ASHVEIL

Close your eyes. I am where your mind drifts, where reality dares not stain and the mind commands without restraint. Close your eyes, and I will be there, dwelling. No one can take me from you, so long as your mind refuses to let go.

F.

Chapter One

The Willow and the Beast

The ground at this part of the Nidavellir Forest was always slicker than the rest of it. Maybe it was last night’s snowfall, maybe the proximity to the Border.

Knowing the weight in the air, it was definitely the second.

Still, I couldn’t let the mud drag me down. Not with the hunters only a few feet behind. For them, falling only meant the loss of prey. For me, the cost of a breath out of place, a single stumble, a heartbeat’s hesitation meant losing everything.

Only prey know how each step can determine survival.

I veered toward the path that led to the Swamp, certain that the hunters would assume my fear would drive me to the brighter one with more fireflickers floating around like a herd of glittering stars.

Finn Mac Gumaraid might risk the Border. His sidekicks? Never.

Even years of running couldn’t silence the wheeze rising in my throat. The stench of the Swamp made breathing through my nose impossible, but the hunters made no attempt to quiet their own noise. They were loud, laughing, tossing vile promises of what they’d do once they caught me. Being loud in Nidavellir with its lurking beasts—and this close to the realm of bloodsuckers—was normally proof of arrogance. But these boys weren’t just arrogant. They were loud because they knew how much their closeness frightened me. Especially with Hera, my sister, out there guarding the tribe before the dignitaries arrived.

It was my own stupidity that dragged me into this, following those fuckheads to see what beast Finn bragged about bringing down on his wedding night. Apparently, I was that beast. And I’d walked right into his trap. No one had to pay the price for my idiocy… especially not Hera.

The bark tore at my fingers as I ducked behind a tree. With the Border ahead, the Swamp feet away, and my lungs aflame, I could no longer take another step. I was practically dragging air into my chest, every breath burning, sweat clinging to me tighter than I clung to the bark at my back.

Dread clawed up my throat. I was too close… way too close to the realm humans dared not speak of. Too close to know if the prickling on my skin came from fear or from the Union Magic feeding the Border.

They were near. The hounds of my trauma could smell them, and I knew better than to doubt that scent. Yet I couldn’t move. Any wrong step risked snapping a twig, splashing in the mud, or worse… sinking deep into the Swamp that marked the line between the land of humans and the bloodsuckers’ territory.

Then came his voice, cutting through everything, freezing me to the bone.

“We’ll split here. Malcolm, Dreng, Bersi, follow the eastern path. Sigurd, come with me. If we get lucky, we could kill both of them.”

Both?

Don’t tell me—

Shit!

***

Before Everything Collapsed, Earlier that Evening

The tribe sparkled like a jeweled tapestry. Garlands, flowers, and ribbons draped the snow-covered village, as if spring had arrived in midwinter. Chief Milo Mac Gumaraid’s wealth bowed to neither season nor reason. With town dignitaries coming, he had to flaunt Stormvaldr’s supremacy.

Despite Cryst’s best efforts to melt the snow, it clung to everything. Still, the village buzzed with warmth, blanketed in spring flowers. Near the ceremonial platform stood a massive cookery tent, where the bride would prepare a stew from the beast her groom had hunted. Her vow to serve. His to provide.

Days ago, after the funeral of the three hunters who were ripped apart by a beast, I overheard Finn boasting about the creature he intended to hunt on his wedding night while I hid behind our family tent. No one knew what the beast actually was, but they trusted Finn when he claimed it was a bloodsucker. Tonight, on his wedding night, he’d be set loose in the forest to bring down the vampire he claimed was responsible for the hunters’ deaths.

Everybody believed Finn to be the rightful heir to the throne of Stormvaldr. The tribe praised his courage, blind to the coward underneath. I knew Finn for the fool he was; I always had. Maybe that was why he and Milo always despised me. If the tribespeople knew he’d stolen the harvest that the farmers worked their asses off to collect, they would gut him before welcoming him home.

