Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 1 - Chapitre 10

The first thing Morgana felt was cold.It seeped in through the cracks around the cottage window, the kind of cold that came from living in the North where winter never quite released its grip. Her eyes opened to grey morning light filtering through worn cloth, the closest thing they had to curtains. The smell of old bread and stale ale filled her nose, mixed with something worse: the sour sweat of a man who had been drinking all night.She sat up slowly, careful not to disturb the thin blanket that was more holes than fabric. The cottage was small enough that she could see her father from her mattress in the corner of the main room. He was slumped in the wooden chair where he'd been sitting yesterday, and probably the day before that. His head tilted back, his mouth open, snoring in that wet, heavy way that meant he'd drunk himself into oblivion again.Empty bottles sat beside him on the floor. Three of them. Maybe four.Morgana didn't let herself feel anything about it because it wo

The mindlink hit Theron like a physical force."She's back."For a moment, just one suspended moment....Theron didn't understand what his brother meant. His mind was blank. Empty. Like Calen's words had broken something inside him that he couldn't immediately repair.Then understanding crashed in.No. No, that was impossible. Reincarnation was possible, yes. The witches had the power for it. But they had been waiting 120 years. One hundred and twenty years of an incomplete bond that had slowly driven them toward madness. One hundred and twenty years of searching, tracking, hoping that somewhere, somehow, she existed again.And they'd found her. In a village market. Selling bread.Theron's silver eyes snapped into focus.He looked at her fully for the first time since she'd raised her head. Really looked at her. And despite the difference in clothes, in context, in everything, she was undeniably her. The same face he'd watched die. The same hair, dark and long. The same small frame tha

Thornwick was asleep when Garrett moved through its streets.The Beta was a shadow in the darkness, his massive frame somehow managing to slip through the village unnoticed. This was one of his skills, the ability to be seen without being remembered, to gather information without leaving fingerprints. Centuries of war had taught him how to move like a ghost through enemy territory. A sleeping village held no secrets from someone like him.He started with the taverns.The first one...the Red Fox, was still lit from the inside, though barely. Garrett stepped through the door and assessed the space immediately. Three drunk patrons. One bartender wiping down glasses. No one important. No one who would have information about the girl or her father.The second tavern....The Broken Crown, was different.This was where the real business happened. Garrett could smell it in the air: debt and desperation and the particular reek of men who had gambled away their lives. He sat at a table in the co

The carriage had been moving for hours.Morgana had no way of knowing how long, exactly. Time had become a strange, elastic thing in the darkness of that wooden box. The only light came through a small window high on one side, and even that was dim, filtered through whatever was happening outside.Eventually, the landscape began to change.At first, it was subtle. The sound of the wheels changed as they moved from dirt road to stone. The movement became smoother, more deliberate. And then Morgana noticed the sounds outside, not the simple sounds of a village, but something grander. Something vast.She couldn't help herself. She moved closer to the window and looked out.Her breath caught.The Northern Palace rose from the landscape like something out of a dream, and it made every building she'd ever seen look like toys. Towers climbed so high they seemed to disappear into the clouds themselves. The stone was black and shimmered with something that looked like starlight embedded in it.

The sun had long since disappeared behind the palace walls, and with it, Morgana's last fragile hope.She sat on the bed in the white cloth Agnes had given her, her feet not quite touching the floor, her hands pressed flat against the silk beneath her. The fabric of her body covering was so thin it was practically gossamer...a breath away from transparent. She could feel the air on her skin, could feel how exposed she was, how utterly defenseless.The room was beautiful in a way that made her want to scream.Golden light from candles cast everything in a honeyed glow. There were fresh flowers in vases on the table by the window. The bed beneath her was so soft it felt like drowning. And none of it mattered because she was about to be devoured by three Kings, and the beauty of the room was just a prettier cage.Morgana counted her breaths.In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.It was a trick her mother had taught her once, years ago, when Morgana was small and afraid of thunderstor