Chapter One

REMI

I wanted to pick moonflower tonight. The sky was clear, the stars wild and dancing. The guards are fewer than most nights. I thought they were all out gambling, until mother arrived. She scolded me for sneaking out, and then all but threw me into a bath.

I tried to tell her about the moonflowers. About their pollinations, cultivations–how it’s poisonous when ingested, poisonous to the touch, but mother told me that good girls remain silent. So I remained silent.

Silent while the maids braided my hair, silent as they dressed me in a pearl white gown. Silent as the guards escorted me to the throne room. The throne room which I now stand silent as the night.

Rose didn’t want to hear about the moonflowers either. In fact, she was direct enough to tell me to shut up. So now I stand quietly by her side, our mother's all-white throne room heavily alive under the glint of moonlight and candles.

I’ve always loved flowers. Painting them, observing them, preserving them. Their delicacy always called to me. As well as the vulnerability of the forests. Little doe, my sisters named me when I was younger because the fawns of our castle lands never feared to approach me. I know it’s a nickname of weakness, that they’ve bonded over silly little Remi. But I believe that there’s grace in allowing your sisters to be happy–even if it’s at your expense. Especially since they started calling me that after dad passed. How they bonded over my demise.

Our father was a good King. He died fighting for us, for our land, until his final breath. “Even the most delicate looking flowers can defeat an army,” he would tell me amidst the gardens, then tuck whatever wildflower blooming beneath my ear, "People often underestimate what appears to be innocent, Remi."

*People underestimate what appears to be innocent. *

I always wondered if that was my father's way of telling me I was pitiful. I'm not a natural-born leader like Rebecca...brave like Reiyna...or smart like Rose, but delicate, pitiful, small.

At least one of us had to be imperfect, and weak, right?

“Remi for the love of Deanna, stop picking your nails,” Rose’s voice slices, calling the attention of some of the nearby guards protecting us behind Rebecca’s sapphire-studded throne. “You’d think tonight of all nights you’d be on your best behavior,” Rose goes on, eyes fixed on the largest of our broken chandeliers, “Do you want the Midnight Prince to take you instead?”

I stop picking my nails immediately, familiar shame washing over me like a warm summer rain.

My blood runs cold and the hair on the back of my neck rises. The Midnight Prince. Reiyna's plan to impersonate Rebecca and fight for our lives.

I’d completely forgotten.

As the youngest, no one ever tells me much of anything, but choosing to forgo the warning that the most dangerous fae male in the realm is coming to our doors to kidnap our eldest for her blood? Even for my sisters that seems cruel. Like the wildflowers, I've always been so easily forgotten.

"Remi, for the love of gods, shut the fuck up," Reiyna's voice is more loud from her false throne. As Commander of the Solis Legion, my second eldest sister is as stoic as ever. She's calm--emotionless almost, in fact, her entire life she's claimed she's been trained so well that she doesn't feel a thing.

I’ve never known if I am jealous or sorrowful of that ability, the chance not to feel anything. I always feel everything so deeply, to the point of annoying my other sisters. They always scold me for crying, or worse--hiding. Tonight though, I just don't want to ruin Reiyna's mission. So much so that I say a prayer to Deanna.

Reiyna's mission has been around since before I was even born. She's been training for tonight her entire life, the chance to finally end the millenia old tradition of the Midnight King stealing the eldest of the Solis Women. The Midnight King should take Rebecca, the eldest, but tonight Reiyna impersonates her. Tonight Reiyna fights back for our sisters. Tonight she will break the curse of the Witches.

Which is, of course, much more important than picking moonflowers.

I couldn't be that brave even if I tried.

I scream the second he arrives. It’s completely involuntary. The shrieks, the trepidation. My father was kind enough to warn me through bedtime stories that the Midnight King manipulates minds. Brings out terror in a way you’ve never known. He would hold me before maps of The Lands Once Lost--the Seven Isles-and show me where the fading magic of our realm resides.

I always cared more for the depictions of forests and wildflowers. Meadows of bioluminescent fields, mermaid lagoons, dragons and never ending wildfires, but the Magic Lands come with as much danger as wonder, my father warned. And every Solis woman to enter has never made it back alive.

Time works differently there, too. The further north you travel, the more magic there is. The magic lives in the land and has the ability to sustain life. So all who reside there, including the Midnight King, are immortal. He only comes once every hundred years.

So again, Deanna above, don't let me ruin Reiyna's mission tonight.

Guards fall to our left and right. The throne room surrenders to shadow. My throat begins to burn from the yelling, and to my left, Rose wets herself.

Pain flashes through my vision in starry white dots. I just want to run away into the forest. I want to be a good girl and hide.

I feel him. I know him. He enters with the wind and night. Don't ruin the mission Remi. Don't ruin the mission Remi.

