Lady of Starfire

Twenty-one years before the story begins, the goddess Saylah—deity of night and shadows, trapped in the mortal realm—descends to the Underwater Prison with Fae Queen Eliné to confront the Sorceress Gehenna.

Twenty-one years before the story begins, the goddess Saylah—deity of night and shadows, trapped in the mortal realm—descends to the Underwater Prison with Fae Queen Eliné to confront the Sorceress Gehenna. Saylah is pregnant. She needs the lock, an artifact that could unlock the realm's gateway and allow her to leave. Gehenna reveals she gave it to a woman named Moranna, who hid it while trying to create a being powerful enough to use it. Only one born of the gods and Chaos who wields Fae elements can find it. Outside the cell, Saylah presses a hand to her swelling belly and weeps. She commands Eliné to raise the child she carries—to love her daughter in the way a goddess cannot, and to prepare her for a destiny no child should have to bear.

Sorin wakes mortal while his wife vanishes to confront a goddess

Sorin Aditya wakes cold for the first time in his immortal life. Every Mark is gone—twin flame, Source, all erased—the price of returning from the After. He cannot summon fire or hear Scarlett through their bond. When Cethin, the Avonleyan King and Scarlett's brother, arrives looking rattled, Sorin learns his wife vanished in the night, stepping through darkness to confront their mother, the goddess Saylah, in the forbidden Shira Forest. Hours later, Scarlett returns with spirit animals at her command and shadows thick around her. She gave the goddess an ultimatum: restore Sorin's magic or face consequences. The lock they have been seeking, she reveals, is not the key to the Wards—it controls the gateway between worlds. And Cethin cannot leave Avonleya without destroying everything he protects.

Three days to break a Fire Fae's soul completely

While Scarlett strategizes in Avonleya, Cyrus—the Fire Court Second—sits in a cell on the Southern Islands, guarded by the Sorceress Gehenna. Alaric gave her vials of Cyrus's blood, and with it she enters his mind. She drags up treasured memories of Merrik and Thia—the two people Cyrus loved and lost—and poisons them, twisting words and feelings until the real versions blur with fabrications. When she reaches for memories of Cassius, Scarlett's Guardian and the man Cyrus is falling for, he breaks. He begs her to stop. She offers a bargain: three sacrifices to keep those memories untouched. Blood. Betrayal. Time. Cyrus agrees, hating himself for a promise he knows will damage everyone he loves. The Bargain Mark winds around his bicep like three binding ropes.