Prologue
The roaring fire was the first memory branded into Lilith’s mind.
Not the sweet scent of her mother’s hair or the bedtime songs her father sang, but the hungry, angry orange beast eating the walls of their home, swallowing her wooden toys, snapping the roof beams like dry twigs.
Blistering heat pressed against her cheeks. Black, sour smoke burned her throat until she was retching, coughing so hard her small ribs ached. Her father clutched her in a suffocating grip, smashing her face into his tunic as his boots pounded against the floorboards. His heart pounded against her ear like a frantic drum, fast and terrifying.
“Don’t look, baby,” Dorian Vance sobbed, his voice cracking into wet, ragged pieces as tears dripped onto her forehead. “Close your eyes tight for Daddy. Keep them shut, Lily—please!”
Lilith squirmed and peeked anyway, clutching her father’s collar in childish panic. She couldn’t understand why the room was screaming.
Her mother stood blocked in the flaming doorway.
Elara wasn’t running to safety; she wasn’t crying. She stood tall with her arms spread wide, her palms spilling over with pure, dazzling white brilliance—like two captured suns. It was the prettiest thing Lilith had ever seen, the kind of glowing magic Mommy used to make flowers bloom on the windowsill. Surely Mommy would blow out the fire. Surely Mommy would fix everything.
“Elara, run!” Dorian wailed, his throat tearing on the scream.
Her mother didn’t move.
Then the wooden wall blew inward, and monsters burst through the splinters.
They looked like big men who broke and bent, bones snapping like kindling as they dropped to all fours, faces stretching out into hairy snouts dripping with foam and yellow fangs. Lilith let out a shrill, helpless whimper, tucking her head under her father’s chin. Mommy’s white light flashed, flickered like a dying candle, and went dark.
Her mother’s shriek ripped through the burning air, cutting short in a sudden, wet snap.
Just like a thread snipped by scissors.
Snip.
And then, Mommy was gone.
Dorian bolted into the freezing black forest, carrying her through tearing briars and whipping branches that scratched Lilith’s face. She buried her fingers in his shirt, her tiny chest heaving with wet, hitching sobs, too terrified to speak. She just wanted her bed. She wanted Mommy to hold her hand.
A heavy, crushing weight smashed into them from behind.
Her father’s arms were ripped away. Lilith went tumbling through the dark, rolling over roots and sharp rocks before slamming into the dirt so hard her teeth bit through her own tongue.
She tasted copper and dirt. She curled into a ball on the forest floor, clutching her scraped knees, crying out in a tiny, breathless gasp for her father.
When she lifted her head, Dorian was pinned on his knees. A giant, shaggy beast had its jaws locked around his arm, crushing the bone, while another ripped deep red lines down his back. Blood sprayed across the dry leaves. Through the dark, her daddy turned his tear-stained, ruined face toward her.
“Hide, baby,” Dorian choked out, coughing up thick crimson as his eyes pleaded with her to survive. “Go hide in the dark and be quiet... please, Lily...”
The beast clamped down hard, and his voice went dead.
Lilith scrambled backward on her hands and knees, whimpering in high, broken hiccups. She pushed herself up on wobbling legs and ran.
Branches clawed at her dress and ripped her hair, but she didn’t look back. She stumbled, fell, scraped her palms, and scrambled up again, her little feet carrying her blindly through the thorns until her lungs felt like they were tearing open. When the growls finally faded, she tripped over an exposed root and slid down the steep bank of a freezing, muddy ditch.
She hit the bottom in a heap, covered in slime, leaf rot, and the sticky, wet crimson that belonged to her parents.
Curling into the fetal position, she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to press herself so far into the dirt she would disappear. Her small body shook violently with silent, gasping sobs, her stomach knotting so hard she gagged on her own tears. She wanted her mommy. She wanted her daddy to scoop her up and tell her it was a nightmare.
Then, deep in the middle of her chest, an electric warmth pulsed.
Her tiny hands began to glow.
Lilith stared through blurry tears at her fingers, her breath hitching in raw panic. An eerie, luminescent green light poured out of her skin, painting the mud and the dark trees in a sickening, venomous glow. It wasn’t the pretty white star-shine her mother made; it was a hungry, creeping flame that made her stomach churn.
To her five-year-old mind, the truth landed with brutal simplicity: the light was what made the monsters come. The light had taken Mommy and Daddy away.
“Go away,” Lilith whimpered into the dark, her chin trembling as she shoved her glowing hands deep into the freezing, wet sludge.
She ground her palms into the black muck, pressing down with all the weight in her tiny shoulders, desperate to bury the monster inside her. She scrubbed her skin against the rocks, weeping quietly as the cold mud suffocated the green sparks, until the light finally sputtered, died, and left her shivering in the pitch-black ditch with only the sound of her own shuddering breaths.
She was all alone.
And in the silence of that frozen mud, the little girl made a desperate, terrified promise--
She would never, ever be bright again.
