Prologue
“Alabaster!” I shouted, my voice raw and desperate as my legs carried me down the dark shadowy hallway. Each footstep hit the stone like a drumbeat of panic, shaking through my entire body.
The flickering yellow glow from the ajar wooden door at the end of the hall seemed to pulse with a life of its own, pulling me forward despite my aching limbs.
“Just a few more steps.” I whispered, clutching at the fragile hope that I could reach him in time.
I burst through the door and my breath hitched painfully, a tremor running through me as I pushed it open wider, the candlelight blinding me for just a moment.
“Alabaster!” I called again, my voice breaking. He was kneeling on the cold stone floor at the far end of the room, his chained hands stretched above his head, his form battered and worn. The sight of him like that sent something cold through my chest, an echo of everything the Mistress had put me through, scars still burned into my memory.
He lifted his head slowly and our eyes met. Shock, pain and something desperate written across his face.
“Elizabeth…” He rasped. “Please. Don’t.”
I turned my head slightly.
There was a figure beside him that I had almost missed entirely, cloaked in the shadows of the room as if it belonged to them. Tall and slender, dark purple wings pressed tightly against its back, sleek black hair falling neatly over its shoulders. For just a moment my mind went to the Mistress, but I pushed the thought away. She was dead. And this creature was distinctly, unmistakably male.
He turned.
Glowing purple eyes found mine, razor sharp and entirely focused, a slow cruel smile spreading across his face.
“Elizabeth.” He hissed, his voice a low serpentine whisper. “Finally.”
Our eyes locked and in that instant something happened that I had no framework for. The world didn’t go dark exactly, it went empty. Like every trace of warmth and feeling had been pulled out of me at once, leaving nothing behind, less than nothing, a void where something had been.
And then the pain came.
It arrived without warning and without mercy, consuming every part of me simultaneously, more intense than anything I had ever felt. Like thousands of points of fire igniting beneath my skin at once, burning from the inside out in a way that had nothing to do with flame and everything to do with something far crueler. I collapsed, a scream tearing from my throat before I had noticed I was screaming, my hands clawing at my own skin trying to stop something that wasn’t physical and couldn’t be stopped.
Through the haze of it I was aware of him moving toward me. Unhurried. Almost tender in the way he leaned down, his voice soft against the roar of everything I was feeling.
“Wow.” He murmured. “She was right.”
He tilted his head slightly.
“You truly are special.”
Wow, what an amazing start!