1 Chapter 1

1

Nathan Grier was exhausted, his body drained entirely of energy from his days spent recovering from an unfortunate shotgun blast to the chest. Sleep was a welcome friend as of late—well, some of the time. A part of Nathan feared the drooping of his eyes and what might be waiting for him in the darkness. But he needed rest. Craved it. The comfort and warmth of the bed beneath him. The quiet of a room that wasn’t in the hospital. The gentle touch of Sasha’s fingers trailing up his thigh.

Nathan sighed. His thoughts were vague, hazy. He was definitely in a bed, in a quiet room, but he wasn’t surrounded by the comfort of covers; he was lying naked on top of them, displayed for Sasha to see. Nathan knew the hand caressing up his side belonged to Sasha Kelly—of course it did. He knew the soft skin of the incubus too well after their night together to imagine it was anyone else.

It had been a week since their run-in with Gabriel, the sealgaire who had murdered Nathan’s parents—and who had turned out, in the end, to be family. Nathan hadn’t told his brother, Jim, about Gabriel being their uncle, and he hoped he never had to. Gabriel had set traps for them, using Sasha as bait, bent on ridding the world of anything not human, especially of changelings like Jim. The shotgun hadn’t even been the finale, but it had been enough to put Nathan out of commission. They were all lucky to have gotten out of that warehouse alive, and Nathan couldn’t help being thankful that Gabriel hadn’t.

When Nathan first woke up in the hospital, Sasha had clung to him, overcome with emotion and intent on confiding in Nathan his darkest secret—that he had killed the first girl he ever fed from, something he had never truly gotten over. Sasha had pleaded with Nathan not to leave him, and the words that followed had shaken Nathan more than anything that had happened to them.

I love you, Nathan.

“Nathan…” Sasha’s real voice called to him, warm breath on Nathan’s face. He could feel the heat and presence of Sasha beside him now, not only his delicately trailing hand. Nathan shivered at their closeness.

Sasha’s touch, Sasha’s affection—Nathan had grown attached to those things. But he wasn’t sure if he was ready for Sasha’s love.

Turning toward the incubus, Nathan reached for Sasha with an outstretched palm, but his hand sank through the air and landed on a cold mattress. Nathan’s eyes opened immediately, and he found himself staring at an empty bed. Just like that morning after they had first made love, when Sasha was taken by Gabriel.

Nathan sat up quickly, instantly awake. He didn’t recognize the room he was in. It was strangely muted, the colors all dull and without texture. There was only the bed, the walls, and a mirror in the corner. There wasn’t even a door.

“Fuck,” Nathan cursed, running a hand through his short black hair reflexively. He was dreaming again. He was always dreaming. He tried rubbing his eyes, tried willing himself awake, but those simple tricks never worked anymore. Not when his mark was so powerful.

A few months earlier, Jim had been kidnapped and taken into the Veil by dark fae, a passage of time Jim couldn’t remember. Nathan had tricked a dark fae Messenger into getting his brother back, but now he was marked for bounty by a yet unknown dark sidhe lord. In their hopes of getting the bounty called off before it consumed and killed Nathan, the most they had learned was that the holder of the bounty was athey, but they didn’t even know what that meant.

Nathan resigned himself to having to play the dream out and rose from the bed. It was the starkest thing in the room besides him, since the sheets were black. He was still naked as he inspected the empty walls and the space around the bed, unable to summon clothing like he might have in a normal lucid dream, which he assumed had some deeper meaning, but he didn’t want to think about it. Instead, he turned for the mirror—his obvious destination.

At first, his reflection looked normal. Just him, clad in only skin, the image enlarging in the glass as he walked closer. But he wasn’t completely bare, he realized. His necklace still hung neatly in place, with his father’s white gold wedding ring and its intricate Celtic knots like a pendant against his chest. Over his heart was the physical manifestation of his mark, a scar made up of three interconnecting lines. Claw marks. He cringed as he recalled the sting of the Messenger’s claws digging in deep—still a vivid, horrible memory.