Chapter One - Dear Diary
Remi
“Knox, you fucking idiot!” I scream in frustration, head thrown back to glare at the sparse forest canopy above.
I hack at the vines reaching for me as I continue deeper into the forest. I have to swing the rusty sword at least twice before it cleaves through enough for me to make any progress.
“Bringing me back to this bullshit,” I rant on.
Whack!
“I’ll break your legs and feed you to that fucking Snatching Tree.”
Whack!
“Mother!”
Whack!
“Fucker!”
Whack!
I’ve been huffing and sweating through the forest for the past fifteen minutes since the Midnight King dumped me here. The trees look more gnarled and grizzled since I last navigated this area seventeen years ago. The aggressive thorny vines are new, too. I suppose I should be grateful for having something to cut into while I vent my rage into the air.
I cannot believe I have to do this again.
An hour ago, Knox and I were clearing out the last of our parents’ things in the basement. After Mom passed, we’d agreed to start letting things go. But, that snoopy asshole discovered a box of my old journals and found the one notebook no one was ever supposed to find. I didn't even realize it was in Mom's house.
Tucked between the pages of that journal was the feather, the gift and the curse I was given when I came back to this world with Knox clinging to me. I returned as a champion, the only Victor of the Trials in the Midnight Kingdom’s history.
Future college dropout and drug addict.
Some legacy those trials gave me.
And that dumbass brother had found the champion’s favor and said the fucking summons.
Knox had been teasing me as I tossed things in a trash bag. We had laughed at some of the entries from those journals, my melodramatic rants about what to wear for my high school graduation, my rainbows and sunshine description of my new college dorm. But then he started reading about a man with “beautiful, summer sky eyes and cute hair” and the skin of my neck started to prickle as I realized what journal he was reading.
I turned to see Knox holding that feather and for a moment, I couldn’t move. It still glowed like moonlight and I could almost hear the whisper of wings in the air.
“'Your champion calls,’” Knox recited in amusement, reading the impossibly fine engraving on the quill.
The words hit me like ice water. “Knox,” I started. “Don’t—”
“’And demands safe passage.’” He looked up at me as I started to lunge at him, a smile on his face. “What is this? How’d you even—”
And then he was gone, a telltale ripple in the air in his place. It was already fading.
“Shit!” I rushed to the spot, stumbling into boxes. “Knox! Get back here! Oh my god, you dumb fuck! I will beat you with your arm after I saw it off with a butter knife!”
“How feral you’ve become, my queen.”
The silky voice that came from behind me sounded different this time, almost two decades later. Not because the owner aged—time didn’t matter to a being like him. But the timbre hit something within me that didn’t exist last time, or maybe I just didn’t understand it back then.
Unfortunately, I recognized the feeling now and I refused to waste time thinking on it.
I turned slowly, giving reality plenty of time to right itself. But when I faced the speaker, he stood there, solid and smirking. “Stay where you are,” I warned in response to his remark. “I may bite.”
The Midnight King’s smirk deepened and I inwardly cursed at the effect those dimples have on me. My memory hadn’t done him justice. Even when I saw him the first time, his beauty was too stunning for me to comprehend. The years had softened that further, clouding the angles of his face and the cruelty of his eyes.
At that moment, I saw him with painful, devastating clarity. The thick, silver hair swept back from his brow was longer than before under the black crystal crown. The strands brushed his wide shoulders. The surreal eyes, an impossible jeweled blue, were unblinking as they stared back at me with open curiosity.
He caught me staring at his offensive, sinful mouth and hitched his smile wide, fangs gleaming in full view. “I’d relish seeing you try, my queen.”
I forced myself to stop gaping. “Where’s Knox?” I demanded.
“You know where he is.”
“Give him back. He didn’t mean it.”
He cocked an eyebrow. I could hear it, the way the conversation was playing out exactly the way it had all those years ago.
You said the words, he’d told me.
Please, I didn’t mean it, I had begged.
And like last time, the Midnight King’s response was the same. “The words cannot be unsaid, Remi. It’s time to go.”
Grey
Remington Bentley was a beautiful woman. I was not fool enough to ignore that fact. At twenty, she had been pretty, the shape of her not yet solid as her body tried to shed the softness of youth. She’d been wide-eyed and scared. I had pitied her then, in a way I had not done for anyone before her or since.
The woman who glared at me now had a defined and untrusting face. Her full lips were twisted at me in anger. And her honey-colored eyes sparked with frustration and challenge and...something I found myself reluctantly entranced by.
“Well, darling?” I taunted. “What is your choice?”
She clenched her fist and I wondered if she’d hit me. I hoped she did. I had an urge to get close and feel the weight of her against me. I knew she’d be warm, fingers strong in my hair and skin soft under my teeth.
She thrusted out her hand. “Let’s go.”
I hid my hesitation behind a wry smile. There was a tug in my mind that told me no, not again, not her. I could see what the trials did to her. It was written in the fury of her eyes, in the lean, unforgiving muscles revealed by her tank top and shorts. My attention lingered on the curious tattoo on her left arm, a sleeve of solid black ink that covered her from her wrist to halfway up her bicep.
I took her hand in mine. Unlike last time, I wore no gloves. Her palm was warm and alive, and I could hear the song of her pulse. I yanked her to me and curled my arm around her waist before I walked us out of the world.
Her gaze went wide and she gasped, her mouth parted in an o that made something dark in me rumble and rear its head. I shoved it back to the shadows of my mind.
I reminded myself, as the world around us warped and contracted, that there are rules. I would ensure Remi and I followed them.
Or we were both doomed.
