Page 1 of Above Cursed Winds

Chapter One

They were all in danger.

All the children born less than a year ago, still toddling underneath their parents’ watchful eyes, they were all in mortal peril.

And it was all Zia’s fault.

She sprinted toward her sovereign’s studio, knowing she was too emotionally compromised to teleport successfully. The half-open door appeared at the end of the corridor, and she made a conscious effort to calm her breathing, but it made little difference.

Nero would’ve sensed her coming, his faultless emotional barometer reading her like a book. Despite the strength of her telepathic shields, no Raeth could resist his Reader abilities, and right now, she radiated despair.

Every security measure she’d painstakingly crafted to ensure the integrity of the list had been broken. She had no clue how it’d been compromised, and she couldn’t fathom the enormity of the shockwaves it would cause in the immortal community once the information would be put to use.

As second in command to Nero, it’d been her responsibility to manage the Peace Accords documentation and above all, to keep the information safe. Zia had taken pride in her work.

And she’d failed.

It would not go unpunished. Any punishment the Accords delegation would decide for her would be justified, and she would willingly bear it. No one else would take the fall for this, not even her sovereign.

Palm slapping against the door, Zia burst into Nero’s studio, where he hovered above his most recent work of art. She skidded to a stop just within the doorframe, her inky black hair, lightly colored in hues of a rainbow, billowed around her shoulders. She had known him since they’d both been toddlers, and one look from her was enough to set the stage.

“We’ve been hacked, sovereign!”

“What did they get?”

“The list. They stole the Accords list.”

Awareness dawned only moments later. “The addresses? They’ve all been compromised?” When she nodded warily, he cursed beneath his breath. “How?”

“I don’t know.” Admitting it was like swallowing shards of glass. “The only way to access it was getting through the wards on my office, then utilizing my fingerprint and password to get into a computer that’s not connected to the internet.”

Gulping a breath to steady her nerves, she straightened. “Nero, someone came here. Onto our lands. Into my office. Someone breached our territory and stole everything.”

“That should’ve been impossible!”

She hugged herself in dread. “Nonetheless, it happened. All of our allies, all of their homes, their children—everyone is in danger.”

Nero was just as horrified as she was.

His reaction served to strengthen hers: Zia would make this right. Though her considerable power paled in comparison to her sovereign’s, there was little she wouldn’t do to ensure the safety of the immortal community.

If she had to track down the culprit responsible and personally wash their minds of the information, her Psyche ability was more than up for the job. The Raeth gift dealt with the creation and alteration of memories, but her power went far deeper than that. In addition to being capable of removing, replacing, or creating new memories, she could impact the emotional association related to them.

She had walked the earth for twelve centuries, and no one, immortal or otherwise, could keep their memories safe from her.

Zia would fix this error, even if it was the last thing she ever did.

There was only one option now: “We have to warn everyone.”

Chapter Two

Stagnant air overpowered Jeremiah’s senses when his consciousness surfaced, the musty smell of his last-minute hotel room a combination of alcohol and regret. Groaning, he scrubbed a hand over his face before taking stock of his surroundings.

A startling variety of drained vodka bottles lingered in a half-circle around him, with beer bottles spilling their dregs towards the outer limit. A low-watt bulb hummed in whatever passed for a bathroom several yards away.

He was sprawled face down on the stained carpet, the shag now a mustard yellow that had long since given up on maintaining its original color.

Jeremiah jerked upright and instantly regretted it. The room spun, and he pressed a palm into the gritty carpeting to keep from face planting back into it.

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