Chapter 1 

Cora

Pain is a constant companion. It lives in the soles of my feet, a dull fire that has burned through my boots and into the flesh. It is a stitch in my side, a hot knife twisting with every ragged breath. It is the hollow ache in my belly that has long since moved past hunger and settled into a deep, gnawing emptiness.

I run.

The forest floor is a treacherous thing, a carpet of blood-red ferns over slick, black mud. The air is thick, heavy with the scent of decay and the sweet, cloying perfume of blossoms that have never known a gentle sun. This is not a human place. The very trees bleed strangeness, their bark a startling shade of blue, their leaves like polished silver. I stumbled into this land days ago, not by choice, but because the thing behind me had closed off every other path. I ran from a monster and found myself in its garden.

Another branch whips across my face, and I taste the metallic tang of my own blood. I ignore it. Pain can be ignored. Exhaustion can be pushed down. But the terror… the terror is a poison in the veins, and it has been a long time since I felt anything else.

A sound slices through the gloom behind me—a wet, guttural crack, like a great tree limb snapping in a storm. It is closer now. Too close. My lungs burn, each gasp of air searing and insufficient. My legs are trembling, threatening to give out. I cannot outrun it. I have never been able to outrun them.

But I have learned other things.

My eyes dart through the unnatural twilight, searching. Not for an escape route, but for a place to disappear. There. A knot of gnarled roots from a fallen giant, its trunk thick as a cottage, creating a hollow of deep shadow beneath it.

I don’t hesitate. I throw myself forward, sliding on my stomach through the mud and slick leaves, and worm my way into the cramped, earthy darkness. I press my body against the damp wood, pulling my knees to my chest, making myself as small as a forgotten stone.

And I practice the stillness.

It is a discipline forged in horror. I slow my heart by force of will, command the trembling in my limbs to cease. My breath, which was a ragged saw in my throat, becomes a shallow, silent whisper of air through my nose. I become a part of the forest’s rot. I am nothing. I am nowhere.

The thudding footsteps grow louder, shaking the very ground I lie upon. It is a heavy thing, this creature. A low groan vibrates through the roots above me, a sound of such profound agony that it almost shatters my concentration. A part of me, the part that still remembers what it was to be a girl instead of prey, aches for it.

A massive, clawed foot, gnarled and crusted with something black and viscous, stamps down inches from my face. I do not flinch. I do not breathe. I am stone. I am dirt. The stench of its sickness washes over me—the smell of festering magic, of a body at war with itself.

The silver mark on my shoulder blade throbs with a dull, familiar ache. It always does when they are near. The brand. The curse.

My mind flashes back, an unwelcome phantom in the dark. The memory is all blinding green light and the scream of a dying god. A Wildspont, they called the place, a wound in the world where magic bled raw and untamed. Our caravan had strayed too close. I remember a creature of impossible grace, a guardian with a coat like spun moonlight and eyes like stars, brought low by a sickness that turned its beauty into a thing of nightmare. As it died, it had looked at me. Pinned me with its gaze. And I felt a searing heat on my back, a flash of power that felt like being struck by lightning and set ablaze from the inside out. When I woke, the caravan was gone, and the silvery, claw-shaped tracery was etched into my skin. A permanent reminder of the moment I became a beacon for monsters.

The creature above me snorts, its breath hot and foul. It circles the fallen log once, twice. My world is nothing but the darkness of my hiding place and the overwhelming presence of the beast. It is drawn here. It smells the echo of that pure magic fused to my soul, and its own corrupted nature craves it like a balm. They do not want to kill me. They want to be near me. To bathe in the aura of what they have lost. And that is the cruelest joke of all.

It groans again, a long, mournful sound, and then the heavy footsteps begin to recede. It is moving on. The throbbing in my shoulder lessens. The air lightens, the suffocating stench of its blight fading.

I wait. I count my own heartbeats, slow and steady now, until they reach five hundred. Only then do I allow my muscles to unlock, my breath to deepen. I crawl out of the hollow, covered in mud and shivering from the release of tension. The forest is silent again, save for the drip of moisture from unseen leaves.

For a moment, I allow myself to sag against the log. I am safe. For now. The thought is a fleeting luxury. I need water. I need food. I need to keep moving.

Pushing myself to my feet, my legs unsteady, I stumble through the alien woods. My path has no direction other than ‘away.’ Away from the last place the monster saw me. I find myself in a small clearing, a circle of relative peace in this hostile land. In the center stands a single, magnificent tree with bark the color of a twilight sky. A sense of calm seems to radiate from it, and I am too exhausted to question it.

My knees buckle. I crawl the last few feet to the base of the strange tree and press my aching back against its smooth bark. The leaves above rustle, a soothing whisper. Just for a moment. I’ll rest for just a moment. I slide down until I’m sitting in the damp soil, my head falling back against the trunk. I close my eyes, the darkness behind my lids a welcome relief.

The air changes.

It is a subtle shift, a sudden drop in temperature, the scent of ozone and something else… something ancient and predatory, like a serpent sunning on hot stone. My eyes snap open.

A shadow has fallen over me, eclipsing the dim light of the clearing. It is not a cloud. It is a body.

My gaze travels up, past a massive, coiled lower body covered in dark green scales that drink the light. Past a humanoid torso, powerfully built and corded with muscle, also scaled. Past a formidable, cobra-like hood, flared in a display of dominance. My eyes finally land on a face that is both beautiful and terrifying, with sharp fangs just visible behind thin lips and a forked tongue that flicks out to taste the air.

And then I see his eyes.

They are the color of molten gold, with pupils like vertical slits. And they are fixed on me. Not with the pained confusion of the corrupted beasts, but with a sharp, terrifying, and absolute intelligence.

The lord of this blighted, cursed land has found me.