My feet slammed into something hard, and I stumbled to my knees. Hands splayed, I tried to find what I’d hit, but only sand scraped my palms.
“Got you,” a deep, melodic voice said. Strong hands wrapped around my arms and hauled me to my feet.
My heart nearly collapsed in on itself as terror ripped through me. The fae couldn’t cross the bridge. So it couldn’t be the soldiers. That only left one person.The Mist King.Tears of pure horror burned my eyes.
I screamed and shoved my dagger into his body. It hit, sinking into the skin, but I couldn’t see in the darkness to know if I’d caught his heart. A grunt of surprise answered, and he loosened his grip on my arms.
Heart stuck in my throat, I ran. My legs wobbled beneath me, my wedding shoes pinching my toes and slowing me down. I breathed in the mists, desperately trying to see the ground before me. Everything was dark.
He grabbed my waist and dragged me back. “Stop running. It’s—”
“Let go of me!” I screamed.
I writhed in his arms, bucking, kicking, twisting. I felt like a caged beast ready to drag my claws through his guts. But I was nothing more than a mouse.
All the stories of the Mist King filled my head, tumbling over and over. He burned humans alive. He feasted on their flesh. He wanted to destroy the world to become a god. And now he’d caught me.
I was going to die.
With desperation burning through me, I hauled up my foot and jammed the heel of my shoe into his boot. He barely flinched.
A soft cloth pressed against my nose and mouth, and the scent of valerian filled my head. As a heavy exhaustion dragged me under, the last remnants of light left me in brutal darkness.
* * *
Abright light dove into my mind and pulled me from a dreamless slumber. Head throbbing, I cracked open my eyes and found myself flat on my back, staring up at a torch flickering on the wall.
Groaning, I glanced around, trying to make sense of things. I was on a small bed with thick blankets draped over me. Across the room—
My heart stopped. A row of steel bars stood between me and…
I let out a rattling gasp.
Between me and the captain.
He leaned against the bars, arms crossed, a hooded cloak hiding his face from view as he stared down a dark tunnelling hallway. But I’d recognize that stance anywhere—relaxed but on edge at the same time, as if any moment something might lurch out of the night and swallow him whole.
It had been him. Out there, in the mists. But…why had he trapped me in a cell? And…my mind snapped on the memory. The cloth against my mouth. The valerian sweeping into my nose.
He’d drugged me. Just like Oberon had. Of course, Ihadbeen fighting him.
I threw back the covers, and pain bit my head. My vision blurred.
“Ah, you’re finally awake,” he said. That deep, lilting voice was so familiar. I should have recognized it the second I’d heard it, but the mists had disoriented me. “You might want to rest until the effects of the valerian wear off.”
With my head braced in my hands, I hissed at him through clenched teeth. “What’s going on? Why am I in a dungeon cell?”
“You seemed determined to flee from me. I didn’t want you to run screaming again when you woke up.”
Still trying to hold my head steady to dull the pain, I looked up to find him standing on the other side of those bars, staring at me with his deep sapphire eyes. Not an icy blue, like they’d been in the dreams. He’d dropped back his hood, the midnight color of his cloak matching the wavy hair curling around his pointed ears. The curve of his jaw was as sharp as a blade, and his entire body pulsed with power.
He was breathtakingly beautiful.
I swallowed hard as I stared up at him. I’d seen this face in a hundred portraits. It was one I’dneverexpected to see up close.
“You’re the Mist King,” I whispered, the blood draining from my face.
The enemy. The lethal fae who had murdered thousands in the human kingdoms beyond the sea. The one who’d trapped the people of Teine beneath King Oberon’s cruel reign.