Chapter 1/The beginning.

Chapter One

The Beginning

Darling Kate’s POV

I learned young that fear had a sound.

Sometimes it was boots outside a locked door.

Sometimes it was the scrape of a key turning slowly in a lock when I knew I hadn’t invited anyone inside.

Sometimes it was my father’s voice going soft because he wanted something.

And sometimes it was silence.

That was the worst kind.

The heavy, suffocating silence that came after you realized the person who was supposed to protect you had decided you were worth more as a bargaining chip than as a daughter.

My name is Darling Kate Lewis.

Most people called me Darling.

My mother, Maeve, was Fae.

My father, Nolan, was human.

And somehow I had been born between those two worlds, never completely belonging to either one.

For the first sixteen years of my life, my parents kept me moving between the mortal world and the magic lands.

We never stayed anywhere long.

Sometimes we lived in tiny apartments crowded between human buildings. Other times we hid in isolated cottages surrounded by forests so thick that sunlight barely reached the ground.

Maeve always made those places feel like home.

She would hang herbs near the windows and hum old Fae songs while cooking. She filled cracked cups with wildflowers and told me stories about silver forests, frozen lakes, ancient courts, and creatures that existed before humans ever dreamed magic was real.

But there was one subject she rarely discussed.

Prince Oberon.

Whenever I asked about him, something changed in her face.

Fear.

My mother was powerful.

I knew that even as a child.

I had watched flowers bloom beneath her fingertips. I had seen her heal wounded animals and create light from nothing more than a whispered word.

Yet Oberon’s name frightened her.

“Why does he want us?” I asked once.

Maeve had been brushing my hair.

Her hand stopped.

“He doesn’t want us, Darling.”

I turned toward her.

“Then what does he want?”

Her beautiful silver eyes met mine through the mirror.

“Something he believes belongs to him.”

“What?”

She touched my cheek.

“You.”

I had been too young to understand.

I wasn’t anymore.

Oberon found us when I was sixteen.

I remembered that night in pieces.

Maeve screaming for me to run.

A flash of golden Fae magic tearing through the darkness.

The smell of smoke.

My father’s hand locked around my wrist.

Men shouting behind us.

And my mother standing between me and Oberon’s soldiers.

“Maeve!” Nolan yelled.

She looked back once.

Not at him.

At me.

I would never forget her face.

She knew.

She knew she wasn’t coming with us.

“Run, Darling!”

“No!”

Nolan dragged me.

I fought him so hard that my nails tore his skin.

“Mom!”

Maeve raised both hands.

Magic exploded around her.

The forest turned white.

Not snow.

Frost.

It raced across trees, earth, and stone faster than anything natural could move.

For one impossible moment, winter swallowed the world.

Then Nolan pulled me through the trees.

I heard the explosion behind us.

I never saw my mother alive again.

For years afterward, I dreamed about going back.

In some dreams, I reached her in time.

In others, she was waiting for me beneath silver trees.

But morning always came.

And Maeve was always gone.

Four years passed.

My father changed.

Or maybe grief simply revealed what had always been inside him.

Nolan stopped acting like the terrified man who had dragged me away from my mother’s body and started acting like someone who believed survival excused anything.

Drinking.

Gambling.

Debts.

Promises he couldn’t keep.

Men began coming to our house.

At first they wanted money.

Then Nolan realized there was something else he could offer them.

Me.

The first time he told me what he expected, I thought I’d misunderstood him.

“No.”

Nolan’s expression hardened.

“Don’t make this difficult.”

“You’re my father.”

“And I’m the reason you’re alive.”

I stared at him.

He stepped closer.

“You think Oberon stopped looking for you?”

My stomach twisted.

“He hasn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know more than you do. There are people who would pay fortunes to learn where Maeve’s daughter is.”

My blood went cold.

“You wouldn’t.”

His silence answered me.

“If you refuse me,” Nolan said quietly, “maybe I make one little deal. One message. One location.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“You’d give me to him?”

“I’d do what I have to do.”

That was the moment my father died to me.

His heart kept beating.

He kept speaking.

But whatever part of him had once been my father disappeared.

After that, refusal stopped feeling like a real option.

What happened to me was not romance.

It wasn’t temptation.

It wasn’t recklessness.

And it certainly wasn’t a choice I made because I wanted money.

It was coercion.

Nolan threatened to hand me to Oberon if I refused, and the men he brought to me cared more about what they had paid than whether I wanted them near me.

Nolan took the money.

I carried the shame.

Afterward, I would lock myself in the bathroom.

I scrubbed my skin until it turned red.

Sometimes until it hurt.

But no amount of soap could wash away the feeling of being treated like something that could be bought.

The worst part was what happened afterward.

People talked.

They always did.

The magic lands decided they knew my story.

They saw men.

They saw money.

They saw me.

And they filled in everything else themselves.

Strangers called me a whore before they knew my name.

Women whispered when I walked past.

Men smiled as if the rumors gave them permission to look at me however they wanted.

Nolan encouraged it.

Shame made me easier to control.

If everyone believed I had chosen that life, who would believe me if I finally told the truth?

