Dark Hunter's Touch. Jessa Slade

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      Prologue

      The old Lord of the Hunt had finally unleashed his passions, and the phaedrealii—the court of the steel-born fey—ran black with blood.

      The Hunter whelp, who was still very much leashed and would be until he had full control of his magics, crawled between the thin, grubby bodies of his young brethren, chained near him. They should have snapped and growled at him for such impunity, and he would have growled and snapped back.

      Now, a few groaned, but most of them lay silent and unmoving.

      The steel-spiked collar dragged at his neck, but the deadweight of his half-severed wing was heavier, though he tried to ignore the twisted burden.

      The agony and dread were heaviest though he tried not to feel that either.

      He edged toward the full-fledged Hunter, fallen just moments ago, minus his head, hands still raised defensively. The Hunter had not believed he would be slain by his lord and master. Biting back a whimper that would mean his own death, the whelp avoided the head with its open-mouthed expression of shock.

      The old Lord paced. The blood of his rampage was invisible on his widespread ebony wings, but the rusty-sweet scent swirled around him. The violent agitation in every boot step thudded through the ground and made the whelp quake as if his bones were cracking inside him from the tightly bound terror.

      “You have brought this upon us, Queen of the Steel-Born, Queen of Lies!” The cry shivered the very walls. Mad he might be, but the Dark Lord of the Wild Hunt had magics to rival the Queen herself.

      And now he had turned his might against the phaedrealii.

      Too late, the whelp understood why the courtiers who had passed through the compound had circumspectly sought the Hunters’ assurances that their Lord was not suffering from the Undoing. An Undone phae let his sentiments run amok, a lack of restraint forbidden since the Queen had ascended to the Steel Throne centuries ago. The Hunters had scoffed at the courtiers’ fretting. No phae had come Undone since the Hunt began enforcing the Queen’s edict upon pain of death.

      But death had come for the Hunters instead, and the whelp knew the unabated gush of blood over his shoulder meant he was on the same path.

      He froze as the old Lord swept past. His seeping blood crystallized in jet-black beads from the force of the ancient Hunter’s wrath when the phae bellowed, “Ankha, you vicious bitch. You were my Undoing! Do you hear me?”

      “Lord Hunter, every being in the phaedrealii, and the sunlit world too, has heard you.”

      At the soft rejoinder, the old Lord turned to face his Queen. His fuming breath frosted the suddenly icy air.

      The whelp shivered helplessly and reached for the ring clenched on the dead Hunter’s hand. The steel band froze his skin as he tugged, but the pain of his ripping fingertips was nothing compared to his wing, and the amber stone nestled in the metal was still faintly warm. He clenched it in his palm and dragged his hand to his chest. The stone—the likes of which would have been his one day had he become a Hunter full fledged—returned him a small measure of strength.

      The Queen glided forward. With her white gown and her hair in a white corona, she glowed softly in the whelp’s fading vision. Her voice was softer yet, so the whelp doubted any of the phae courtiers gathering in the shadows heard her, aside from himself and the old Lord. “I will not let you do this, Lord Hunter.”

      “Call me by my name, my Queen.”

      “I told you I would not. This is why.”

      The old Lord’s face twisted. “Lies. All lies.”

      “And the blood?” She lifted the hem of her pure white skirts—spattered now with black and crimson—to point the toe of her gore-stained slipper. “Also a lie?”

      The tangled lines of his face deepened. “The price of true passion. Mine and yours, the phae’s…”

      “The first never was, and the last cannot be.”

      “Without the Hunters to enforce your ruthless edict, it will be.”

      “No,” the whelp whispered. Not that anyone heard him.

      But the Queen also said, “No.”

      She raised her hands, and the glow around her edges expanded like crystals of hoarfrost. Behind her, the gathered courtiers exhaled as she drew her power through them.

      But the old Lord also raised his hand. Though the triangular glass sword clutched in his grasp did not gleam through the blood, its bone handle was as white as the madman’s knuckles. It sang the hunger of the Undoing, and the song was sharp as steel, sweet as blood, bright as starlight in the deepest veil of night.

      The whelp ducked his head down into his shoulders to block the seductive sound. The motion wrenched his wing into fresh agony, and he cried out just as the old Lord charged the Queen.

      The whelp smashed the amber stone against his spiked collar. Light, shining like the sun he had heard stories of, burst asunder.

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