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Chapter 1
Chapter One: A Bargain in Moonlight
Aeralin felt him long before she saw him. The grove held its breath around the trespasser, leaves stilling, roots listening. Moonlight threaded through the trees, catching on the edges of her glamour, and the old oaks yielded their secrets in soft creaks.
He stepped into a ribbon of silver light and paused. A man, grown and lean, hair dark as wet bark, shoulders travel-worn. His eyes slid toward the heart of the grove where the spring glimmered. His boots had more stubbornness than caution.
Aeralin flicked two fingers. Magic spun like silk. He slammed back against a nearby trunk and stayed there, pinned by a pale shimmer that looked like nothing and felt like a wall. His breath went sharp. He didn’t shout. Interesting.
She stepped out from the shadow of a willow and saw his gaze find her. He tilted his head, surprised and more curious than afraid. He smelled of iron and wind and road dust. She did not like that her pulse leapt.
“Who are you?” she asked, voice calm. “And why are you in my grove?”
His mouth curved. “I’m just a lost traveler.”
The lie hit her like a struck bell. Heat jumped low in her belly, a pulse of truth-curse that made her inhale harder than she meant to. She put a hand to his throat, fingers light. His skin was warm. The magic that lived under her ribs shivered, quick and deep.
He noticed. His smile sharpened. “Nothing to be afraid of,” he said, soft and shameless, even as the veins in his neck beat fast under her palm.
Another lie. Another rush of heat, bright and uncoiling. Aeralin tightened her grip. The world narrowed to the line of his jaw and the thud of his pulse and the way her magic woke to his deception like it had been waiting for it.
“Do not lie to me.” She hated how husky her voice sounded.
His eyes lit with wicked curiosity. “All right,” he said. “I’m not lost.”
Her curse went quiet. The sudden absence of heat left her hollow and irritable.
“What do you want here?” she asked.
He glanced past her toward the spring again. “Something I’m not meant to touch.”
His honesty cooled her skin. Better. She could think. She released his throat but left the moonlight pinning him.
“You will not touch anything,” she said. “Your name.”
He hesitated. “Rowan.”
True. The curse lay still. His name settled in the grove like a pebble thrown into a still pond.
“I am Aeralin,” she said. The willow leaves trembled as if at her name. “And you trespassed.”
“I did,” Rowan said. His gaze tracked the movement of her hair as it slid over her shoulder. “Will you punish me?”
He did not have the right to sound like that. Her magic woke again at the curve of his mouth and the intention in his eyes. But it wasn’t tied to a lie, and that unsettled her more.
She should have ended it here. Men had bled for less. But the grove leaned in, expectant, and her curse hummed near-silent against her spine, as if the night itself might ask her to be unwise.
Instead of killing him, she flicked her wrist again. The shimmer around him thickened and drew down his arms, forming bands of moonlight that crossed his chest and wrists, then snaked to her hand. A chain with no weight and all the force of her will.
“Walk,” she said.
He obeyed—oh, he obeyed. And still he watched her like she was the secret he had come to find.
