Chapter 1
Dust and Smoke
Evelyn
The wind in the Wildlands never stopped moving.
It curled through the canyons like a restless spirit, lifting dust into the air until it coated your tongue, your boots, your soul. I’d been riding through that dust since dawn, and by late afternoon I was beginning to feel like I was made of the same cracked red clay the wind carried. Dry, brittle, stained by old blood and older magic.
My mare, Thistle, gave a tired snort as we crested the last bluff. Below us, stretched out in the heat haze like a mirage, was Venombend
A town built on dead things.
The first thing you noticed wasn’t the buildings—most of them leaning sideways like they’d long since given up—but the bones. Strung across signposts, nailed to doors, hung from the eaves of saloons and brothels like charms to ward off gods no one prayed to anymore. Animal bones, mostly. Some weren’t.
Venombend wasn’t on most maps. It sat on the edge of the civilized territories, pressed up against the jagged spine of the Forgotten Mountains like a drunk clinging to a barstool. People came here to disappear, to deal in curses and blood oaths, or to die where no one would bother digging a grave.
I was hoping to manage the first without tripping over the second two.
I tugged my hood lower and nudged Thistle forward. The sun was bleeding out behind the peaks to the west, turning the sky into a smear of orange and violet, and the town below flickered in and out of shadow like a fading memory.
A signpost at the edge of the bluff read:
WELCOME TO VENOMBEND
Population: questionable
Don’t Start None—Won’t End None
Charming.
We descended the winding path into town as the wind picked up, teasing my braid loose, catching the scent of crushed sage and dry rot. I kept my gaze straight ahead, but I could feel eyes on me. Watching from behind shutters and broken windows, from alleys that stank of rust and wet ash.
Supernatural eyes. Too still. Too quiet.
Venombend didn’t take kindly to strangers, but I wasn’t new to its kind. I’d grown up dodging creatures that walked on two legs but hungered like beasts. I’d bartered with witches, kissed a ghost once, and slipped through more than one portal I had no business near. I’d learned to walk through wild magic like it was fog. Learned how to heal and hex in the same breath.
But Venombend still made my skin crawl.
I passed the Bend’s version of a market square—a scattering of ramshackle stalls, half of them already closed for the evening. The others peddled the usual frontier oddities: dried herbs, rusted weapons, teeth in jars. One booth sold “guaranteed curse removals.” Another offered “venom extractions—safe-ish.” A group of teenagers with yellowed eyes and matching scars were watching me from the shadows, laughing low and slow.
My fingers drifted to the satchel at my hip. The vials inside clinked softly—glass, not magic, at least not yet. I carried painkillers and sleeping draughts, but also foxglove resin, stormwater, a feather from a midnight raven. Just enough to get by. Just enough to get out.
I wasn’t here to make friends. I was here to trade a few tinctures, fix a few broken bodies, and move on. No roots. No mistakes. No one looking too closely.
That had been the plan.
And then the wind changed.
It was subtle, like a shift in breath. But the moment it happened, I felt it—every part of me tensed, gooseflesh rising like a cold ripple down my arms. My mare stiffened too, ears flicking back.
Someone was watching me.
I didn’t turn. Not immediately. That was the first rule: never react. Predators thrived on weakness, on fear. You had to let them think you didn’t notice, didn’t care.
But the gaze… it was heavy. Intimate. Like a hand resting at the nape of my neck, warm and possessive. And wrong.
I dismounted in front of a crooked general store with peeling green shutters and a porch that looked one strong breeze away from collapse. The bell over the door gave a sad, metallic jingle as I stepped inside.
The air smelled of dry goods, gunpowder, and salted meat.
“Evening,” I said, forcing a smile.
The man behind the counter squinted at me through one good eye. The other was a milky gray, webbed with scarring. He looked like someone who’d survived a bar fight with a demon and lost, but only barely.
“You the healer?” he rasped. “From down past the Charred Ridge?”
“I’m a traveler,” I said. “And I know a few things that help with pain. If that makes me a healer, sure.”
He chuckled, a dry, wheezing sound. “We get all kinds here. Witches, bone-readers, snake charmers. You don’t look the part.”
I set my satchel on the counter. “Looks can lie.”
The man nodded slowly, holding out his hand. It was bandaged in filthy gauze, crusted through with old blood. I peeled the cloth back, wincing at the angry red swelling beneath.
“Been cursed?”
“Just drunk,” he muttered. “Fell into a cactus.”
I gave him a salve that would take down the swelling and another for the itching. His fingers trembled when I touched him.
“You feel cold,” he whispered.
I blinked. “Cold?”
“Not your skin. Just… you.”
Before I could ask what he meant, the bell above the door jingled again.
But no one entered.
The wind howled past outside, rattling the windows, and I swore I saw something—someone—in the reflection of the glass. Tall. Dark. Unmoving.
The sensation of being watched slammed back into me like a blow.
I stepped outside just as the last sliver of sun sank behind the ridge.
And that’s when I saw him.
He stepped out of the alley like he’d been there the whole time, just waiting for the world to catch up.
He was tall. Towering, really—had to be six and a half feet, maybe more, wrapped in a black leather duster that billowed like wings when he moved. A wide-brimmed hat cast his face in shadow, but I saw his eyes.
Gods. His eyes.
Golden. Slit-pupiled. Unnatural. Beautiful, in a terrifying sort of way.
My throat dried up.
He didn’t say a word. Just looked at me like I was something rare and dangerous.
Like I was his.
My heart stuttered. “Can I help you?”
No answer.
He walked toward me with a predator’s silence, boots crunching softly in the dirt, and something behind his eyes flickered—interest, maybe. Or hunger.
And then he struck.
One moment I was standing. The next, I was on the ground, face pressed to warm sand, arms wrenched behind me by something firm and smooth. Not rope.
A tail.
His tail.
“What the actual—” I started, but his gloved hand clamped over my mouth.
He leaned close, his voice a venom-laced whisper against my ear. “Don’t scream. It won’t help.”
He smelled like leather, fire, and something faintly metallic—like rain on hot stone.
I screamed anyway. Bit down on his hand.
He didn’t even flinch.
“You match the description,” he murmured. “Witch scent. Green eyes. Ash hair. That’s enough.”
“I’m not who you think I am,” I hissed, twisting in his grip. “Let me go, you fork-tongued bastard.”
That earned me a low chuckle. Dark. Rich. Dangerous.
I hated that it made my stomach flip.
“You talk too much,” he said.
Then he hoisted me—like I weighed nothing—and slung me over his shoulder.
As my braid swung and my mouth filled with curses, he added almost lazily:
“If you weren’t guilty, sweetheart… you wouldn’t be so afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” I snapped, pounding my fists against his back. “I’m furious.”
“Same thing,” he said, and tightened his tail around my waist.
