Prologue (Verona)
The first sign something is wrong isn’t an ear piercing scream.
It’s the silence.
Ashlyn isn’t quiet.
She talks in her sleep. She hums while she cooks, and narrates reality TV like the contestants can somehow hear her. Even when she’s asleep, she’s incapable of shutting up for more than ten minutes at a time.
So when the apartment falls still—I wake.
My eyes crack open. The blue glow of my alarm clock stains the ceiling.
2:17 a.m.
I lie there and listen only to hear…nothing.
Then—a floorboard groans, but it’s not the usual settling of old wood.
It’s someone taking a step.
My heart thuds once, hard.
“Ashlyn?”
There’s no answer. I throw off my blanket and shuffle into the hallway, still half asleep.
“You better not be eating my leftover cheesecake.”
Silence answers me. The living room comes into view. Moonlight spills through the windows, and washes everything in silver.
The couch is empty.
Ashlyn’s blanket lies crumpled on the floor.
“Ash?”
The soft scrape of leather against hardwood grates against the otherwise silent room.
I look up. Someone is standing in my living room.
No.
Not someone.
Something.
He’s too tall, nearly brushing the ceiling. His broad shoulders fill a long black coat that looks like it belongs in another century. Moonlight catches dark hair that’s falling across his face.
Then he lifts his head.
Gold.
His eyes are gold. Not hazel. Not amber.
Gold.
They burn like molten metal in the dark. My brain offers the only reasonable explanation.
Colored contacts.
It’s a weird choice for a home invasion, but okay.
Then his upper lip curls. Two elongated canines catch the light.
Then I see Ashlyn hanging over his shoulder like a sack of laundry.
Unconscious.
“Ashlyn!” I lunge forward and grab the nearest thing I can find, a standing lamp, and swing it at him.
It connects with his back with a dull clang. Nothing happens. He doesn’t even stumble.
Instead he slowly turns his head toward me, mildly irritated, like I’ve interrupted him during a very boring meeting.
I hit him again, but this time even harder.
Still nothing happens.
“Okay, rude,” I hiss.
He adjusts Ashlyn slightly on his shoulder like she weighs nothing. “You are loud.”
“That’s my roommate!”
“I am taking my mate.”
I blink.
“…Your what?”
He exhales through his nose like I’m the problem here. “Mate.”
“That is not, what does that even mean? Is this like… a cosplay club thing? Are you in a cosplay club? Is Comic-Con in town? Did a Renaissance festival get violently out of hand? Is this method acting?”
He stares at me. “…You are confusing.”
“Yeah, well, you’re kidnapping my friend!”
I swing the lamp again, but he catches it this time, with one hand, and barely looking at it.
The metal bends slightly in his grip.
I stop breathing.
He looks at the lamp. Then at me. Then sighs, deeply, like I am the most exhausting creature he has ever encountered.
“I do not have time for this.”
“Wow. Same.”
He shifts Ashlyn again.
“Put her down,” I demand.
“No.”
“That’s not a negotiation!”
He tilts his head. “I am a King. I do not negotiate with humans.”
“Well, what if I said she still owes me forty-three dollars and a Tupperware container? So you can’t take her.”
His eyes narrow slightly, like he’s trying to decide whether I’m amusing or annoying.
“Move,” he says.
“No.”
A beat passes. Then he looks past me, toward the window. I follow his gaze just in time to see the glass ripple. Like it’s not solid.
“…No,” I whisper.
He steps toward it.
I scramble in front of him. “You are not, nope, absolutely not, this is a second-floor apartment!”
He looks at me like I’ve said something deeply irrelevant.
“I am taking my mate.”
“I don’t care if she’s your tax accountant. Put her down.”
He doesn’t respond. He just walks straight through the window. He didn’t break it or open it like a normal person. No, he just, walked right through it.
I freeze.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
I rush to the window, throwing it open. “HEY! YOU CAN’T JUST—YOU CAN’T JUST TAKE PEOPLE!”
I blink at the empty street below. He’s gone. Ashlyn’s gone, and somehow I’m left standing in the middle of my living room, gripping a bent lamp and wondering how my Tuesday managed to turn into the opening scene of a fantasy novel.
