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CHAPTER 1

Oliver Basco when his captors would decide to kill him and how they would do it Public execution?

Swift murder? Torture? Or perhaps they would simply feed him to the Battle Swine and let those filthy porcine warriors bite off his head and strip the flesh from his bones

In the two months andstone cell with its iron-grated s and heavy wooden door, he had cos a prisoner in the royal dungeon of Yucatazca could do to pass the ti, and work his body hard enough to hurt, just to remind him that he was alive In all his life, Oliver had never been so strong He could not escape the irony that despite all of his newly gained strength and discipline, he had also never been so powerless

A stained sleeping , he kept it rolled up in the center of the cell With that out of the way, he could walk the peri but the s he had to a toilet

He didn’t have space to run; no way to get up any momentum in a cell twenty feet by twelve The best he could do alk and so he did that, swiftly and consistently, for at least an hour when he rose and another hour after dark After dark, Oliver needed to keep his body occupied because his mind became busiest then, as well Back in the ordinary world, he had always believed that there truly were things lurking in the dark, but now he knew for certain In the world of the legendary, everything was possible

No, , like every other, he knew the day had begun by the lightening of the cell frouards out in the corridor The two sht and offered no view of anything but stone and shadow Beyond the outer wall of the dungeon was a slotted canyon built into the king’s palace by its architect He supposed he ought to have been grateful for that little bit of light that allowed hiht and day, but Oliver had no gratitude in his heart

Only ice

In the absence of Frost--whom he suspected was alive, despite all evidence to the contrary--he had become a kind of winter man himself

If not for the presence of his sister, Collette, and his fiancée, Julianna Whitney, in the cell across that stone corridor, he knew his heart would have become ice entirely What saved hilirated s in their parallel door Instead of sla callus, he ht have rammed his skull into the wall and been done with life

Instead, he lived

In between hiswalks, Oliver did sets of push-ups and sit-ups He’d built up the muscles in his arht as a druieon diet" He, Collette, and Julianna lived on pitiful meals of crusty bread, water, and a thin stew obviously made from whatever others in the palace had not cared to eat He tried not to think about the origins of his food and never left a drop in the bowl It would keep him alive

"Oliver"

He paused beneath one of the grated s and glanced at the door to his cell It seemed to him that the voice had come from the corridor, but he was keenly aware of the possibility that he’d iined it Claustrophobia had never been a problem for him, but it had crept into his head over the past two months, and soined shadowsvoices seemed a likely addition to the ain

He grinned, feeling like a fool The voice belonged to his sister

Silently, he crossed the cell and craned his neck to peer through the iron grate set high in the door Collette and Julianna were in the opposite cell Jules was tall enough that he could see the upper part of her face through the grate in their door, but Collette had to pull herself up to peer through, like a child trying to get a peek at the world of grown-ups Even worn and filthy and half-starved, he thought they were both beautiful His sister’s eyes had a uished by their incarceration And his fiancée’s gaze was unwavering

"Morning, Coll," he said Then he locked eyes with Julianna "Morning, sweetie"

It ought to have felt odd to use such an endearment under the circumstances But it didn’t He didn’t love her any less after the time they’d spent imprisoned here In a thousand ways, he loved herlives in the ordinary world as attorneys for the law firm their fathers had helped to found Oliver had always lived in the shadow of his father and the life the old man had wanted for him

As a boy, he’d wanted to be an actor, had believed in rown he’d slowly succumbed to his father’s efforts to stifle such dreaed it had been both the best and worst thing that had ever happened to him--the best because he loved her utterly, and the worst because their wedding would cement him forever into the role his father had laid out for hi If Julianna would be his wife, that alone would provide enough ht

But that was before the h hisin a blizzard of ice and snow, on the night before his wedding, and torn his life apart He’d traveled betorlds since then, end from dozens of cultures--some of them allies and some enemies--and he and Collette had discovered that they theendary in their blood Their father had been murdered and they had been hunted on both sides of the Veil that separated the fantastical froe-old peace between the Two Kingdoends had died Julianna had followed Oliver through the Veil and was now trapped here, in this world, unable to return

And now they were prisoners in the bowels of the king’s palace in Palenque, capital of Yucatazca, accused of regicide In truth, Oliver hadcirculamour that had caused him to believe the ineered all of his and Collette’s misery, and soMahacuhta--with the sword of Hunyadi, King of Euphrasia

No news had trickled in to thedoms must be in open war by now

Yet in spite of all of that, he stood at the door of his cell and looked across at the eyes of the woman he’d loved since childhood, and soet out of this

"Are you all right?" Julianna asked, brows knitted in concern

"Fine Why?"

"You were kind of "

Oliver leaned his forehead against the bars, s "Stir crazy We’ll take turns, okay? Rotate breakdowns, so at least one of us is sane at all times"

"That’s not funny, Oliver," Julianna said

He lifted his gaze to h to rip the doors away and tear down the walls that separated theht I’ to keep my mind active, stay ready"

Collette poked her head up beside Julianna again Through the bars in the sile It was an illusion Collette had survived as a prisoner in the castle of the Sandman Compared to that horror, this was like a resort hotel