A western wind slips over the failing construct. I bury my nose in my elbow, nearly gagging from the eye-watering stench of death. It reeks like a thousand fading souls. Raina Bloodgood has one desire: kill the Frost King and the Witch Collector who stole her sister. On Collecting Day, she means to exact murderous revenge, but a more sinister threat sets fire to her world. Rising from the ashes is the Collector, Alexus Thibault, the man she vowed to slay and the only person who can help save her sister. Whatever’s bothering them has nothing to do with Collecting Day. The Owyns are Witch Walkers, and Finn and Helena are still of age for the Witch Collector’s choosing. The Owyns believe the Frost King does what he does for a godly reason, a man gifted with insight from Neri’s eternal blessing, a leader who means to protect our lands. I know they’d be saddened to lose any member of their family today, but they view sacrifice as duty—unlike me. Something else must be wrong. He narrows his brown eyes, and the need to cower behind something sweeps through me. Deceiving Mother was bad enough, but deceiving Finn might be even more challenging. Finn and I sit for a long while, staring past the village outskirts to the valley beyond. Everyone else on the green stares too. A village holding its breath.

Mother leans over my shoulder and unties her cloak as she eyes the knife. The scent of cloves, fallen leaves, and smoky coldness floats from her skin and clothes. The dove’s wings flap and ruffle. When I open my eyes, her heart pounds so hard that her breast moves with each beat. Her little eyes open too, and she’s up, flying from wall to wall. I shove open the shutters and watch her take off into the cold, vanishing in the distance near the forest’s boundary. For a moment, I see nothing but the flash of blades, hear nothing but screams and swords meeting flesh, remembering too well the melody of battle, the tune of war.I can’t blame him if he doesn’t. I even find myself doubting her, though the thought twists my insides. The truth I can’t ignore is that if Raina held that sort of power, her skin would show it.

The wind rips angry tears from my eyes, and devastation crashes through me. Once such a comfort to me, Hampstead Loch is being destroyed to ash—its people with it—while I head toward Penrith, carrying a weeping mother and child in my arms. Have I saved them? Or only extended their execution? This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.Wild deer, huh?” He twists the pommel in his hand, and the amber stone reflects the forge’s firelight. He looks up at me, narrowing his eyes again like he’s sorting me out. “You wouldn’t happen to mean a Witch Collector instead, would you, Raina? Perhaps a Frost King?”

The day’s events have left me with a sour stomach, but the sweet scents of stone-fired bread and baked apples awaken my hunger. I break off a chunk of the loaf, dip it in the soft fruit, and savor the warm bite. He leans closer and lowers his voice. “Because they took you from me. Maybe not physically, but we can’t have peace thanks to them.”Later, I occupy my nervous hands by making myself useful outside. I help Mr. Foley haul wood for the bonfires and assist old Mena in setting stones for our ceremony circle. Mena moved here from Penrith after she lost her daughter many years ago on Collecting Day. She has no family now, but she and I have always shared a sort of kinship. Why would Nephele deny the entire kingdom such rare protection? And if the girl is all Nephele claims, why isn’t her power visible with one glance? One woman chosen by the God of the Sea. A king hellbent on saving his mysterious island home. And a forbidden romance that could destroy them all.

When he looks into my eyes, I taste the bitterness that has lived inside my heart ever since he refused to run from the vale with me three years ago. I could’ve loved him the way my parents loved each other. We could’ve had so much more than this. Then again, if we’d left, I wouldn’t have had this chance to save my sister and maybe every single person living in the Northlands from enduring lives they did not choose. Not a day goes by that I don’t talk to Hel. I’ve known her all her life, but when I lost Nephele, Helena wouldn’t leave my side. She filled an emptiness in me that not even Finn could reach. Finn and I aren’t together anymore, not in the way we once were, but he’s still my comfort, even when he’s impossible. I don’t know how to live life without him, but I fear I’ll have to. When the moment arrives today, I’ll still give him—and his family—a choice, but if I’m honest with myself, he made that decision three years ago.”We’ll never be even.” His dark face hardens, and he’s shaking, from fear or anger—I can’t tell which. He glances around, desperation in his eyes, then exhales a trembling breath and adds, “I tried. I did. But I must get my family to safety.” When I meet her stare, she pokes my side and smiles, but her wild spirit doesn’t stir, not even in her eyes. We’ve heard rumors from the East along the spy chain before,” I remind him. “Nothing has ever come of them.” Gods, what a terrible excuse. There won’t be any Great Horns for the harvest supper if the hunters don’t return in time. My chest tightens at the sound of my parents’ names. When they met in the Northland’s southernmost city of Malgros, my father was Head Sentry for the Northland Watch, a guard witch assigned to protect the port. My mother was also a guard, often stationed near my father’s territory. A short time after Mother became pregnant with Nephele, tensions between the southern queen, Fia Drumera, better known as the Fire Queen, and the East’s King Regner, created unrest. As the southern and eastern breaks prepared for war, the Northland peoples along the coast feared the conflict might finally spill across the sea to our shores. Then Fia Drumera killed Regner, and soon, in the east, a mystical prince with no name rose to power.