My eyes lower from the gold domed ceiling I’ve loved as a child to meet his. I want to refuse to kneel before him, refuse to cower before my people’s enemy–but then my eyes meet his, and my knees…my knees break.

Who knew the Ruler of Shadows walks like liquid starlight?

Fear and desire slam through my spine, accompanied by the crushing impact of bone against the marble. Gods above, I’ve been warned of his terror, warned of his presence, but this–this is a power of Gods of Old. Drawn from an abyss so daunting, so unyielding–that it seems to have no end and no beginning.

My heart slams against my chest, beating so loudly I’m sure he can hear. His eyes of untold mysterious–his devilish smirk–are looking right at me. Dark-inked tattoos, swirling against his tanned skin, snake up his arms and neck. He's so tall I have to crane my neck to follow them, among scars and muscle, right up to his sharp line. And in his mouth, bright as a white light, is a sweet smoked cigarette.

He wears black fighting leathers, two twin-strapped swords, and a black hood. Smoke curls around his face when he exhales, and I can't help but scream when he lowers the hood.

His eyes glow in the night. They are nebulous--orbs of mountain and star. Purely violent, cunning, and mystical.

My heart leaps to my throat. Something about him is not right. He's out of place, rare and wrong yet right. Predatory. Covetous. A male should not be as beautiful as this. But yet here he stands, smirking down at me, as beautiful as the dark night.

So I am fucking *terrified. *

I shriek as his hand reaches out to my face, fanning against my cheek. I want to move, want to retreat, but my legs are locked in place. Never before has a man made me feel like this. Never before have I melted.

“There you are." I hate the reaction my body has to his voice almost as much as the smoke he blows into the air. But I don't cough, don't push him away, I lean into his thick grip of my hair and breathe in. I suddenly feel more brave than I have in years.

I suddenly feel *alive. *

I shouldn't be feeling this way. I’ve been raised my whole life to fear this male–to fear his Ceremony, his being, but something different runs through my blood. A different kind of air than that which I’ve been breathing.

The male takes notice. Smiles. But not one of those genuine, sweet smiles. No, this is a smile of mocking--of power. Of watching something helpless bend to your will and finding amusement in it. A smile of a warrior who knows he has won the war. “Are you in need of protection, little doe?”

I gulp down another thick-smoked breath, surrendering to the fact that his air is my life force. Am I need in of protection? At this point in time, it feels like I'm only in need of protection from myself.

The air around us seems frozen, the firelight still, as if even light itself bends to his will. I look away, desperate to escape the weight of his gaze, but a small press of his thumb and forefinger into my cheekbone has me looking right back at him.

"We can do this the easy way, or the hard way, little dove," his other hand brushes the hair from my face, settling it for me behind my ear. "Are you going to be a good tonight, or not?"

I open my mouth, Reiyna, he's supposed to take Reiyna, the Warrior, the combatant but not a word nor a whisper comes out.

Don't ruin the mission Remi.

He leans into my ear, pressing his thumb ever so slightly against my mouth. My breath is going so fast I can hardly catch it, but I know that he knows what some deep-dark, messed-up part of me wants.

The Midnight King's face is a mask of boredom. No emotion, not a care in the world for what I'm going to say. I swallow again, trying to find my voice, trying to find my sense of self. This is the most dangerous killer of centuries, the war general who killed your father. Why the hell am I so attracted to him?

But I have limited choice, and no matter what I say, whether I will go with him or not, I have been chosen by the Witches to go to the Lands Once Lost.

So I look to the most powerful and beautiful male I've ever seen and open my mouth.

His brows raise in amusement. Blue. His eyes are ice-colored blue.

I always thought the Sun too bold, the light of our Solis Kingdom too overpowering–too selfish, but the Midnight King brings with him the cool darkness of twilight and the fragrance of jasmine.

*Jasmine. *

Not the scent of fear as my mother had warned, nor the texture of despair and sadness–but the breaking of a new dawn. A blooming field of ten thousand forbidden red roses crushing like rich velvet against my bare skin.

And above all, the Midnight King brings with him what only that which a man like him can do. The promise of a rarity wanted by many but coveted by few. My kidnapper brings a call to adventure. Something equally terrifying as it is new.

That is, until the mask drops and the shadows disperse.

Reiyna says something, ever the warrior before the Midnight King. “You will take her over my dead body.”

He stands now in the middle of the throne room. Yet he was just here, before me, how is that possible?

There is no mercy in the male’s gaze. Nothing as he stabs through Reiyna’s chest with nothing more than a wisp of shadow.

I’m not sure if I’m screaming. I’m not sure if I’m breathing. Then the most dangerous male of centuries arrives before me in a mist of smoke, glittering in my dead sister's blood, and steals me away in the middle of the night.