Chapter 1
PROLOGUE
The sun sinking into the sea took my breath away. Maybe this would be the last time I ever saw it. They told me I was the one who had to go. I had never had a father or a mother. Nothing was waiting for me here. The King would have nothing to threaten me with. But that was what they told themselves. The truth was, there would be no one here to miss me when I was gone. So I was the easier choice.
As far as I could remember, I had never felt a real connection to this place. And yet, it had always been my home. My people. My safe place. The only place I had ever known. I didn't know how I was supposed to survive even a single day away from here. But maybe that was the point.
Why should I try to survive?
I had never seen him, the one I was supposed to marry. Their King. The Only King. But I had heard enough about him to know exactly what kind of creature he was and what his people would be like.
The Others were much larger than humans, stronger than we could ever hope to be, and their strange wings made them even more terrifying. They had always been this way. They could live for centuries. Some of the oldest among them had watched generations of humans be born, grow old, and disappear while they remained almost unchanged. That was what made them so dangerous. We were temporary. They were not. They could wait. They could outlive us. They could remember things that our people had long forgotten. And their King had been there through most of it.
He had ruled for longer than any human could remember, and no one had ever challenged his authority and lived long enough to tell the story. There were countless stories about him. Stories of men who had begged for mercy and received none. Stories of kingdoms that had refused to bow to him and had been wiped from the map. Stories of enemies who had tried to invade his lands, only to become warnings for everyone who came after them.
The gods had given him strength, long life, wings, sharper senses, and a body that could withstand things no human body ever could. But they had not given him a heart capable of feeling what we felt.
He could understand pain, but he could not feel compassion. He could understand fear, but he could not feel it. He could recognize happiness, but he could never experience it. Empathy was something completely foreign to him.
So was grief.
So was guilt.
So was tenderness.
So was love.
I wasn't going to marry a cruel man. Cruelty meant there was something inside you that could be twisted. Something that could be wounded. Something that could still care.
He had none of that.
There was nothing inside him to twist.
Nothing to break.
Nothing to reach.
He simply had no feelings at all.
And I was about to give myself to him.
I had never seen the King. But I knew his history. I knew exactly what was waiting for me beyond the sea.
A monster.
The ruler of the Others.
The Only King.
And soon, my husband.
