It’s almost time for Emerald Darkness!!! This book has been a long time coming. When I finished Demons Forever, I knew there was so much more story to tell, but I needed a break to let the characters rest in my head and to let the story grow. It has taken a couple years to get back to the place I needed to be, but I am proud of how the beginning of this next series turned out. I hope you love it as much as I do!!

Only A Dream

Harper

The moon peered through the dark clouds, creating a criss-cross pattern of shadows on the forest floor. I darted between them, my feet light and careful, every step a chance to be discovered.

Or followed.

Miles from home, all alone, chasing a truth I didn’t even understand. This would be the perfect way to end me.

I adjusted the black hood covering my blonde hair and glanced behind me. I didn’t dare to breathe, afraid the sound might cloak a misplaced footstep or snap of a twig. I counted to ten, my eyes searching for any sign of movement.

But nothing moved.

The forest was still and quiet, as if it somehow shared my fear.

What was I doing here? I couldn’t shake the feeling that once I got to my destination, nothing would ever be the same again. Something secret had been set in motion and once I discovered it, there would be no going back.

I ducked low, my heart racing. Was she out there this time? Watching me?

In the back of my mind, a part of me realized this was only a dream, but it didn’t slow the beating of my heart or calm the butterflies dancing in my stomach.

When I was confident I had not been followed, I moved again, darting toward the next shadow, my blood pumping as the trees thinned to reveal a small circular clearing several feet ahead. I made my way to the edge of the woods and paused to study the small shabby house situated perfectly in the center of the clearing.

This was new.

Most nights, I ran through the woods, fear stalking me like a hunter, never knowing where I was headed or who was behind me. Sometimes, I got a rare glimpse of the woman in black, her dark hood pulled over her head to hide her face.

But I’d never seen a house before.

There were no roads or worn paths leading up to the front door. Brown, brittle grass and weeds had grown up as high as my knees in most places. It looked completely abandoned. No lights shone through the windows. No shadows moved beyond the broken glass.

A simple porch was attached to the front, but it was barely more than a few boards nailed together. Strips of white paint had been removed by the weather over the years, leaving the place looking dull and brown and haunted. There was no front door. Only an empty black hole. A heavy sorrow overwhelmed this place, hanging in the air around it like a thick perfume.

I found myself wishing for Lea. Even in my dream, the thought of her name made my stomach tense. I had hurt her, and it devastated me, but she was part of our group, and I needed her. If she were here, she could reveal the secret tragedies this place had seen. Her gift of conjuring memories might have been useful, but I had a feeling I did not want to know the horrors of this place.

The moon disappeared behind the clouds again, and the clearing slipped into complete darkness.

I should move now, but fear sank down to the pit of my stomach like a heavy stone, anchoring my feet to the ground.

Was it a trap? What would I find inside?

I couldn’t shake the feeling of death that hovered near me, breathing down my neck.

My lips parted, and I inhaled a ragged breath. I leaned my forehead against the cool, rough bark of the pine tree and closed my eyes. I pictured the drawing Jackson, my fiancé, had given me shortly after our final battle with Priestess Winter several months ago. A king and queen seated on a soft blanket in a sunny field, hands clasped as they watched their son playing in the grass. A promise of happier days to come.

Jackson’s visions always came true. There was no avoiding them.

Usually, that was a bad thing, but this one vision, this one drawing, had given me peace. I clung to it like life.

I touched my palms to the tree and waited for the essence of its power to fill me, feeling its roots snake through the soil under my feet. I became a part of the earth around me, connecting that secret well of strength deep inside my core to the river of energy that pulsed through every living thing.

When my eyes snapped open, my hands disappeared. I became the color of air and nothingness, invisible to the normal human eye. I crouched and slipped into the high grass.

No turning back now.

The boards on the steps leading to the porch groaned under my feet, and I paused, waiting. I watched for movement through the dark windows.

I stepped more carefully, moving with aching slowness as I crossed the threshold into the house. It was somehow colder inside than it was out in the woods, and goosebumps prickled my arms and legs.

