Starkeeper of the Fractured Crown

I tested the weight of the rock in my hand, feeling his eyes on me. I wondered what he was thinking. Maybe he was wondering if I had the guts to do it.

I did.

And if I died Mark would be fine. Me? Well, I was never going to live that long anyway.

“It’s a puzzle,” the High King stated. “You need to solve it.”

Cole snarled under his breath. “Why? Why are you doing this? Why even save her if you hate the humans so damn much?”

I took a step back, angling myself as I lifted the stone high in the air.

“Now that’s my puzzle, isn’t it?”

I met his eyes again.

He was watching me evenly. I wondered if he had ever looked away.

There was challenge in his eyes. An unspoken threat.

“Do it,” I heard the wind whisper through me, that guttural purr of the demons.“Do. It.”

“You have no idea how close I am to leaving the High Court, do you?”

I flung the rock forward with everything I had.

It slammed into the center of his forehead with a sickening crack, but he didn’t move, didn’t flinch. Didn’t block it with the magic he so clearly had use of.

Cole’s eyes widened, his head whipping around to me. “Talons, what are you doing?”

I straightened, my heart thundering against my ribs as I watched a thin trail of blood slide down his face from that three-inch gouge in the middle of his forehead.

His lips flicked up in a smile as if he had won.

I bared my teeth at him. “Fuck yo—”

Before I could finish my sentence, he had me up against the wall of my cottage, hand wrapped around my throat, wrists pinned above my head by those chilling shadows, so cold they burned my skin.

Every hair stood on end, a shiver of fear spreading through my body, forcing me to press my legs together as his eyes searched mine, bright and wild. Feral.

He smiled, tilting his head slowly from one side to the other, so close I could smell the scent of rain drifting from his skin.

My stomach warmed in rage. My knees buckling as his hand tightened around my throat, so large, his fingers dug into the stone and mud of the cottage behind me.

“Such a dirty little mouth you have,” he mumbled, hisvoice dripping fire down my skin.

I glanced behind him, Cole slamming his sword up against an invisible wall. A shield. I was alone in here, utterly alone.

Trick slid his hand up, gripping my jaw, forcing my eyes back on his. “You look at me now, Angel. No one else.”

His eyes were steady, unwavering. “Let me go,” I grunted, pulling at the restraints only for them to tighten painfully.

He chuckled and gods-damn if that didn’t worsen the fear dripping down my leg. “Never again,” he whispered threateningly.

Trick shoved my face to the side and leaned in, inhaling me from where my hood had fallen away from my neck. He shivered and released a sort of animalistic groan. “Oh, you smell more delicious than I had imagined.”

My eyes widened as he leaned back, and I found his eyes again. “You’ve been following me?”

“For a year four days from today,” he admitted without shame, that blood sliding across his lips, running the length of that scar.