Moon-Kissed (Within the Darkness #1) - Amelia Hutchins
Prologue
250 years ago
Staring out the large window in my bedroom, peering over the kingdom, I watched as the morning sun rose. Turning back toward the room, I studied the white eyes of the seer. In her hands was the ancient tome, one that no other creature had held in a millennia.
Long black curls flowed down her shoulders in waves, invitingly. Candlelight swayed with the wind in the room from the powerful magic she created from her soul. Watching her, I folded my arms over my chest as her eyes returned to the soft violet that promised heaven and yet delivered no comfort.
“Your mate will be born soon,” she announced through a husky, rasp-filled tone that spoke of seduction. “She will be born into the moon-touched clan, and once you read from the tome, she will be brought to you by the power of the book. Your mate will be fire and ice. She will be beautiful and strong. Everything you crave will come to you, but only if you read from the Book of the Dead.”
“That book is known for taking away what you want,” I argued, watching her full mouth curve into a sardonic grin. “It never gives you what you crave.” Noting the way she tensed, I hesitated.
“Everything comes with a price,” the seer stated, her shoulders slumping before she placed the book onto the table, opening it to the page in which she wanted me to read. “All magic has a cost, and all knowledge comes from that cost. You asked me to find your true mate; after losing who you had assumed was yours already, I would think you’d want to take this chance. The universe only allows us to have one mate in a lifetime. That you have another chance at finding her if she’s reborn, well, few can find them twice. If you ignore what I have foreseen, then that is your choice. Considering who you are and what she will be born to be, I doubt your paths ever cross naturally. You are of the night, and she is of the light. She will be born of the same clan as her first birth. Would you give it all away to another man? Or will you pay the price to know her taste and to feel your cold, deadened heart beating again?” she pried, her pretty violet eyes watching me with a burning need.
“What is the cost?” I demanded, watching the sparkle shining within her eyes.
“I can’t tell you that. A life? A thousand lives? What do you care? You’re no saint, and the taint of lives lost won’t bother your soul. You forced a king’s hand, and he sent his daughter away where you could never find her, and she connected her life to that of another. Will you chance to lose her again? Will you risk your true mate meeting another and falling in love before you can find her?”
“No.” I swallowed past the lump those words caused. Moving toward the seer, I watched her tense from my nearness. “How will I know my true mate when I see her?”
“You won’t, not until it is time. Mates are tricky things, and only something unique between you will forge the bond. It could be as simple as a look or a kiss that makes you feel her within your soul. Why you would even want to find her is beyond me. Once you do, you will never feel another’s touch because your heart will only beat for her.”
“Your mate died, and when he did, what did you feel?”
“Nothing, which is what I prefer,” she returned icily, and I smiled, nodding. “There was freedom in knowing my husband was dead. There was also a numbness that began and has yet to stop growing in my soul.”
“I know that numbness well. I feel nothing, nor have I for a very long time. Three hundred years ago, they sent my mate away, far beyond my grasp. I was too young to understand what it meant back then. I taste no food or wine. I take pleasure, but it is muted at best, and I never feel satisfied. I have an endless hunger to know the feeling of my mate and to experience the true pleasure of living…” I slid my fingers over the book’s pages, smoothing them out with my fingertips. “I am merely an endless night that hungers for her pleasure and to know her touch. I tire of the cold, eternal chill that aches