I thought of the strange female voice that always spoke to me in my dreams.

Please. Listen. Darkness is coming for you. Find me there, and I will steer you toward the light.

Was she trying to help me? Or was this another in a long line of betrayals?

I reached for the gold locket hanging from a chain around my neck. A gift from Jackson, his heart stone locked inside like a secret meant only for me. It had never been with me in my dreams before, and I drew strength from its presence, praying that whatever darkness we were about to face could be survived, as long as we had each other.

I let my invisibility drop and stood shivering in the small one-room shack of a house in the middle of the woods.

With a trembling hand, I conjured a small orb of white light and sent it to the center of the room. The house was completely empty, except for one thing.  A cage made of black iron, its door wide open.

Hot blood pumped through my veins. I had seen cages like this once before in the dungeons of Winterhaven. Priestess Winter, the leader of the sapphire demon gates, had locked away witches who crossed her or disobeyed her, forcing them to live in iron cages suspended fifty feet in the air while their life and power drained from their bodies.

For her evil, I had killed Priestess Winter with my own bare hands, ripping what served for a heart straight from her chest.

And I knew that someday her sisters would want their revenge for what I had done.

Something very dark and very dangerous was on the horizon, and now I understood what all these dreams had meant. I understood why the cloaked woman had come to me in my sleep, urging me to listen.

My eyes locked on something lying on the floor of the cage.

I stepped forward and lowered my orb inside to get a closer look. My mouth went dry at the sight of it and a cry escaped my throat.

There on the floor of the cage, was the symbol of my late father’s love for my mother—a single, pure white rose. It was a symbol of all that was good inside me. The white roses were our secret portal between worlds, allowing us to pass from the human world of my birth into the Shadow World of my newfound demon heritage.

The sight of it struck me so hard it brought me to my knees against the dusty floor, but it wasn’t the flower that had rattled me.

It was the fact that the rose was wrapped in a strand of dark green emeralds.

An Unwelcome Spark

Lea

The witches were barely visible through the trees. Ten of them, more than a hundred yards away. It would be a challenge, but I had never been one to back away from a fight. The harder, the better.

Tell me I couldn’t do something, and I would prove you wrong every damn time.

I pushed one foot forward and lifted my bow. I nocked a ghostly arrow and drew back on the string. I aimed at the first witch, taking a deep breath and letting go on the exhale.

I didn’t wait to see if my first arrow found its mark. I quickly nocked another conjured arrow and shot again and again, the string making a satisfying thumping sound as each arrow released.

By the time my breath was gone, I had sent all ten arrows toward the conjured witches. I lowered my bow to my side and counted my kills, my heart racing.

Each target had a glimmering arrow through its shadowy heart.

I allowed a hint of smile to tease my lips, but I had celebrated too quickly.

I’d hit every mark except one. Number six. I trudged through the thick pine straw on the forest floor, kicking at the fallen limbs in my path. My hand clutched the grip of my bow so tightly, I worried I might break yet another one.

Teeth clenched, I studied the sixth conjured witch. The arrow was seated deep in her left arm, which was the useful equivalent of a freaking mile away from her heart.

Nine out of ten was unacceptable. In a real battle, witch number six could have been the death of me or someone I loved.

Right now, if that person was Harper, I might not mind so much. In fact, it didn’t escape my notice that half the conjured witches on this round had faces that resembled hers. But anyone else dead as a result of my poor aim would be a tragedy.

With a wave of my hand, the figures dissolved. All traces of my victory smile were gone, replaced by an anger and sorrow I wasn’t ready to face. Not yet.

The snap of a limb nearby brought my bow back up, arrow ready, but I lowered it as Aerden walked into a thin strip of moonlight between the trees. He better not have come to lecture me about using my powers out here in the woods. Tomorrow morning, I’d have to beg Zara to regrow some of the trees I had ruined by pulling from their life force in order to cast.

