Chapter 1

Elza

The lash marks on my back are already knitting themselves shut.

I can feel it—the familiar, unnatural pull of skin mending too fast. It’s not a comforting warmth, but a low, irritating itch, a secret my body keeps against my will. I lie still on the cold flagstones of my cell, cheek pressed to the grime, and focus on the slow, rhythmic drip of water somewhere in the darkness. It is the only clock I have in this lightless pit the dark elves call the undercroft.

My fingers curl into a fist, grit digging under my nails. The guard, Kaelen, had been particularly vicious today. He’d found a chip in the water basin I was scrubbing. An imperfection. In the stronghold of the Aethel, imperfections were offenses punishable by the whip. My entire existence is an imperfection.

A dull throb starts behind my eyes. The pain is a constant companion, but this swift mending is a dangerous anomaly. It’s the reason I’ve survived punishments that have killed other slaves. It’s also the reason the Aethel look at me with a mixture of utility and revulsion, like a tool that sharpens itself. They do not understand it, and what they do not understand, they eventually seek to break.

A sudden commotion from the corridors above shatters the monotonous drip-drip-drip of my world. Shouts echo down the stone throat of the dungeon, sharp and guttural in the elven tongue. Not the usual barks of command, but something else. Something laced with a frantic, serrated edge I’ve never heard before. Ice trickles down my spine. The Aethel do not feel fear.

The heavy, groaning scrape of the dungeon’s main gate being forced open follows, a sound reserved for the arrival of something truly significant. My breath catches in my throat. I push myself up, ignoring the fire across my back, and creep to the bars of my cell.

The passage is cast in the wavering orange glow of torches. A squad of elite Aethel guards, clad in black, chitinous armor, marches past, their faces grim. They are dragging something between them, a massive form suspended by thick, iron chains that groan under an immense weight.

My mind struggles to process what I am seeing.

It is a male, but like none I have ever seen. Taller than any elf, with a lean, sculpted build that speaks of lethal grace even in his current state. His skin is the color of bleached bone, and his hair, long and matted with black blood, is the silver of a cold winter moon. But it is the wings that steal the air from my lungs. Two vast, leathery appendages, like a bat’s but impossibly larger, are bound tightly to his back. One is clearly broken, bent at an unnatural angle, the membrane torn and weeping a dark fluid.

A Vrakken.

The name is a whisper in the back of my mind, a creature from the cautionary tales slaves tell each other in the dark. Winged warriors from the frozen peaks, masters of silent death, who feel nothing. No pain, no joy, no remorse. An entire race of beautiful, empty things built for killing.

He is grievously wounded. A deep gash runs from his temple down his chest, and his flawless, pale skin is marred with a hundred other cuts. Strange, glowing runes pulse faintly on the iron cuffs clamped around his wrists and ankles, and I realize they are magical dampeners. They must be. The stories say a single Vrakken can slaughter a dozen dark elves before they can even draw a blade. It must have taken an army to bring this one down.

He is unconscious, his head lolling to the side, but the sheer power radiating from his still form presses in on me, a low, oppressive hum that makes the hair on my arms stand on end.

The guards haul him past my cell, and for a heartbeat, his face is illuminated. Gods, he’s beautiful. Not in the sharp, cruel way of the elves, but in a way that is utterly alien and perfect, like a statue carved from ice and starlight. A fallen god dragged from his pantheon and chained in filth.

The procession stops a few cells down, at the reinforced chamber used for…interrogations. The sounds that come from that room usually end in screams. I hear the clang of the door, the heavy thud of his body hitting the floor, and then the receding footsteps of the guards.

Silence returns, but it is a new kind of silence. Heavier. Colder. Charged with the presence of the monster in the dark.

Hours pass. Or maybe it is only minutes. The dripping water is my only guide. Then, new footsteps. Slower. Deliberate. They stop outside my cell.

I look up into the impassive, obsidian eyes of Commander Vorlag. He is the master of this stronghold, an elf so ancient his face is a twisted mask of elegant cruelty. He has never come to the slave cells before. My stomach plummets, a sickening lurch that leaves me hollow.

His gaze sweeps over me, analytical and cold. It lingers for a moment on my back, where the blood has already dried and the wounds have sealed to thin, red lines. A flicker of something—interest—crosses his features.

“Remarkable,” he murmurs, his voice smooth as polished obsidian. “Kaelen reported a standard disciplinary action. Thirty lashes. Yet, you bear the marks of a minor scrape.”

I say nothing. I have learned that silence is the only armor a slave possesses.

Vorlag taps a long, slender finger against the bars, the sound a sharp click in the gloom. “We have acquired a valuable asset. A Vrakken Enforcer. Unfortunately, he is dying. Our healers’ magic is…ineffective. His biology rejects it. It seems we captured a creature too powerful to kill, and too fragile to keep.”

He lets the words hang in the air, watching me, his head tilted. I feel like a bug under a lens.

“But you,” he continues, his voice dropping lower. “You endure. You heal. There is a vitality in your blood, slave. A resilience that is…unnatural.” He smiles, a thin, bloodless stretching of his lips that shows no warmth. “We cannot have our prize expiring before we have had a chance to study him. So, you will serve a new purpose.”

My heart drums against my ribs, a frantic, trapped bird.

“You will be his living poultice,” Vorlag says, the words dripping with a chilling, scientific detachment. “Your…vitality…will keep him stable. We will chain you in his cell. If he feeds, he may live. If he kills you…” He shrugs, a gesture of absolute indifference. “You are replaceable. He is not.”

The air leaves my body in a sharp hiss. He is sending me to my death. He is chaining me to a monster and offering me as a meal.

Two guards appear at Vorlag’s signal. They unlock my cell door, their movements efficient and rough. They haul me to my feet, my muscles screaming in protest. My fingers instinctively search for the hilt of a dagger that isn’t there, a phantom gesture of defiance that is all I have left.

They drag me down the corridor, my bare feet scraping against the stone. The air grows colder as we approach the reinforced cell. They wrench the door open, and the hum of his power washes over me, a wave of cold that has nothing to do with the temperature.

They shove me inside.

The cell is larger than mine, and he is in the center of it, a fallen constellation in the dark. The guards chain my wrist to a thick iron ring set into the far wall. The chain is long enough to allow me to stand or sit, but not to reach the door. Not to reach him, unless he comes to me.

The heavy door clangs shut, the sound echoing like a death knell. The bolt scrapes home, sealing me in the suffocating darkness with the creature.

For a long moment, there is only the sound of my own ragged breathing and the slow, shallow rasp of his. My eyes adjust to the near-total blackness, and his form slowly takes shape—a sprawl of pale limbs, silver hair, and the dark, broken lines of his wings. He is perfectly, utterly still. A predator in repose.

I press myself back against the wall, the cold stone biting into my skin. The chain clinks softly.

The sound, small as it is, seems to break a spell.

Across the cell, the Vrakken’s head moves. It is a slow, deliberate motion, the turn of a hunter who has scented prey. My blood freezes, a frigid tide that steals all warmth. My vision tunnels until his face is the only thing I can see.

And his eyes snap open.

They are not black like the Aethel’s. They are a true, starless abyss. A void that consumes the faint light, that promises nothing but cold, empty eternity. And they are fixed on me. Not with confusion, not with pain, but with a chilling, absolute, and predatory focus.