Wrapping myself in my black cloak, I headed toward the bitter orange grove, yards away from the tribe. The grove was hidden in the farthest reaches of Nidavellir, the vast, living wilderness that wrapped itself around Stormvaldr like a mother’s arms. Bitter orange trees were rare in Brotbein, but I had grown up beneath them. They were seen as useless, unworthy, when compared to the sturdy pines the Chief so often compared to our tribe’s resilience. But I understood his disdain. They were different. Misplaced. And their thorns had once nearly torn through his precious son’s arm when he’d tried to climb one to steal eggs from a bird’s nest.

I climbed my carefully hand-picked bitter orange tree. Its thorns cut anyone who didn’t know its secrets, but I’d claimed a favorite branch, smooth and just wide enough to cradle me. From there, I watched the tribe flicker like dying embers below, while the sky deepened above. People turned into misty, dancing shadows from up there. Still, the scene was so mesmerizing I couldn’t help but gawk. The cloak helped camouflage me—not that anyone would care to come near this grove anyway.

After all, outcasts gather where the wild things are.

With the night crawling closer, cold penetrated even the thickest of cloaks, turning my body into an uncontainable, shivering form. Gradually, Cryst—the fading star that warmed our days and abandoned our nights—dipped beneath the horizon and vanished. The stars began to dust the sky.

Nights on Aquatis were dark as obsidian. If you were lucky, you might catch a glimpse of Ymirath, the giant blue planet that sometimes looked like a jewel pinned in the sky. If the night was clear enough, you could even see the trailing mist of Andromeda—sparkling threads of blue and violet, shifting to orange and pink near dawn. It hovered so close that it made you ache to climb higher, to reach out and run your fingers through the soft veil of it.

I couldn’t risk climbing down to build a fire. Finn was probably already in the forest. I wouldn’t put it past him to name me his prey. People would cheer to see the corpse of the cursed womb of Stormvaldr as quickly as for any other beast. So I closed my eyes and turned to one of my quiet fantasies: I would’ve left Stormvaldr for Árborg—the nearest town to the tribe—to find work. To build a life. Sometimes my thoughts grew wilder and shaped a bookstore, completely mine. They sometimes included a child, with a husband who didn’t know my name was cursed. I kept all those pictures tucked away in the basement of my mind… waiting, where no fears or realities could stain them.

A sharp crack split the silence.

Someone was out there, lurking in the dark, and the second their voices drifted up through the trees, my heart faltered.

What the hell were they doing here? Wasn’t a groom supposed to hunt alone?

“D’ye reckon it’s a good idea us bein’ here wi’ ye?” Sigurd asked.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one wondering.

“It’s massive. I can’t bring it down alone,” Finn replied. That voice… it sank my heart to the pit of my stomach and left fear to conquer all my senses.

“But wha’ if it carries us o’er t’Border?”

“It won’t,” Finn snapped. “Vampires avoid these beasts. Just stay alert. If you see anything glowing red, tell me.”

Red? Vampires weren’t—

“Are you sure it’s a phoenix?” someone else asked in disbelief.

“Say its name again, Bersi,” Finn hissed, “and I’ll ram my sword down your fucking throat.”

A phoenix? Was he fucking serious?

I’d only ever seen phoenixes in old sketches. Either he was high on something, or his hollow skull had finally cracked enough to mistake myth for reality.

A few fireflickers floated overhead, not enough to completely light their faces. I leaned forward and caught Sigurd crushing a tulip under his boot.

“Just imagine it,” Finn said, voice rising with excitement. “One of those big-ass things, dead by our hands. We’d sell it on the black market for a fortune. Just a single feather is worth more than the entire fucking livestock trade. No one’s seen one since, I don’t know, the dawn of time?”

Even the shadows couldn’t hide the unease tightening the faces around him.

“But what if they notice we’re gone?” Malcolm persisted. He was always the only one in that pack with a half-functioning brain. Not that you’d notice if you compared him to a trained pig. “They’ll know we’re with you. It’ll ruin us. No girl would ever accept a man who follows bad omens. We won’t have any chance of a future if they find out we joined a group hunt when the groom was supposed to hunt alone. You’ve already got your woman, Finn. What’s in it for the rest of us?”