“I almost shot you,” I said.

“Normally I would say keep dreaming, but you’re getting scary,” he said. He motioned toward the area where the targets had stood moments before. “How many this time? Eight?”

“Ten,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow, and our eyes met through the shadows. “You’re improving quickly.”

I shook my head and looked away. “I missed one.”

A smile played across his lips and quickly disappeared. “One target out of ten at a hundred-yard distance?” He shook his head and sighed. “Pitiful.”

“Don’t start with me,” I said, heading back toward Brighton Manor. Not tonight. “When the fighting begins again, even one miss could mean the difference between victory and seeing everything we’ve worked for destroyed.”

He grew quiet and stared up at the sky. The moon was barely visible through the tops of the pine trees. Sadness stretched between us, the heaviness of a hundred years behind its strength.

Even though he’d been free for several months now, Aerden wore his despair like a dark cloak draped over the shell of who he used to be. It would disappear for brief moments, but a simple word or expression could bring it back in the blink of an eye.

Mentioning the coming war was a mistake.

I had learned not to bug him about his moodiness, never pushing him to tell us about his years as a demon slave to the Order of Shadows. Talking about it only seemed to make it worse. Besides, his twin brother Jackson bugged him about it enough for all of us.

Around me, I allowed him to be silent. I think that’s why he always sought me out when I was alone here in the dark, training. He once told me he’d had voices in his head for so long, silence was the only way he could be sure he was free.

“Not going to try again?” he asked when he caught up with me.

“Why? You want a go at it?” I asked. I had come out here to be alone, but maybe I’d spent enough time sulking in the shadows for one night. Besides, I was glad he had spared me the lecture. Harper didn’t like for us to train out here in the open where our destruction could be easily seen and tracked, but considering she’d just gotten engaged to the demon I once loved, I didn’t really give a crap.

“I could be persuaded to participate,” he said.

I stopped and smiled, glancing back at my makeshift training grounds. “As ally or enemy?”

“Anyone who dares to be your enemy is a fool,” he said. “Ally for sure.”

I nodded and reset the course, adding ten additional witch targets in a row behind the first ten.

Aerden and I had trained a lot over the past few months. At first, his skills were rusty. He sometimes struggled to shift forms and his confidence was non-existent after all this time of being forced to do whatever his host witch commanded or needed of him. But his instincts were still there.

Other than shifting from solid form to demon shadow, he never used his powers. He preferred physical weapons, everything from axes to swords to spears.

He’d been a great warrior once. Even better in battle than his twin brother, Jackson. It was good to see him training again.

“Why don’t you try magic this round?” I said as casually as I could, barely glancing at him as I walked toward my starting mark.

Even fifty feet away, I could feel him tense.

“Maybe next time,” he said, the playful tone gone from his voice.

In my peripheral vision, I saw him lift a hand to the spear strapped to his back.

I prepared my first conjured arrow and took a deep breath. With a subtle nod of my head, he shifted to black smoke and flew through the air toward the targets, gracefully dodging my arrows as he rushed toward the witches on the second row. He moved so fast my eyes couldn’t keep track of him.

His skill distracted me, and I slowed the release of my arrows just to watch as he shifted back and forth from solid form to shadow, his spear twirling, landing each blow and stab with such precision, it awed me. The targets fell to the ground so quickly that by the time I released my seventh arrow, the target I’d been aiming for was already gone.

Aerden returned to his solid human form just in time to catch the crest of my arrow with his bare hand.

My lips parted, and our eyes met across the distance. Breathless, he watched for my reaction.

An unwelcome spark ignited in my chest.

“Impressed?” he asked, one eyebrow raised, his head cocked slightly to the side. He still held the burning arrow in his hand.

Impressed was not the word I’d been thinking of.

“Not bad,” I said, clearing my throat and trying to understand the fluttering feeling in my stomach. I waved my hand in the air and the brutalized targets disintegrated into nothing. “For a guy with a primitive weapon.”

