Page 1 of Ignite
Prologue
The screamsof tormented souls fill the icy air. The Vale is a desolate wasteland, a personification of nightmares and death. Graylen’s knees slam into the cracked, dry dirt. The red sky above him begins to rain down droplets of blood, staining his skin with streaks of crimson.
“You’re going to be fun.” Vidaris smiles, sickly sweet, her white teeth gleaming through the crimson haze. “Torture looks good on you, Aegis.”
Graylen didn’t flinch as a sword made of ice sliced across his abdomen. Even as pain seared his flesh, he managed to hold back the grimace twitching beneath the surface of his face. He gritted his teeth, his anger flaring. But he had to be patient. He couldn’t waste his draining energy on an outburst of anger. He would wait for his opening, and then throw everything within him at Vidaris.
The Goddess of Vengeance may have been the Queen of the Vale, but everyone had a weakness. And if anyone knew how to exploit a weakness in someone, it was Graylen.
He would bide his time, keeping his anger in check with thoughts of tearing Vidaris to pieces limb by limb. Only when she was nothing more than decaying flesh would he return to Lunaria. His little princess was strong, a lot stronger than she believed she was.
So, each time Vidaris found a new way to cause his body pain, he would let her. He would study her movements, her motivations. Learning what things he could say to cause her to react—and in turn pay the price of her wrath.
But if she was here torturing him, then it meant she wasn’t out in the living realm trying to hurt Lunaria.
Graylen focused on biding his time and on baiting Vidaris to focus onhim. It worked… Until it didn’t.
One
Pietersite
For a single moment,I knew true happiness—right before it was ripped out of my grasp. Now, nothing but dull numbness and vast emptiness claws at my chest, quieting the world around me.
Snow-capped mountains peek above tall pine trees, the image blurring and then refocusing as I let the heaviness settle over my heart and spread throughout my body.
I inhale deeply, trying to steady my thoughts enough to focus. But as the metallic tinge of blood hits my nose, bile rises in my throat, and my gaze is torn from the mountains.
Bodies are scattered at the edge of the tree line in front of me.
Reichardt. Soldiers.
The edges of my vision turn cloudy and dark as my eyes coast over the lives I’ve taken. I expect to feel something as the memories flood in—anything—but nothing happens.
No guilt poking at my chest, no nausea churning in my stomach.
It’s as if I’m hovering outside of my own body, watching from a distance as my empty shell of flesh and bone stands unmoving. Even as a faint echo of pain twinges at my chest, it doesn’t reach me—I’m an impenetrable fortress of hollowness. A glass case with nothing inside.
A shout pierces the air, like a shock of lightning, and I jolt. Familiar faces look down at me, but they’re blurred. Their movements are hazy and their murmuring voices jumble together as if separated from me by a wall.
All that I can seem to focus on now is the one thing that’s missing. Onwho’smissing.
Graylen.
Is he still alive?
The thought scatters through my mind, causing my body to finally react, my stomach clenching and bile once again rising in my throat.
Vidaris wasright there.So close I could’ve done something—anything—to change what Graylen did. He saved me from her…but at what cost? His own life?
I swallow down the rising acid, and my body begins to tremble. The nothingness inside of me begins to crack as terror peeks through. Graylen shoved me out of the way, pushing Vidaris back into her realm and sealing her—along with himself—within.
No amount of pain growing up could’ve prepared me for this; no comparison of loss or hardship comes close to the splinter that has formed in my heart since that portal swallowed him whole.
“Lunaria?” a sharp feminine voice urges—nothisvoice. Not my Graylen’s.
Instead of trying to listen to them, I scream into Graylen’s thoughts, begging him to answer.
“Graylen, please,”I plead down that quiet bond.“Tell me you’re okay—tell me you’re alive.”
