Chapter 1
The Fae Crown Prince was dead, and he had the extremely poor taste to die in the mud.
Maeve Winterbourne stood at the edge of the police tape, her tailored black trousers entirely ruined by the damp soil of the Neutral Zone. She didn’t mind the rain—as an Inquisitor of the Winter Court, water was just ice that hadn’t found its spine yet—but she did mind the glaringly obvious, neon-bright political disaster lying ten feet away.
“We have a runner!” a junior officer yelled from the tree line.
“We don’t have a runner,” Maeve sighed, her voice like glass scraping over velvet. “We have an idiot.”
Before she could step over the tape, the damp forest air shifted. The biting, crisp chill of her magic was suddenly cut by a wave of raw, obnoxious heat. It rolled over her like a furnace door swinging open, smelling of pine needles, wet earth, and a very expensive, very illegal brand of single-malt whiskey.
“Step aside, Princess. Police business,” a deep, raspy voice rumbled from behind her.
Maeve didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Silas Vance. The Pack’s premier cleanup guy, wearing his signature, ridiculously broken-in leather jacket and a smirk that had probably gotten him kicked out of several decent establishments.
“Vance,” Maeve said, not breaking her gaze from the corpse. “I see you finally figured out how to walk on two legs today. Congratulations.”
“Always a pleasure, Winterbourne,” Silas chuckled. He stepped up beside her, easily crowding her space. He was a solid head taller than her, radiating a body heat that made the frost on her coat sleeves begin to weep. “They told me the Court was sending their coldest, most ruthless bloodhound. I didn’t realize they meant it literally. Are you shivering, or is that just your natural state of misery?”
Maeve slowly turned her head. Her ice-blue eyes locked onto his dark, mocking ones. “If I were shivering, Vance, I would set myself on fire before I used you for warmth. Now, why are you here? This is a Fae royal.”
“Yeah, but look at his chest,” Silas said, his smirk dropping just a fraction into something sharper, hungrier. He gestured to the body. “And look at the ground. This happened on the pack-border line. My Alpha wants to make sure your people don’t use this as an excuse to start a turf war.”
Maeve walked under the tape, Silas falling into step right beside her.
The Clues in the Mud
The Crown Prince lay on his back, his silver hair plastered to his forehead. But it was his chest that drew their attention. Ripped right through his silk shirt were four clean, savage lacerations.
The Mark: A classic werewolf claw strike.
The Anomaly: No self-respecting werewolf would leave a Fae royal’s throat intact; they kill to end a fight. This was theatrical.
The Runes: Shimmering faintly around the body were three ancient binding runes, pulsing with a low, violet Fae magic.
“See that?” Silas muttered, kneeling beside the body. He leaned in, his nose twitching slightly. “He doesn’t smell like a wolf kill. A pack kill is messy—rage, territorial dominance, adrenaline. This smells like...” He paused, taking a deep breath.
Maeve watched his chest rise, a sudden, irritated warmth blooming in her own throat. “Smells like what?”
Silas looked up at her, his eyes flashing a brief, dangerous amber. “It smells like silver, ozone, and... you.”
“I assure you, I was asleep in my remarkably comfortable bed when the Prince was slaughtered,” Maeve replied coldly.
“Not you specifically, Princess,” Silas said, standing up and dusting off his knees, stepping close enough that Maeve could feel the heat radiating off his chest. “Fae magic. Specifically, the kind that binds. Someone held him down with magic so a wolf—or someone pretending to be one—could carve him up.”
Maeve’s eyes narrowed. As a Fae, she couldn’t lie, but she could certainly twist the truth. “The binding runes are ancient Winter Court script. But anyone with a basic spellbook could have copied them.”
Silas leaned down slightly, his voice dropping to a low, intimate purr. “Is that a half-truth, Inquisitor? Because my nose is running a diagnostic on you right now, and you smell incredibly tense. Or is that just what happens when you get this close to a predator?”
“It is the smell of absolute disgust, Vance.”
“Funny,” Silas whispered, his gaze dropping to her mouth before snapping back to her eyes. “Because to me, it smells a lot like caramelized honey. And in my pack, we call that attraction.”
Maeve’s hand moved with blinding speed, her fingers pressing flat against the center of his chest. Instantly, a thick layer of blue frost erupted from her palm, biting through his leather jacket and freezing the fabric solid over his heart.
Silas didn’t even flinch. He just looked down at her frozen hand, the smirk returning to his face as his natural heat began to melt the ice into steam.
“Careful, Princess,” he murmured. “Play with fire, and you’re bound to get burned.”
“And if you play with ice,” Maeve hissed back, pulling her hand away as the steam rose between them, “you end up losing your fingers. Now, do we solve this murder, or do I have to execute you on day seven to satisfy the treaty?”
Silas stretched his neck, his leather jacket creaking. “Let’s go find the killer. But if we’re going to be partners, you’re buying the first round.”
