Prologue
I had never thought I could actually kill someone, though I had imagined it often. And when the opportunity arose to do it, all the ice and rage and fire and grief screamed through me and I became a blinding light of power. I was someone capable of everything I had imagined—someone who could be feared.
But I didn’t kill the person I wanted to kill.
And I’d have to pay the price forever.
Cold clouds carried the tears that threatened to burst from my chest. It’d rained so much yesterday, I thought they’d all gone. And as I stared at his grave, it all came rushing back.
The blood. His blood. His heart. His soul.
When an Amortal dies, their soul, a gold ball of light, floats out of their body and dissipates into the air. When a human dies, they become permanently unconscious, but we don’t know where their soul goes. Their body stays—does their soul also stay? Or is it just gone? I’m not human, so I guess I’ll never know.
I wondered if I ever loved him or if I just didn’t like the thought of my life without him. It already felt off, somehow. Like every step I took was not correct, but out of place, wobbly. Guilt hung onto my heart like a hellish claw for what I did. For being weak and foolish.
What kind of Queen lets all this death happen? What kind of Queen cries this much and cannot control how her grief shows in the skies and the earth? Though I took deep breaths to urge the clouds away, the pressure on my shoulders made me collapse onto my knees.
The weight of my tears broke out of the clouds and stormed onto the Amortal Kingdom as I knelt on that ground, and not as a Queen—
As a girl with a dark, cold heart.