“Hey, if I had my axe back, I’d have taken down more of them.”

He laughed and tried to hide his smile. Hell, even a hint of a smile from him felt like a victory. I longed for the days of our childhood when we laughed all the time and had no idea of the terrors that awaited.

But that was before our lives were stolen from us. Before our past happiness became the pain we had to bear in silence.

We walked side-by-side through the forest toward the house, the warmth of that one smile from him soaking into me like sunlight. His arm brushed against mine, and I felt myself wanting to lean into him.

Instead, I moved away

 

More Important Things

Lea

Footsteps sounded behind us. Aerden and I both raised our weapons without hesitation.

We were all on edge these days.

A man with black hair smiled and lifted his hands in surrender. “I come in peace,” he said, his thick Spanish accent apparent even in his laughter.

“That’s the second time I almost shot someone tonight,” I said. I secured my bow across my shoulder and reached out to grip his hand. Andros pulled me into a strong hug. “You guys should both know better than to sneak up on me. Especially tonight.”

“Why especially tonight?” Andros asked, releasing me and holding his hand out to Aerden. “Has something happened?”

“Her former betrothed got engaged,” Aerden said, gripping Andros’ hand in welcome.

I shot him a look. I hadn’t realized he understood why I was out here training tonight, but Aerden constantly surprised me that way. In the same way that I never asked him about his years as a slave, he never asked me to talk about what really happened between Jackson and me. It was an unspoken agreement between us, but he seemed to understand how much it affected me, even after all this time.

“Engaged?” Andros asked, his eyes darkening. “How can this be? Unless you have given him your permission, Princess?”

“Do you think I could really deny it?” I asked. “He proposed at the Halloween party. Which you bailed on, by the way. I thought you said you were going to bring Ourelia.”

I missed spending time with Andros, his wife, Ourelia, and their young daughter, Sasha. We had spent many years together in the Shadow World before I came over to this side, and even though a few of my best friends had come through with me, this world was often a very lonely place. Strange how you could sometimes be surrounded by people and still feel alone.

Especially when you lived with the demon you used to love more than life itself and the new girl he loved more than you.

I definitely did not want to talk about it.

“There will be plenty of time for parties once the Order of Shadows is defeated,” Andros said. “For months now, we have been waiting. Doing nothing while the Order continues to kidnap demons from our lands and force them into slavery.“

“Thousands of demons free and home with their families,” Aerden said. “You can’t say we’ve done nothing.”

Andros shook his head. “I do not mean to sound ungrateful for all your group has accomplished,” he said. “But freeing the blue gates is not enough. For every demon that has been set free from slavery in this world, two more are being kidnapped. The four remaining priestesses of the Order have doubled their recruitment over the past few months. Something must be done.”

“Is that why you’re here?” I asked. Andros didn’t come to the human world very often. He hated it here. He hated humans in general, really, and every time I saw him lately he tried to convince me to take stronger action against the Order. He didn’t understand why I was allowing Harper, a young human girl, to give the orders around here.

Hell, sometimes I didn’t understand it myself. But Harper was the one who had saved Aerden when all the rest of us had failed. No matter how I felt about her personally, she deserved my loyalty and my trust.

Besides, she was half demon, a princess in her own right.

“I’m afraid I’ve come for much more important matters,” Andros said, his expression growing dark and tense. He glanced at Aerden. “May I speak freely, Princess?”

“Yes, of course,” I said. But just in case, I turned to Aerden and added, “As long as you understand that anything discussed here stays between the three of us.”

Aerden questioned me with his eyes, but nodded.

Andros cleared his throat and looked around, as if making sure no one else was listening.

“I try to keep eyes and ears on your father’s city in the Northern Kingdom,” he said. “But six months ago, after the fall of the sapphire demons gates, your father closed the gates of his own city. No one has been allowed to enter or leave since.”

I already knew this, so I waited for him to say more.

