PART I
BEGRUDGINGLY BOUND
“Her eyes ensnared, seared, utterly stripped me to the marrow, and I stared back. Baffled.
No one had ever made me lose my words. Not like that.
For a moment, anger scorched my veins. How could I already be a bumbling fool when I didn’t even know her name? It wasn’t just her beauty, though her bound moonlit hair with loose tendrils, those honey-gold eyes, and that torturous dress would surely bring me to my knees.
No. There was something else.
Something so consuming I couldn’t tear myself away.
Like she held an answer to a question I hadn’t realized my heart was screaming, and the hollow in my soul was meant to hold her.
She smiled as if she knew.
And every hard, jagged edge of my existence melted for her.
A gravity formed between us and I stumbled forward as if the only path led to her. A path I’d come upon, not by coincidence, but by fate’s hand itself.
So, I followed.
Then there was only me, and her, and the inevitable tug of destiny.”
The Nameless Book
CHAPTER ONE
VESPER
Alone in the throne room, Vesper glowered at his shattered reflection. The red-rimmed eyes he could credit to his sleepless nights, but gods only knew how he’d gotten that split, purple cheek. Through his drunken stupor he barely felt the mirror shards skewered into his fists, though he wished the pain would distract him, because as Emmery’s voice rang through his head, he sank inwards, deeper and deeper.
I know. I know everything now.
He bared his teeth as his fist connected with the mirror. The glass gave way, splintering into his hand beneath the sheer force of his anger. He had to put it somewhere, expel it from his body,or it would eat him alive. A mottled mess of flesh and crimson soaked the wall, but he couldn’t be bothered to care.
He reared back and struck it once more.
Twice.
He threw his entire weight into the third. The whole thing shattered, and glass rained down around him in a stupidly poetic reflection of his world falling to pieces. Of all the moronic choices he’d made, what he’d done to Emmery was the worst. To say he fucked up was putting it lightly.
That sinking feeling only grew as his eyes fixed on the gold-flecked bloodstained floor—a reminder of the day he’d stumbled into Castle Dusk and his world had halted. Stopped entirely. Crumbled to irreparable pieces. When the marriage bond had torn him in two, it fractured something irreparable inside him. Now each time he saw the stain, it aggravated that aged wound.
But when he found Emmery across the gate again, and she looked straight through him, it split wide open, messy, gruesome, and guilt riddled. Because, with her memories gone, it was like meeting a stranger’s eyes. A ghost.
All this time he’d thought her dead, stolen from him like Izzy and his kingdom. Even Fionn had kept her whereabouts a secret, which he was still bloody pissed about. But the absolute worst part of this situation was how fucking badly the world had hurt her.
And he hadn’t been there to protect her. Not that sheneededprotecting. It was Emmery after all. The woman could reduce a man to ash with a single glance. Yet, it’d been his duty to look after her. Protect her. Fuck the marriage bond, he’d promised her that long before.
At least, he had before she’d torched Ellynne.
Since then, almost a century had passed. Things had changed.
Hehad changed.
Vesper’s head lolled and his pulse thudded angrily in his ears as Asaella’s crest, seared into the top of his hand, glared back at him.A future favour, Destonne had declared. What demented nonsense would he demand?