Prologue for 'Through Fire Redeemed'

The day of the shipwreck was the day her life ended.

Or began.

Or maybe it had never truly felt real until that moment.

She watched from just beyond the veil as the passengers staggered ashore, drenched and huddled together. Bleeding from wounds both visible and invisible.

She could feel the dark currents of their pain wafting on the icy ocean breeze, warming her veins and awakening her magic. It was hungry, and they were a feast laid out before her—battered and far from home, stuffed to the brim with sweet memories of agony, stranded on these inhospitable shores with nothing but the last tattered remnants of a feeble hope.

And him.

Even through the veil, he burned bright. His power surrounded him like a shroud, hiding itself from casual view but evident to anyone with eyes to see. And the burdens he carried… immense, and yet his back remained unbent. Not young, but ageless, with a mantle of authority that ensnared everyone else on that rocky shoreline and bound them together.

He was the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen. And not only because he was the one man she’d ever encountered who might rival her in power. He was warm and golden to her icy cold. Handsome, respected, well-liked. A caregiver and a protector. Everything that she was not.

And for the first time since she was a child, she found that there was something she wanted more than power.

So she watched, for days that became weeks, that turned into years. Watched as this strange foreign people spread out over fae hunting lands and began to make them into something new. They hunted and built and fell deeper under the sway of the land’s magic, and over the course of time they changed, but he did not change.

Her own people mourned and raged as their lands were lost to them through violence, and that, too, fed her magic. And when the day came that they gathered to discuss driving out the newcomers, she was powerful enough to strike at them—to protect him and this new world he was building.

But in the process, she revealed herself, and the others became aware of her magic.

Not sweet and gentle, like the fae were meant to be. Not at one with the land, nor pained by violence and bloodshed.

But nourished by it. Sated by memories of suffering and uncertainty. Dark and dreadful. An abomination.

So they repudiated her. Abandoned her. Bound her away from the lands of her own kind, but she did not care. Because he was safe. Protected. Hers.

And they might have remained that way for centuries. She might have been content to go on protecting him from the shadows. Except that he was a king, and even among her own people, kings must have heirs.

The first woman disappeared in the mountains during a heavy storm.

The second wandered too far from her settlement and was taken by monsters.

And before there could be a third, she decided he was ready.

Ready to know the truth.

Ready to choose her.

So she lured him beneath her mountain with a display of power—with fire and fury and rage that shook the very roots of the land itself.

And then… And then…

…

It did not matter. She would continue to keep him safe. Protected. And someday he would see her as she truly was. Someday he would open his eyes and choose her. No matter how long she had to wait. No matter how long it took.

She wanted him for herself, and she would do anything to have him.

Anything at all.