Page 1 of First Light

PROLOGUE

She dreamed of flying when she slept. The cold wind cut through the leather armor that shielded her body, creeping down her neck like icy water over rocks. She soared over mountains draped in fog where the dark tips of pine trees jabbed the shadowed sky.

There was no moon. No stars. The only light that touched her face came from the glow of fire coming from the belly of the beast that carried her.

She dreamed of flying, cradled in a smooth, curved claw that wrapped around her body and held her in its grip.

Nêrys.

When she closed her eyes, she heard the thundering voice in her mind and the fire burned her eyelids like a fever dream.

Itwasa fever dream.

“Take this.” A potion touched her lips. “Take it. It will heal…”

The words died away in a rush of pain that twisted her belly and speared into her chest, wrapping iron fingers around her heart as it raced, raced, raced to escape the thread of fire.

She heard it thundering in her ears.

His voice.

Her heart.

She felt the cold licking down her throat.

Then everything went silent, and her heartbeat stopped.

CHAPTER ONE

Carys Morgan felt like she was going to shave off the left side of her car. “This was such a bad idea.”

“Going to Scotland to look for your missing boyfriend?” Kiersten asked over the speakerphone. “Or deciding to drive?”

“The driving part!” A dark hedgerow seemed to rise up in front of her. Carys jammed on the brakes, and the car came to a stop.

A thin man emerged from the hedgerow, cocked his head at her, and pulled his cap down lower over his face. Then he loped across the field, stepping over a low stone wall that bordered a green pasture before he disappeared into a copse of leafless hawthorn trees dotted with bright red berries.

She blinked and the thin man was gone.

What was she doing? She slowly guided her car back into the lane. This was the worst idea in her twenty-nine years of life on this planet. This was such a bad idea.

And she couldn’t stop now.

“I don’t think we should be talking to her while she’s trying to navigate the wrong side of the road.” Her best friend Laura was also on the call. “Mostly I’m feeling guilty that neither of us went with you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The road after the curve widened, and Carys’s heartbeat slowed to a nonfatal rate. “Both of you have lives and jobs and aren’t insane. I am a mentally unbalanced mythology professor whose boyfriend disappeared.”

“You’re not mentally unbalanced. And you’ve been a lot better in the past few months.”

Ever since she’d met Lachlan, which was why she had to figure out what the hell was going on. She’d taken a leave of absence from work when her depression dragged her down, but she was slowly crawling back from it. And then…

And then.

“I’m doing the right thing, right?”

“Yes.” Both her friends spoke at once.

“We know Lachlan,” Laura said. “Something very weird is going on. He would not just leave you without a word. He didn’t call. Didn’t text.”

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