Where did they all go, and so quickly? He struggled up the cliff to the top and stopped, hearing no sound but the rustle of wind-washed bracken, seeing nothing across a wide stretch of twilit moors.

They were gone, and it was more than strange, as if he’d been spirited to this place by magic.

Isaac was alone with only his memories and his hopes. But here he would find his parents, who had believed he could make it to Scotland. He would search for this strange symbol as his mother had told him he must.

Isaac stood on a spit of windswept barren land until the night was fully dark as the stars flitted through stringers of clouds. He gulped the unfamiliar damp, peaty air of Scotland. His cheeks began to sting, the wind bringing tears to his eyes. In the distance he thought he could see a pinprick of light.

He made for that light.

CHAPTER 5

Moloch

Thin places. Moloch knows much about thin places.

As a Seelie fae who’s been banished to the grim corner of the fae world, he pays careful attention to the thin places that are the veil between the worlds, fae and human. As a fae whose heart is filled with desire, Moloch waits for human cruelty and selfishness to tear the fragile fabric of the ancient boundaries. Yet another hate-filled human war has made the boundaries, those thin places, very, very easy to cross.

Moloch stands at the top of the high tower of his isolated corner of the Realm of Faerie, twisting the object he holds in his clawlike fingers as he waits for a sluagh hunter to return with news. The object in his hand is a small cracked mirror.

Of course it’s cracked. Everything Moloch has is damaged.

He stares into the mirror and wills it to open a window to the past, an act he does often in an effort to feel better.

He sees again the time when fae and humans shared space and magic. He sees himself as he was—beautiful, powerful, included in the Seelie world. Moloch’s mouth twists and he clutches the edge of the mirror.

The vision changes and the ancient war between fae and humans (the war that separated the realms) rages. He sees how he stands by as humans steal the magic and lock it away. (All right, he helped them, and yes, it was a mistake, but he did it to show off his cleverness, and wouldn’t anyone?) He sees how his face is sliced by a human when he tries to betray them, too.

He sees again how the Seelie fae condemn him as punishment to this dark corner of the Realm of Faerie, where he has lived in exile for miserable centuries with the sluagh host, the Unseelie fae.