“But I do have a few of my men who are still inside. I haven’t heard from them in six full months, but a few hours ago, a messenger arrived at the secret entrance to the Underground. He had the tattoo of a phoenix on his arm.”

My eyes widened. “My father’s insignia.”

The Underground was the home of the Resistance Army, a group of hundreds of demons and their families who had banded together, vowing to fight against the Order and protect the demons outside the safety of the King’s City. Andros led the army, and when Jackson and I first found out the truth about the Order, about what had happened to Aerden and so many thousands of demons from our world, we had joined the Resistance ourselves for many years.

As far as we knew, neither my father nor his guards knew the location of the Resistance forces.

“How—”

“One of my men inside must have trusted the guard enough to tell him where to find us,” Andros said. “That alone should tell you just how important it was that I receive his message.”

“What did he say?”

“Lea.” The way he said my name sent chills down my spine. Andros was one of the bravest, most stubborn demons I had ever met. He hardly knew the meaning of fear, but there was unease in his voice and in his eyes as he spoke. “He said your father has brought a stone guardian with a diamond heart to Leuxia, the King’s City.”

My entire body froze, each muscle tense and unmoving. I couldn’t breathe. A gentle wind blew across my skin, a loose strand of hair from my braid fluttering against the back of my neck.

I shivered.

“That’s not possible.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, either,” Andros said. “But one of the King’s Guard taking such a risk to seek me out? He risked his life coming to me. I could have killed him for his knowledge of the Underground.”

“I thought stone guardians were a myth,” Aerden said, shaking his head. “Like a scary bedtime story or a way to keep the citizens in line. Don’t go into the Black Hills alone, the stone guardians will come after you. That kind of thing. They aren’t real. Are they?”

“Stone guardians are very real,” Andros said. “And incredibly dangerous. Our entire race was nearly wiped out by the war between the guardians five thousand years ago.”

“I thought they were extinct,” I said, barely finding my voice. “I thought they killed each other off in the war.”

Andros shook his head. “Inside the libraries of the Underground, we have found many texts that reference the stone guardians as beings who come from another dimension. Just like the humans. There are many worlds besides these two, Lea. The stone guardians were not all killed. Those that survived were banished, the one remaining portal between their world and ours sealed and guarded for the last five thousand years.”

“And you’re telling me that somehow my father, the King of the North, has opened that portal? That’s ridiculous. Why would he bring such a dangerous being back to our world? It doesn’t make any sense.”

My mind raced, searching my own memories for any reference my parents had ever made to stone guardians. The only thing I remembered was that the mines of magical gemstones scattered throughout the Shadow World were said to be the decayed bodies of these giant stone beings.

Diamonds were supposed to be the most powerful of all the gemstones. And the most rare. The symbol of the Order’s High Priestess.

I touched a hand to the rope chain around my neck. The only true Shadow World diamond I had ever seen was embedded in a key Aerden had given me before he was kidnapped a hundred years ago. I had never been able to unlock its power, but I kept it with me at all times.

Could all these things be connected? Why would my father have brought a diamond stone guardian to his city? Were they even real?

Aerden was right. It sounded more like a myth than truth. There was nothing said about them that made me believe they were anything more than stories told in hushed whispers. Dark fairy tales meant to scare shadowlings into doing what they were told.

“Your father has been slipping into madness for years, Princess, and you know it,” Andros said. “I have warned you many times that he was eventually going to do something that put us all in even more danger than we’ve already endured for so many years. Every chance he has had to fight back against the Order or to save his people, the king has turned his back on us. And it’s only gotten worse over time. The King’s Guard used to patrol the villages, keeping the Order’s hunters away. He slowly reduced the patrols to one single unit of six soldiers for the entire Northern Kingdom. They were useless. They spent more of their time searching for the Resistance than for the actual hunters.

“When the King’s Guard stopped their patrols, it seemed like a blessing. But then the doors to the gate around the King’s City closed soon after, and we realized the king had given up on his subjects outside the city. He practically offered us to the Order on a silver platter. The fact that the doors closed right after the Order increased their recruiting can’t be lost on you, can it?”

