CHAPTER 1
An Aching Heart
Staring at his broken wife through what he hoped were dispassionate eyes, Ryker attempted to quell the racing of his aching, broken heart. For three weeks, the fae captain had existed in a state of anger and disbelief, unwilling and unable to accept the truth of what had occurred on his wedding night.
His beautiful, intelligent, intriguing vampire had lied to him.
She’d played him for a gods-damned fucking fool.
Ryker knew that was true. He understood it in the same way that someone understood that the sky was blue, flowers bloomed in the spring, and the sun rose in the east every morning.
That understanding did nothing to dispel the absolute agony coursing through him like a raging river during a thunderstorm. It did not heal his brokenness.
Every breath was like inhaling shards of shattered glass. Every pulse of his pulverized heart was like throwing salt in an open wound. Every single second was worse than the last.
Broken.
They were so fucking broken.
Once, they’d been whole. Better than that, they’d beenone. But Brynleigh had taken what they’d carefully formed during the Choosing and shattered it.
Ryker didn’t know how to fix this. He didn’t even know if it could be done. When he surveyed the shattered pieces of his heart, which had been a daily endeavor since their wedding night, all he felt was soul-deep pain and burning anger.
He had no idea how to put his heart back together. Was it even possible to pick up the remnants of his life after the one person he’d mistakenly trusted obliterated it?
Right now, that seemed impossible.
Brynleigh’s black eyes were wide, and she was staring at him as though he were a ghost. Her face, pale on a good day, was as white as a fresh snowfall. Her hands trembled against the manacles binding her to the chair, and her chapped lips opened and closed repeatedly.
She rasped, her voice rough and scratchy like she’d been screaming for hours, “You… you’re dead.”
By the Obsidian Sands, Ryker wished that were the case. Death would have been easier than this.
Agony was a spear lancing through him, stealing his breath, as he truly looked upon the woman he’d married for the first time since entering this gods-forsaken place.
A galaxy of black and blue bruises mottled every exposed inch of Brynleigh’s skin. Dried blood crusted her face and arms. One of her eyes was nearly swollen shut. Her hair was matted and greasy, and the once-blonde ends were rusty. Her black, ill-fitting jumpsuit was covered in dirt and other substances.
She looked… bad.
Ryker had been around enough prisoners to know this was normal, but to see the woman he loved like this?—
No.
The prisoner before him wasn’t the woman he’d fallen in love with. This wasn’t the woman he’d Chosen.Thatwoman, the one he’d spoken with for hours on end and broken rules for, was a different person. One who, apparently, had never existed.
Ryker gritted his teeth. Brynleigh had lied to him, yet nomatter how many times he told himself she’d played him, he still couldn’t believe this nightmare was real.
How had everything turned out so horribly?
“No, I’m not dead.” His voice was a low growl as he answered her previous question. It seemed to echo in the windowless cell.
Ryker had to get a grip. He was a soldier, for the gods’ sake. Emotions did not belong in a place like this.
Forcing a mask of composure on his face, he hardened his eyes and steadied his heart. Even though his hands twitched at his sides with the need to rip off the silver shackles, gather Brynleigh in his arms, and take her away, he was a statue.
If Ryker had known Victor Orpheus had been put in charge of the fucking interrogation, he would have stopped it earlier. The sadistic fae couldn’t be trusted with anyone, let alone Ryker’s… his… Brynleigh.
But Ryker hadn’t known. He hadn’t wanted to know.