Page 1 of Witch Queen

PROLOGUE

Memories cameto Rose Blake in bright, distorted flashes drenched in blood and the stench of Hell.

A red moon dominating an obsidian sky devoid of stars. A rooftop littered with the corpses of those she had tried to defend. The agonizing pain that tore through her chest when a demon ripped open her flesh and bones with his claws.

But it wasn’t the fiend who had mortally wounded her that captured her mind and soul in her infinite dance toward death. Instead, it was the woman she considered her best friend and sister who stole her breath and broke her heart.

The power Mae Jin had wielded that night as she tried desperately to save Rose had made the very air tremble and the city shake. And the anguish and despair painted across her beautiful face when she’d realized she had failed would forever be imprinted in Rose’s darkest recollections.

Her last living memory was of falling, her body numb and weightless, the devil who had brought the forces of the Underworld to the city and wreaked havoc upon their lives wrapping her in his suffocating black wings.

But death had not brought her peace.

Instead, it had turned her reality into a nightmare from which she feared she would never find salvation.

Most of the time, she floated in what felt like eternal darkness, deaf and blind, her consciousness barely there.

But there were moments when she was roused. When visions of what was happening in the world of the living played across her inner mind like a macabre show. In most of them, the devil who had killed her engaged Mae in some kind of violent battle that often left her bloodied and bruised.

It took Rose a while to realize what had happened to her mortal remains. But however much she howled and raged at the fiend who had possessed her physical form and performed the most unspeakable acts with the hands that had once healed the living, Rose knew no one could hear her.

Until someone did.

Rose…

Rose tore her wretched gaze from the fading sight of Barquiel fighting Mae once more. She looked around the endless void surrounding her, wondering if the voice she had just heard call her name was yet another figment of her imagination.

It came again, startling her.

Prepare yourself…Rose…

Rose tensed. She had not imagined it after all.

Is this one of Barquiel’s tricks?

She swallowed and fisted her hands. Considering she was somewhere between the land of the dead and the living, she didn’t have anything to lose if she responded to the voice.

Rose lifted her chin defiantly. “Who are you?”

I am…Ran…Soyun…

Rose startled. She knew that name from Barquiel’s memories. Ran Soyun was the first witch who ever walked the Earth and the wife of her killer’s mortal enemy, the demon Azazel. She was also the mother of Na Ri, Mae’s original incarnation.

“How—how come I can hear you?!”

We don’t have much time, Rose…

Rose flinched as Mae’s voice reached her, the fury it contained staining the darkness around her with a palpable aura of rage.

“CHAOS SEAL!”

A fracture appeared in the gloom. It was small and thin but so shockingly bright it dispelled the shadows around Rose, revealing a faint crimson haze.

Barquiel’s scream tore through the void.

The crack expanded a fraction. Rose froze.

Something pulsed beneath it. Something that echoed the beat of her once human heart.

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