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Chapter One

At ht on April seventeenth, Luisa Lopez silently celebrated her twenty-first birthday by looking into the future

Her visions had begun five years ago, shortly before four ht school They had dragged her into her own apartment, where she had been beaten, raped, and nearly burned alive Luisa had foreseen the attack two days earlier, but until it happened she had thought her visions were only nightmares It wasn’t until she woke up in the hospital burn ward that she knew the strange things she saw in her mind were real

At first Luisa didn’t know the people in her visions The one she saw ry lady doctor, had been taken away to operate on a man hite-streaked hair and no face She had also helped soolden-haired killer, the greenthief Soli and the shadow prince, but their futures were never revealed

Luisa had been frightened when she beganthe people from her visions, but they had never harmed her The lady doctor, Alexandra Keller, had coiven Luisa’s mother the money for her treatht Luisa to this rehabilitation hospital to continue her medical treat with the visions, as well as hat had been done to her In the first, worst weeks Luisa had wanted to die, and tried several tian to dream of the shadow prince that she found a reason to live

As he struggled, Luisa had done the sa what the doctors did to her in order to heal her injuries Sometimes it seemed worse than the attack She accepted the visions she had of the secret war between the immortals who called themselves Darkyn, and their enemy, the zealot Brethren, but that wasn’t easy either There were nights she woke up weeping, soift was that Luisa couldn’t warn anyone Who would believe that a poor, ignorant girl from the projects saw the future? Even if she could convince the immortals who had helped and protected her that her visions were real, as hat she saw coe it before it happened Luisa already knew the events could not be changed; any interference by her or the about the end of the world

So Luisa remained silent and watchful, and took what coht she prayed to the God whom both the Darkyn and the Brethren had abandoned, and asked Hiht her vision was of the s a red-haired wo in a crowded rooesturing toward an old painting The vision faded alun, but Luisa felt exhausted, as if she had watched it for hours

She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep

Luisa saw the shadow prince walking through a forest, touching nothing, his dark face gri and wondering but never trying to intrude on his solitude She sensed his emotions, and knew that the only ti You should be asleep

Luisa froze He had never acknowledged her presence I’m not very tired Then, very tentatively, she asked, Are you okay?

You have surgery to hers It’s your birthday

She shrugged

Everyone forgets I still have them, too He didn’t srees Happy birthday, Princess

She would have laughed, hearing someone else call her that Where are you?

In the mountains He seemed to lose interest in her as he looked around hihtning-struck tree

He wouldn’t touch the hi You won’t hurt thehts I hurt everything I touch

A blinding light filled Luisa’s head Visions hardly ever cah her thoughts like a bulldozer speeding out of control

The shadow prince turned around What is that light?

A vision She couldn’t keep hih her eyes He saw the girl throw herself in the furnace, and the other iuard as she burned The vision whisked thelassworks and hurled theh its empty corridors, and into a tiny roo a blade to saw through the covering of a grass-filled rass until he grinned and grabbed so inside the lancing at the , put it under his sweat-stained shirt He ran out of the rooh the silent halls, and ju cart An olderthe cart slapped the reins on the back end of a donkey, which pulled the cart across the grass and onto a dirt road

The book Luisa closed her eyes to the i head between her hands They can’t find it Not yet They’re not ready

What about this book? the shadow prince asked Why is it so important?