Page 1 of Steel Heart Iron Claws

Chapter 1

Basten

Blackness roars inside my skull. Pain stabs behind my left eye like a hatchet to the brain, and I grip the sides of my head before the gods-damn bone splits apart. But there’s more than just pain, isn’t there? There’s something worse.

Darkness.

Nothing.

A fuckingvoid.

Remember her!a voice screams in the back of my mind.

But the memory of whatever—whoever—my mind is trying to cling to slips out of my grasp. I chase after it, stumbling through the midday woods, swiping my hands through empty air as though I can catch the fleeing memory like lightning bugs. But, of course, my hands come up empty.

Before I can drag in my next breath, the void roars again.

Wait…what was I even trying to remember?

A curse rumbles out of my chest and echoes among thetrees, sending a flock of crows into flight. Their frenzied wings make me flinch.

My damn armor is too tight. Something is wrong. I’m forgetting something important.I can’t fucking breathe…

In unsteady footsteps, I rip at the buckles of my breastplate as I lurch toward the sound of voices ahead through the trees. With my godkissed senses, I should be able to pick up on every word from hundreds of paces away, but now, everything is a blur. The voices blend with the sound of the clouds roiling overhead, of crows screeching, of my own raging pulse.

I stumble to the edge of a clearing filled with elegantly dressed lords and ladies who make their way toward a row of waiting carriages. Their backs are to me, so I have a moment to observe and try to figure out what is happening.

Why is my head so damn foggy?

The clearing’s tents are black—a foreboding color. A red-robed priest carries an elm staff and a gilded copy of the Book of the Immortals. A patch of freshly turned dirt sprinkled with rose petals reeks of earthy clay.

It’s a gods-damned funeral.

Lord Berolt’s funeral.

Thank fuck—it’s coming back to me now.

The blessing over his ashes. The notably dry eyes of attendees who loathed the man. Then, after the ceremony, Lady Eleonora pulling me into the tent with Rian to confess a long-held secret that upended both our lives in a second.

“Wolf?” Lady Suri notices me first. She’s the young widow of Lord Charlin Darrow, a loathsome minor lord from Bremcote who did her a favor by choking on his own blood. She cranes her neck to search behind me as though surprised I’m alone. “What…what are you doing back here?”

Her pretty brows pinch in concern.

I open my mouth, but there are no words. WhyamI back here?

The last thing I remember, I was leaving Lord Berolt’s funeral in a rush, determined to plunge deep into the woods, away from the crowd, with no intention of ever returning. For all I cared, everyone in this gathering could fuck off to Old Coros and leave me in peace.

But I wasn’t alone.There was a woman in the woods with me…

Lady Suri’s question draws the attention of the other attendees, who turn and stare at me in utter shock.

What the hell? Is there a wildcat clinging to my back?

Wildcat.

Something about the word triggers that void where a memory of someone is missing, and my chest feels tighter than ever, so tight that my lungs scream with the force of a thousand gales. No matter how much I pull at my breastplate’s buckle, it won’t loosen.

I can’t fucking breathe!

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