Finn inhaled deeply, then clapped a heavy hand against Malcolm’s neck. “Think about it, Mal. A. Fucking. Phoenix. No one’s going to ask how many of us it took. No one will care. All they’ll see will be a creature not seen in centuries, dropped at my bride’s feet. Tell me, what was the most glorious hunt a groom ever offered? A bear, right? That’s what my father dragged home. If I’m going to make them see me as his heir, I need to do better. And I will. But I need this beast. And I need you. So ask yourself this: if I do become chief one day, and remember which of you walked away when I needed you most… are you ready for that?” Silence fell. They were already weighing the risk. If Finn rose to power, saying no made them enemies. “So? You in or out?”

Sigurd nodded. Others followed. “But when it’s dead, we’re gone. No one sees us. A bad omen’s still a bad omen, righ’? T’groom’s gotta hunt alone, or else—” Everyone knew the cost of breaking tradition, how frowned upon it was to help a groom during a hunt meant to be undertaken alone. Not that Finn cared. Glory had blinded him.

I had to know what they were after. That phoenix bullshit could’ve been Finn’s way to lure them into his real plan—hunting a vampire. Once they were in, there was no backing down. While impossible for a mortal alone, it wasn’t when one was surrounded by five trained hunters.

The Border between clans was sealed by ancient Union Magic, and even the wildest Stormvaldrians weren’t reckless enough to test it. Of all the tribes near the dividing lines, ours lay closest to Brotbein’s southern frontier, bordering the vampire realm of Hárheimr. We were still miles from their towns, but the only tribe proud—or foolish—enough to breathe the same air as bloodsuckers.

As kids, we dared each other to find the Willow. It was a test of courage, proof that Stormvaldrian blood ran strong. No one actually touched it, of course. Getting too close to the Swamp that enclosed the Willow was absolute lunacy, not to mention that without legal validation, crossing the Border was prohibited. But the real challenge lay in getting close, the mark that you belonged.

Killing a vampire meant breaching the Union Agreement, a declaration of war. It wasn’t just a death sentence for Finn and his cronies. It meant doom for all of us, especially Hera, captain of Milo’s female army.

However, it could make for a dramatic offering. If there was one thing Milo and Finn shared, it was obsession with spectacle and cruelty. Knowing Milo, I doubted he’d lose sleep over breaking the treaty, even one as crucial as the Union Agreement. Stormvaldr was still Brotbein’s strongest tribe, shaped by his ancestors’ legacy. Milo would gladly burn their memory to carve his son’s name into legend, especially if it started with slaying a vampire on his wedding night.

The urge to follow Finn was irresistible. Once the group vanished into the woods, I climbed down and followed, their voices floating ahead through the snow that muffled our footsteps.

Fuck!

They were heading toward the Swamp. To that cursed Willow.

With every step, Nidavellir grew quieter. Even the night-creeping animals had fled this ominous part of the forest. I froze, breath sharp.

One misstep… one snapped twig, and they’d hear me. With only two daggers tied to my belt and the rest of my weapons in the tent, getting caught was absolute madness.

Suddenly, they stopped. Finn raised a hand. “From here on, shut up. We’re near the Swamp.”

“It lives… there?” Sigurd’s voice shook.

“Not just there. On the Willow,” Finn said. “I saw it roosting there.”

“Didn’t t’elders say t’Willow’s forbidden?”

“They also said phoenixes were myths. And yet, here we are.”

Another, probably Dreng, breathed out, voice broken and alarmed. “Wha’ if it ain’t a phoenix? Wha’ if t’tree made ye see summat else?”

“You think I imagined it? It was a fucking phoenix, Dreng. Accept it and shut up.”

A rustle to my left made every hair rise. Breath slashed through my mouth in a loud inhale, and… I saw Finn’s head snapping right toward where I was standing.

And in the dim light of the fireflickers drifting through the trees, our eyes collided, even before I could attempt to conceal myself.

Shit. Shit. Shit!