The merchant blinked, pulse pounding at the base of his throat, unable to tear his eyes from mine. Unwilling, for he too, could taste the Divine. Through me. “Ex-Expensive, yes. Yes. But for you,” he said, licking lips gone dry, “I’m happy to see it go.”
What would it hurt to take just a little… more? To drink just a little deeper from my merchant and celebrate this tiny victory? My fingers tightened on his wrist, mouth watering, hungering for his ki. He wouldn’t notice the absence, not really. How could he miss what he couldn’t sense? What he’d never sense, for he was not of the Blood.
“A fine choice,” came a voice from behind, making me jump. “Not sure it’s worth the risk, but a fine choice, nonetheless.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks, fingers jerking free of the merchant on a startled gasp. Fist crackling with stolen ki, I spun to face the fool who dared disturb me.
He caught my wrist, standing too close, fingers rough and warm—but utterly devoid of ki.
I blinked.
Blinked again, turning the full strength of my senses upon him. Nothing. Not a lick or whisper of ki. “Impossible,” I breathed, meeting eyes darker than pitch, trying to wrap my head around the contradiction standing before me. Every living thing had ki to some degree, for without it we were nothing but fuel for the next generation. And yet this man, obviously so full of life, possessed nothing of the sort. Unless…
My eyes dropped to his neck, absent a chain that might have swung with a pendant like mine. Dressed in formal black and gold, dark hair cropped close and kept neat, the man had the gall to smirk at me. Clean, sharp jaw framing a handsome face, his were not the features I was accustomed to seeing. Too dark, build too big to be of Tritan blood. My gaze dropped further still, to the hand on my wrist—and the chunky, masculine ring sitting proud on his pinky finger.
Glaith.
I knew without seeing those distinct blue, green, and purple shadows scattering the light. Knew what the ugly stone set in a foreign family crest meant. But… “Impossible,” I said again, though this time it was a dry squeak. This time, I pulled away, for he couldn’t be what I thought he was. The Glaith was coveted by Tritan’s Priestesses for its responsive reactions to ki. This man couldn’t possibly know what his ring was truly worth.
It was a coincidence, nothing more.
Trying to step back, I tucked my pendant beneath my shift, reuniting the warm stone with my skin, just in case. When the Glaith touched my breastbone, it pushed everything else out, deadening my forbidden senses once more. Turning my knees to water as it swallowed the Divine.
“The brooch,” he said, ignoring my attempt to free myself from his grasp, though those dark eyes tracked my every movement. Tracing the pendant beneath my shirt. “How much?”
The merchant blinked, still under my sway even without my touch on his skin or my ki thick in his veins. “F-For the lady, nothing. A gift, sir.”
“Take your hand off—”
“Nonsense,” the intruder returned, fingers tightening on my wrist. Near to bruising with the unspoken warning. “You have a living to make. To earn nothing from an item of such fine quality is a crime where I come from.”
I bristled with the implication, spluttering, the reprimand plain enough.
“Well,” the merchant breathed, each passing moment pulling him further from my influence. “If you insist—”
“I do.” The intruder dropped a few foreign coins into the merchant’s outstretched hand. “Besides,” he continued, full lips twitching when he met my bewildered scowl once more, “it’s my pleasure to part with the coin if it’ll buy me a few moments of the lady’s time.”
I wrenched my wrist free at last, pressing a trembling hand to my throat. “Do I look like a commodity?”
He turned those obsidian eyes down at me, invading my space with a single step. “You’ll have to excuse the presumption, but I rather think you’d prefer if I didn’t say what I think you are.”
“And I think you’ll excuse my rudeness, but I don’t care what you think I am—”
“Asher. Captain Asher Rawlings of His Majesty’s Imperial Army.”
A Caledonian.
The heat rushed from my cheeks, taking my breath with it.
A Caledonian. Goddess, with all my power, how could I have been so bloody stupid? So blind?
I swallowed the bubble rising at the back of my throat, and said, “Right. Well, Captain Asher Rawlings of His Majesty’s Imperial Army, I don’t care what you think I am. Because whatever it is, I can assure you, you’re wrong.”
Asher hummed, low at the back of his throat. Inky eyes glittering with something I couldn’t name.
And then, without speaking another word or breaking eye contact, he removed his ring.
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Swallowed by Darkness
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Chapter 1
Cold.
The sort of cold that lined the kidneys and chilled the blood, seizing her every muscle with violent, spine-bending shivers. Nothing else was relevant. Not how she’d come to be there or why she couldn’t remember… anything. Not her name, how old she was, or how long she’d been wherever here was. But it didn’t matter, for she knew—without opening her eyes—this was the sort of cold no human being could withstand for long.
Groaning, she tried to pull aching limbs into the fetal position. Tried to preserve body heat and keep her vital organs warm for just a little longer, but was stopped before she’d even begun.
Bound at wrists and ankles. Legs spread wide. Hands useless at her sides.
No leverage.
Pinned. Exposed.
Panic knotted her intestines into garish ribbons, but it was too cold to scream. Too hard to open her eyes and assess her surroundings. Instead, she flexed fingers and toes, counting them. Trying to force the feeling into stiff digits. Searching for a reason that she’d be strapped to what felt like a gurney, bared and alone, with nothing between naked flesh and frigid steel. Left helpless to stop her precious, fragile core temperature from plummeting.
She’d die betrayed by her own circulatory system. With her heart working to spread ice through her veins, it wouldn’t be long before her muscles gave up their pathetic trembling. Not long until the shivering stopped and everything went quiet…
Teeth grit, she clenched her fists, squirming to ease the ache of muscles fast approaching fatigue. Flexing, back arched, she came up against the bonds. Head swimming on an ocean of fizz, ears stuffed with a bizarre, rumbling click.
Drugged. She’d been drugged. That had to be it. The blurry distortion of rational thought tasted like anesthesia, but… aside from the glacier burning through her veins, there were no discernible injuries. No memories of illnesses that would require her to go under the knife.
So why was she here?
Pulling a breath between chapped, cracked lips, she clawed her way back to consciousness. Pressing her shoulder blades into the hard steel beneath her until the bones threatened to slice through her skin and grind themselves dull on the gurney. Relishing the sharp pain and its tethers to the waking world.
A long, low hiss pierced her ears, but still, she couldn’t pry her lids apart. Could do nothing but tilt her head to the right, trying to pinpoint the sound.