Prologue

Outside Jackson, Mississippi

HIS HEAD HURT.

It always hurt these days and had for a long time now, long enough that David couldn’t tell whether it was getting worse or whether he’d just been hurting for so long that it was starting to become unbearable.

As always on nights like these, nights when he was in pain and felt like he didn’t fit in his own skin, he thought about Harper. About Pine Grove and everything he’d left behind. It had been the right thing to do, he was sure of that. Staying in Pine Grove, making Harper give up so much of her life to protect him, it only would’ve hurt her in the long run. Not just physically—although God knew there was a risk of that—but everything. Her whole life, spent making sure he was safe? No, David couldn’t let her do that. So the easiest thing to do, seemed to him, was to take himself out of it altogether. Then, if someone came after him, Harper wouldn’t have to deal with it.

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Even Ryan and Bee, the two people who cared about Harper just as much as he did, had thought it was for the best. They helped him get away, and David had thought . . . well, he hadn’t really been sure. Getting away had been the main point, and he’d just figured he would work out exactly what to do next once he was gone.

That was before the headaches—and the visions—got worse.

Before he started having the sense that he was headed somewhere. Or being pulled in a direction. Every day he got behind the wheel of his car and drove, but he couldn’t say where he was going. Only that he knew to turn here or to take this exit.

It should’ve scared him, probably, but instead it just felt like a relief.

David sunk farther into the booth, trying to make himself eat another bite of his burger. That was the other thing: with his head pounding all the time, eating had gotten harder, and his clothes were fitting a little bit looser. He didn’t have any extra weight to lose, so he was probably looking gaunt, but since he avoided his reflection in the mirror these days, he couldn’t confirm how bad he must look.

“You, uh, you need something else?”

The only other person in this fast-food place was a cashier, and she’d come around from the counter a few minutes ago, sweeping up old fries and straw wrappers. She was about his age, seventeen or so, and had straight brown hair that fell to her collarbones. She didn’t look like Harper that much—God knew, Harper wouldn’t have been caught dead in the orange polyester uniform the girl was wearing—but her eyes were a similar shade of green, and seeing them made David’s chest ache in addition to his head. So he made himself smile at the girl even though he was pretty sure it must look like a grimace.

“I’m good,” he said, and for the first time realized how rusty his voice had gotten. He didn’t know whether that was from how little he’d spoken to anyone over the past weeks, or whether it was from all the screaming he was doing in his sleep. Either way, he sounded raspy and unfamiliar to his own ears, and from the way the girl backed up just a little bit, he knew it must sound awful to her, too.

Or maybe she was weirded out by the sunglasses.

It was bright inside the restaurant, sure, but not bright enough for the dark lenses covering David’s eyes. He wore them there all the time now. By the time he’d left Pine Grove, his eyes had become bright orbs of golden light, and in his experience, that tended to freak people out. The sunglasses didn’t completely disguise the light, of course, but they made it easier for people to think that they were just seeing something reflected off the lenses. People preferred to believe the least creepy explanation for a thing.

David had figured that out, too.

The girl went back to sweeping, and David went back to eating and trying to keep visions at bay.

Once, he’d needed help to see the future. Needed guidance and the magic of his Mage and his Paladin to see things clearly. Now he couldn’t seem to stop seeing things, and every day was a struggle to keep himself rooted in the present. And the worst part of it was, he had no idea what the visions even meant. Weird, fragmented images came to him—things on fire, blood on the front of a yellow dress—but sometimes, he got the sense the images were coming from another time and place. There was the dream he kept having of men on horseback, plus the one of men in robes in caves, the smell of incense heavy in the air.

There were times David wondered if he wasn’t having visions at all, but simply going insane. Given how violent and awful his visions had gotten, sometimes he thought insanity might be the better option.

“Um, we’re about to close?”

Glancing up, David saw the cashier standing near the counter, her fingers wrapped around the broom handle. Her hair was falling in her eyes, and she was shifting her weight from one foot to the other, the soles of her sneakers squeaking against the linoleum floor. This was another thing David had learned in the past two months. People were scared of him. It was probably more than the voice or the sunglasses: People could sense that there was something wrong with him, that he was something way past normal.

“Right,” he said, gathering up the remnants of his meal, squashing his fries in the paper that had wrapped around his burger. Sliding out of the booth, he grabbed his tray and walked over to the trash can, pretending not to notice the way the girl moved closer to the counter.

It had been stupid to come here. Not only had he wasted money he really didn’t have on food he barely ate, but now he’d freaked the girl out, and he hated that. David wished he could say it was because he didn’t like scaring people, but the truth was, he didn’t like being reminded of what he was. The more time he spent alone, the weirder he felt when he had to join the public.

It felt worse now than it had before. Back in Pine Grove, he might have been an Oracle, he might have had the glowing eyes and the occasional vision, but he’d had friends, too.

He’d had Harper.

Then there was the other part. The other truth. The reason he was spending so much time alone these days, no matter how many times he told himself that he couldn’t be sure what had happened those other nights . . . to those other girls.

Hands shaking, he tipped the remains of his dinner into the trash, already planning out what he would do when he got back to the motel that night. Put the few things he had back in his bag, see if there was any extra change around the vending machine, and get the heck out of—

Then the pain came on, fast and immediate, and so intense he felt like he might actually die from it, like you couldn’t hurt this much and not die.

Blood on a yellow dress, the taste of salt on his lips. More blood? Tears?

As if from a distance, David heard the clatter of the tray hitting the ground and gritted his teeth against the sudden fire inside his brain. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the girl moving closer. Even though he’d scared her, she was still coming to help him, concern overriding her fear.

People were better than you’d think they’d be. Another lesson from the road, and one that broke his heart now.

She was just at his elbow when the golden light shot out of his fingertips, sending her reeling back, her broom flying from her fingers to smack against the glass doors, her lips parting with both the shock of her fall and the jolt of power David had just sent her way.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was his and not his at the same time. “I didn’t mean to.”