The anger in his tone grew as he spoke, and it kind of pissed me off. I knew what was coming next.

“So you come here to accuse me of turning my back on you as well, is that it? Is that what you’re saying?” I stepped toward him.

“You must know it is true if you’re so quick to understand my meaning,” he said, his eyes narrowing.

My jaw tensed. “No, I just know you that well,” I said. “How do I know this story about the stone guardians isn’t just your way of getting me to come home and fight for the Resistance?”

“Do you think I would lie about such things?”

“I think you would do whatever you thought necessary to achieve your goals.”

“Is that not an honorable thing? Doing whatever it takes to save my people? Your people, Princess. Or have you forgotten where you come from? Who you are? Have you been living with these humans for so long you’ve forgotten where your duty truly lies?”

Anger boiled in my veins, its power so strong my body began shifting to the black smoke of my demon form. Tendrils of dark shadows swirled around my skin like snakes.

Aerden took a step toward me, but one glance warned him off. I regretted saying he could stay. If I had known what Andros was about to accuse my father of, I never would have let him say it in front of Aerden.

“I understand why you came here,” Andros said, his voice softening. He raised his hands and stepped back, putting some distance between us. “I know you only did what you thought you had to do out of love. But what reason do you have to stay now? Jackson is engaged to another. Harper is the heir to her father’s kingdom in the south and will soon take her place on his throne. Let them handle what is needed here in the human world and in the Southern Kingdom. Your people need you now more than ever. I’m begging you. If your father has brought a stone guardian into the King’s City, then he has truly gone mad. He must believe the giant will protect him from the Order, it’s the only explanation. The time has come, Princess. You cannot deny your place as Queen any longer. Please, for the sake of your people, come home to claim your throne.”

With this, he got down on one knee before me and lowered his head.

My anger dissipated, leaving behind fear and confusion.

Andros was right. I had only come to the human world because of Jackson. I followed him here because I loved him, and I foolishly believed that if I joined him in his quest to save his brother, he would someday return to me. That we would be married and have a life together.

There was a part of me that held onto that hope even after he fell in love with Harper. But now? When he asked me to release him from our engagement—to give back the heart stone he had given me one hundred years ago during our engagement ceremony—he broke my heart all over again.

Why would I choose to stay here with them, instead of returning to my homeland?

Tears stung the corners of my eyes, but I forced them back. I would not cry. I was stronger than that.

I lifted my head and motioned for Andros to stand.

“Tell me everything you know about stone guardians.”

 

I Didn’t Know

Jackson

My visions were becoming more violent.

Sometimes I saw them clearly in my mind like flashes of memory, but other times I had to put pencil to paper to extract them from my brain. When a vision was struggling to be released, I often felt it like a fever. It was almost like a sickness that needed to be drawn out from me, the way surgeons used to use leeches to draw blood from patients.

Until it had shape and form, I had no hope of relief. And tonight, I had the fever.

I drew with my eyes closed, almost as if in a trance. My hands worked on their own, as if the visions were speaking directly to them, bypassing the rest of me in an effort to work more efficiently. I worked fast and hard, stopping only to tear my shirt from my body, sweat pouring from me.

Sometimes the visions held onto me for hours, my hands working through image after image, page after page, without pause. Tonight, there was a stack of nearly twenty pages already filled to the very edge with scenes of battle. Blood running through the streets of a small town. Swords raised against each other. Magic clashing in the air in a burst of light.

And a woman in a black hood. She was always there, but her face was never visible.

Some of tonight’s drawings were a small piece of the scene shown in detail, like the side of someone’s face with a streak of blood along their cheek. Others were more like silhouettes, drawn in sweeping strokes and dark shadows, but with no real detail.

The hooded woman was in every single drawing, but she always appeared like a ghost or a memory, see-through and shaded. A piece of her cloak, the profile of her hood, I drew them all, begging for my vision to show me her face or give some other clue. But none came.

