic rolled off of him. Shadow hands left his body and touched the corpses at his feet. I stared at his face, horror consuming me as the power poured off of him, forming into shadows that fell to his feet.

The horror started at the top of his head, a gleaming silver crown appearing as the air itself shifted, parting to reveal something new. Or something very old. The silver crown bled darkness, the black ink of it dripping down the metal and into the top of his hair. What had once been an ashy blond brightened to ashen silver as it grew to a slightly longer, shaggier style where it ended above his shoulders.

His features shifted, becoming sharper and even more stunning, as his ears elongated and his eyes gleamed a bright, frosty blue. He grew taller, his features more brutal, and his beautiful face twisted with cruelty as his tunic and cloak transformed into a mix of pale-blue fabric and black armor and leather coverings. He was enormous, a formidable figure who made the Caelum I’d known look like a weakling as he cut through the Mist Guard that tried to stand in his way.

The ground beneath me shook, a skeletal hand emerging from the dirt next to my head. I screamed, watching as the skeleton pulled itself out of the ground, but I couldn’t move, pinned to the spot as it reassembled its broken pieces into the shape of the man it had been and turned on the Mist Guard standing over me. It attacked, launching its entire body at the man and tackling him to the ground.

Finally freed from my paralysis, I scrambled backward on my hands and feet until my back touched the wall of the building behind me. Curling my knees into my chest, I watched on in horror as Caelum and his army of the dead made their way toward me.

He thrust his hand into the chest of a man who tried to fight him, wrapping his fingers around his heart and yanking it out while the organ still pumped blood between his fingers. He dropped it to the ground, stepping over the corpse that rose again behind him to fight off the remaining Mist Guard, who had been stupid enough to think they could ever stand a chance against the monster who strode straight for me.

The man I’d fallen in love with had never really existed; Caelum wasn’t real—nothing but a deception. I’d seen the likeness of his true form before. Seen drawings and statues of that beautiful, terrifying face and the horror of his power over the dead.

Caldris.

More skeletons rose all around me as I forced myself to my feet, using my hands on the stone wall at my back to pull myself up, even when everything in me felt like giving up.

Beyond the skeletons that surrounded me, I was vaguely aware of more fighting, and of people emerging from the rubble to run from Caldris’s army of the dead as he stalked toward me.

The skeletal corpses formed a circle of protection around me, cutting off any chance I had of escape. They parted slowly as he emerged in front of me, letting him enter the bubble they’d formed.

This close, he seemed larger than humanly possible. His form was taller than any of the skeleton’s remains, towering over all of them as he stopped in front of me. The Mark on my neck burned, sensing the power of the Fae so near.

I shook my head when he reached out one of those perfect, strong hands to touch me. With his glamour gone, every line of his body was feral; the sharp lines of his face were as animalistic as the way he moved.

I backed into the wall, my hand brushing against the finger bone of one of the skeletons guarding me and drawing a terrified squeal from my lungs.

My God was nothing but pure, brutal beauty, and I wanted absolutely nothing to do with him; not ever again.

“They won’t hurt you, Little One,” he said, tilting his head to the side as he stared down at me. Even his voice was deeper, something ancient resting within it as those blue eyes gleamed.