So I stopped explaining.

I learned to keep my chin high.

I learned how to look people directly in the eye while they judged me.

And somewhere beneath all the humiliation, something inside me began changing.

At first, it was small.

A glass of water freezing when I became angry.

Frost forming around my bedroom window in the middle of summer.

My breath becoming visible when Nolan frightened me.

Once, during an argument, a thin sheet of ice spread beneath his shoes.

He nearly fell.

We both stared at the floor.

“What did you do?” he demanded.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I didn’t do anything!”

But I had.

Somehow.

After that, I practiced hiding it.

I didn’t know what the power was.

Maeve had died before she could teach me much about my Fae blood.

But I remembered something she’d told me when I was little.

Fae blood remembers, Darling.

I’d laughed.

“Blood can’t remember.”

Maeve had smiled.

“Ours can.”

“Remember what?”

She kissed my forehead.

“Where it came from.”

I hadn’t understood.

Then an invitation arrived from Oberon’s castle.

Nolan found the black envelope outside our door.

The moment I saw the gold crest pressed into the wax, my stomach dropped.

Oberon.

Nolan broke the seal.

His eyes moved quickly over the page.

Then he smiled.

I hated that smile.

“What?”

“Prince Oberon is celebrating his engagement.”

“So?”

“So every important supernatural family will be there.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should.”

He folded the invitation.

“People with money will be there.”

My stomach twisted.

“No.”

Nolan looked at me.

I stepped backward.

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard what I’m asking.”

“I know exactly what you’re asking.”

His expression darkened.

“You’re going.”

“I said no.”

His hand closed around my arm.

I tried to pull away.

“Nolan.”

“You’re going.”

“Let me go.”

“Do you have any idea what I sacrificed keeping you hidden?”

“My mother sacrificed everything!”

His face changed.

I knew immediately I’d gone too far.

But I didn’t care anymore.

“She died protecting me,” I whispered. “You sell me.”

His grip tightened.

“Careful.”

I stared into his eyes.

For the first time, I wondered what would happen if I stopped being afraid of him.

Something cold moved beneath my skin.

Nolan suddenly released me.

He looked at his hand.

Frost covered his fingers.

Neither of us spoke.

I backed away.

He stared at me differently after that.

Not like a daughter.

Not even like property.

Like something he didn’t understand.

Something that might eventually become dangerous.

Good.

Hours later, I stood before my bedroom mirror wearing a dress I had not chosen.

Nolan had selected it.

Of course he had.

Everything about it was designed to attract attention.

I hated it.

I hated Oberon.

I hated Nolan.

But most of all, I hated the exhausted woman staring back at me.

For years, I’d survived.

That was all.

Survive tonight.

Survive tomorrow.

Survive until somehow, someday, something changed.

But what if nothing changed unless I changed it?

I lifted my hand and touched the mirror.

Maeve’s voice moved through my memory.

Fae blood remembers winter even when the world is burning.

I had never understood what she meant.

Until that night.

Cold spread beneath my fingertips.

I froze.

A delicate white pattern appeared on the glass.

Frost.

It feathered outward in beautiful branching lines.

My heart began pounding.

I pulled my hand away.

The frost remained.

“No,” I whispered.

Then something stranger happened.

For one heartbeat, my reflection changed.

My eyes looked lighter.

Almost silver.

Like Maeve’s.

I stumbled backward.

The image returned to normal.

A fist pounded against the bedroom door.

“Darling!”

Nolan.

I closed my eyes.

“Move!”

I looked at the frost.

Then at myself.

Twenty years old.

Half human.

Half Fae.

Hunted by a prince.

Controlled by a father who should have protected me.

Judged by people who knew nothing about what I’d survived.

But still standing.

I wiped the last trace of tears from beneath my eyes.

I could not fight Nolan yet.

I could not fight Oberon yet.

I didn’t even understand what was awakening inside me.

But for the first time in years, I felt something stronger than fear.

Anger.

Power.

Hope.

Something cold and ancient stirred beneath my skin.

Not Nolan’s.

Not Oberon’s.

Mine.

“DARLING!”

“I’m coming.”

I touched the frosted mirror once more.

The cold welcomed me.

A strange feeling settled into my chest.

I didn’t know that before the night ended, I would meet a man named Kazan Blackwood.

I didn’t know that one look from him would awaken a bond neither of us could ignore.

I didn’t know he would become my mate.

Or that before we learned how to love each other, we would hurt each other.

Fight each other.

Save each other.

I didn’t know my blood carried secrets old enough to frighten kings.

I didn’t know my mother’s death had been only the beginning.

All I knew was that Prince Oberon was waiting.

My father intended to sell me again.

And somewhere deep inside me—

winter was waking.

I opened the bedroom door.

Nolan waited on the other side.

His gaze moved over me approvingly.

I hated him for it.

“Finally.”

He turned away.

I followed.

But this time, I wasn’t walking beside him like a frightened girl waiting for someone else to decide what happened to her.

I was walking toward something.

I just didn’t know what yet.

I took one final look at the frost-covered mirror.

Then I walked toward the night that would change everything.