Who was she?

It wasn’t until I finally drew a panorama of the entire scene that my pencil fell to the desktop, my fingers cramped and twisted. I pushed away from the desk and stood for the first time in hours.

I walked to the window and looked back toward the bed where Harper slept. We had switched places at some point in the early morning hours. I couldn’t sleep, but she was finally peaceful and quiet.

Lately, we both seemed to spend a lot of time staring out of this window. It was the place where our eyes had first locked onto each other, our souls connected in ways we couldn’t have realized at the time.

Whenever I started to feel hopeless or afraid that the coming war would be too much for us, I thought of that first moment when I saw her, standing right here looking down at me. She had no idea just how important she was or how much we all needed her. And yet, when the time came, she was the only one strong enough to fight back.

The memory served as a reminder that there were still witches inside the Order who were pure of heart. Victims trapped under the tyranny of the four remaining sister priestesses.

It reminded me that even though my brother was free, there were still others who needed and deserved our help.

Despite the price yet to be paid.

I studied my final drawing, the pencil marks smudging at the edge of the paper under my thumb. I had drawn it with heartbreaking accuracy.

The Southern Kingdom. The domed city built by Harper’s father, the King of the South, to protect his people from the Order. He had built it decades ago, inviting all who lived in his kingdom to join him inside the safety of the dome. Now, thousands lived there, all protected by the king’s loyal soldiers and the magic of the dome that kept the Order’s hunters out.

It was Harper’s kingdom now. Harper’s city.

And someday soon, the war would bring it down.

I crumpled the drawing in my fist and walked over to the desk with its stack of papers. I tossed them all in the trash can. I didn’t want Harper to see this. She had enough to worry about without having to see it with her own eyes.

She whimpered, and I turned, crossing to her in seconds. At first, I thought my moving around had woken her up, but when I sat beside her on the bed, I saw that she was still sleeping.

Her face twisted into a frown and she whimpered again. Her chin jerked to the side, her hands curled into fists.

I touched her forehead. She was hot, her hair drenched in sweat.

“Harper,” I said softly, gripping her fist with my own. I ran my hand across her cheek, trying not startle her, but wanting to pull her from the nightmare.

Like my visions, she’d been feverish with dreams. She didn’t like to talk about it, and I understood. I hadn’t told her the truth about my drawings, either. If we didn’t talk about our fears out loud, they weren’t real yet.

And I had desperately wanted to enjoy the happiness of our engagement for just a few more days.

But I knew our time for pretending was up. Our months of peace were over, and something was coming for us.

I could feel the heat of the next vision already warming the blood in my veins. They were relentless, consuming my nights the way these nightmares often consumed her.

I’d hidden it from her longer than I ever should have, and man, was she going to be pissed.

Harper thrashed to the side, another cry escaping from her throat as she reached her hands out, holding onto my forearms.

“Harper,” I said, louder this time. I wrapped my hands around her wrists and shook her slightly. “Wake up.”

Her eyes opened and she drew in a strangled breath.

I pulled her into my arms and held her close to me.

“You’re okay,” I said softly. “I’m here. It was just a dream.”

Hot tears fell onto my shoulder. Harper clung to me, crying as she struggled to catch her breath.

When she finally pulled away, her dark brown eyes were wide and her cheeks were flushed.

“What is it?” I asked in a whisper. “What happened?”

She took a breath and shook her head.

“Emeralds,” she said. “I think someone’s been trying to warn me.”

My body tensed and grew suddenly ice cold, as if a ghost were breathing down my neck. “Who?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She closed her eyes. “I’ve never seen her face, but she’s there in every dream, Jackson. All this time, I thought she wanted to hurt me, but tonight, I got farther than I ever have before. I forced myself to keep going. She’s tall and when she moves, it’s like she’s floating on air, just gliding over the surface instead of actually walking. I keep trying to see her face, but—”

“She’s wearing a black cloak?”

