Death's Lover Read Free Page A

eternity she was making him feel —not just her pain, but her desperation for life. Emotions he’d never felt before. It was all so confusing, and yet…he’d never felt more alive. All his life he’d walked around in a daze. Moving from one soul to another, not living, just existing. For the first time he wanted. He felt. Because of her, and he’d betrayed her in the worse possible way.
    Her eyes, glazed with pain, held his own. Defying him to take her life. She wanted to live.
    Another shot of emotions slammed him. They felt like churning waves of angry sea crashing against him, stripping the flesh from his bones. Her anger beat at him, clawed at his throat with desperation.
    Right then he made a decision. In defiance of his queen, the ruler of the reapers, he let her live.

Chapter 2
    C ian opened the portal between the here and there with a swipe of his hand and stepped through. No one witnessed the shimmering disturbance of air, the growing crowd still entranced by the grisly scene before them.
    He crossed the threshold, and an immediate soothing heat engulfed him in an explosion of sifting colors. Reds melded into gold, greens into blues. The dizzying array of shifting lights blurred until suddenly it opened, revealing a shrouded gray and misty isle.
    He stepped through and studied the familiar surroundings, inhaling the sharp tang of salt in the breeze and allowing the awareness of home to ease the worry from between his brows and the throb of pain from his heart.
    Algae-tinted water crashed against rocks, and foam bubbled up, looking like a witch’s frosty brew. The wind shrieked, its tone almost magical in quality. If one listened closely one could hear the voice of the land and its children speaking. Hence its name: Isle of Whispers.
    But the locals knew the isle as something else. Alcatraz. The atoll had been home to fae long before any human had dared to step foot upon it. There’d always been a hint of danger settled within the foundation of earth and stone. A natural fallout of magick linked to the longtime association of faerie. In truth, the island itself was not home, but rather an entrance to the sithen. Alcatraz Island was only one of many openings to the fae kingdom.
    Cian bowed his head against the whipping winds and walked toward a tree. An old oak, its limbs twisted by age and roots gnarled and curled out the ground, that was the life-sustaining mother of this sithen. The shrill scream of twin crows forced him to glance up.
    She knows.
    The knowledge did not come as a surprise.
    The birds circled him twice then landed silently by his feet as they cocked their heads in unison, their hard glares boring into him. Cian clenched his jaw and waited for the summons.
    Follow us.
    He didn’t hear the words so much as feel the push of their will against his mind. After what the witch had just put him through, the push felt more like a stab. He winced, still sensitive.
    A golden quickening surrounded the crows, the crackles of light appeared as a sunburst—variegated colors of red and gold cut through the fog. The birds landed before the entrance and passed their feathered wings across the bark in unison. A loud creak, similar to the groaning of shifting earth, rumbled through the air, then, smooth as silk, the center of the tree separated.
    The hollow tree encased a trove of glorious splendor—rolling emerald hills, meandering streams of liquid crystal, and craggy cliffs. Thick, billowing mists sheathed the surroundings.
    This was truly a world within a world. To travel through the entirety of the fae world would take years, if not decades. But he knew where he was going: to the very center of the realm. The queen’s castle rose through the mists as a spiraling steeple.
    The crows cawed. Haunting, wispy calls echoed in return. The sylphs—winged beings resembling angels—flew overhead. None but immortals could ever see them. Their butterfly-like wings were a splash of glorious color against the gray