Harper paused, lips slightly open. Her eyes widened and she stared at me for a long moment before the realization finally came to her. She released my arms and scooted back against her pillows, drawing her legs up to her chest.

“You’ve seen her, too,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Her gaze flicked to the desk.

“Yes.” I waited for the anger. I knew better than to keep secrets from her, but all I wanted to do was protect her. Whenever I shared my visions with her in the past, we usually misinterpreted them, leading to unnecessary fear and worry. I didn’t want to do that to her again. Not until I was sure what I was seeing.

“Do you know who she is?” she asked. There was sadness in her voice, but not anger.

Somehow, that was worse.

“I haven’t been able to see her face, either,” I said. “But she’s in every single drawing.”

“I want to see them.” Harper stood and crossed to the desk.

I moved faster, quickly nudging between her and the notebook. I’d thrown tonight’s drawings in the trash, but there were many more still inside my book. None as gruesome as tonight’s, but I still didn’t want her to see them.

“We don’t know what they mean, anyway,” I said. I placed a hand on her shoulder, but she twisted away. My heart tightened.

“After all this time, you still want to hide from me,” she said. “I thought the memories you showed me last night before you proposed were supposed to change things between us. You said you wanted me to see you at your worst before I agreed to a lifetime together. And yet, here you are, still hiding the truth from me, because you think I can’t handle it.”

“That’s not it at all,” I said. “I only want to protect you. Seeing pieces of the future is my burden, Harper. Not yours.”

Her eyes snapped to mine, the anger I’d been dreading blazing in her expression.

She stepped toward me and put one hand on the gold locket I’d given her. The other rose to my chest, covering my heart.

“We are one now, you and me,” she said. “Our burden is the same. If we keep things from each other, how will we ever get through this? I don’t want to be alone in this, Jackson. I want to know we’re a team. You’re always thinking about my heart, my fears. Always trying to protect me. But I want to protect you, too. You shouldn’t bear this alone.”

I put my hand on hers and closed the small gap of space that remained between us.

“I don’t deserve you,” I whispered, placing my lips against her forehead. She was still warm from the dream.

“Love isn’t about deserving,” she said. “It’s about being completely open to each other. It’s about needing and being needed. And I need you now more than ever. I think whoever this cloaked woman is, she’s been trying to warn us that the emerald priestess is going to attack. I think it’s going to happen soon. We need to be ready.”

She pulled back slightly and searched my eyes.

“I need to see those drawings, Jackson.”

I squeezed her hand and nodded.

I turned back toward my desk and leaned against the worn wood. I did not want to show her what I’d seen. The destruction would tear her apart, and no matter what we did, there was nothing that would change it. Her father’s domed city was going to be destroyed and people were going to die.

It was only a matter of when.

Reluctantly, I opened the notebook and slid several drawings across the desk, spreading them out from bad to worst. Harper came around beside me, the soft fabric of her nightgown brushing against my side as she studied them.

Her eyes dipped to the trash can and before I could stop her, she took the crumpled paper from the bin and smoothed it out. Her knees buckled.

I caught her just before she hit the floor and cradled her in my arms. She rested her head against my chest, still clutching the drawing in her hand.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered through her tears. “I didn’t know.”

I held her close to me and rocked her back and forth.

My eyes drifted down to the page, seeing again the unavoidable destruction that was coming our way, focusing on the hooded figure in the corner, her face just out of sight.

Monday, May 11th is release day for Emerald Darkness!!! If you haven’t had a chance to preorder, you can still do so for just 99 cents at these retailers:

Barnes & Noble
Google Play
iBooks
Kobo

I decided not to do a preorder at Amazon for various reasons, but I promise that it will be on sale for 99 cents on May 11th! I’m going to do everything I can to make sure it’s up before midnight, but will post on Facebook and send out a mail as soon as it’s live everywhere!!!

Emerald Darkness will have a special release week only price of 99 cents. After that, it goes back up to its normal price of $3.99.

I hope you enjoyed this preview of the first 4 chapters!!