He’s trapped in a place where no one leaves alive.
She’s come to find him, no matter the cost.
When Pytr and Liv’s paths collide inside the Towers of Silver City, they have one night to escape—or lose each other forever.
A steamy second-chance romance about promises kept, magic wielded, and a love worth dying for.
Chapter One ~ She’s My Wife
Pytr
“Stop,” the man hisses under his breath. “Please. You can help me.”
I try to pull away, but the man sticks to my side like a burr on my cloak. I glance up, watching my three friends as they continue to waltz their way down the street while twilight swells around them, totally oblivious to the strange man who’s now matching my pace as I thread through the crowd.
Gods, this always happens to me. I must have a target painted on my back. One that reads: Farmer.
No, make that: Idiot Farmer.
“I can’t help you,” I growl, crossing my arms over my chest for emphasis.
I’ve never been small, not even as a boy, and at times like this, I’m grateful for my size. Even though it means nothing ever fits quite right, not even the fancy clothes I’m wearing tonight to blend in.
That must be why this man stopped me. The clothes. I probably look like I piss gold coins. I stare at the receding backs of my three friends, willing one of them to turn around. Even if it’s just to laugh at the way the idiot from the country got stopped by some beggar on the street.
They don’t, of course. And the man pulls even closer.
“You’re from there,” he says, his voice so low it’s almost a whisper. “The Towers.”
I stumble, then stop completely. For the first time, I turn to look at the man.
He doesn’t exactly look like a beggar. His clothes are a bit wrinkled, like he’s been sleeping in them, but they aren’t in tatters.
Actually, from the look of his eyes, I don’t think he’s been sleeping.
I open my mouth, then stop. The ones chosen for training at the Towers are not granted the privilege to leave. This isn’t the first time my friends have snuck me out, but still, coming from the Towers is not something I want to admit in the middle of Silver City’s busy streets.
The man glances to the side, like he’s afraid we’re about to be attacked. When he turns back to me, there’s a wild desperation in his eyes. Some part of me worries that the crazy bastard is about to pull a knife on me.
Gods, my friends would laugh then. Pytr the farmer, mugged in the middle of the street, before it was even dark.
“It’s been over a week,” the man whispers. “Ten days. It’s been—” He stops, runs his hand over his face, and turns back to me. “We went on a tour. The full moon tour, you know?”
I nod. I feel like I’m sinking into something cold and thick. I know what full moon tours are. And I know why the Towers puts them on. To raise money, they say, and to spread the word about their noble mission of capturing magic for humanity.
But that’s not the real reason the Towers open their gates to a flood of humanity once a month.
No, the Exemplars of the Towers use those tours for recruitment. And sometimes the people they take even come willingly.
“I don’t—” the man stammers, then shakes his head. “That’s the last thing I remember, walking through the gates. And she— she smiled, I think. Laughed.” He shakes his head, then waves his hand at an alleyway. “I woke up down there, pushed against a wall.”
Poor bastard. They must have come on the tour alone, or admitted they were travelers just visiting Silver City with no one here to miss them. I bet one of the Exemplars used sleep magic on him.
The man looks like he’s about to break down, right here, in the middle of the street. Nervously, I glance over my shoulder. My friends are gone, of course.
“Well, that’s awful,” I say, as nicely as I can. “Now, I really have to be going.”
He lunges forward, grabbing my shirt in his fists.
“Please,” he says. It sounds like a sob. “You have to help me. She’s— She’s my wife.”
I stop. I know better, damn it. Every part of me knows better. But that word cuts deeper than any knife.
Because I have a wife.
I bend down, until I’m so close I can smell him. Yeah, he’s definitely been sleeping in those clothes for a while.
“Who is she?” I ask. “What does she look like?”
“Kyla,” he replies. “She’s blonde. Short, curvy. Her nose is slanted, it— it broke when we were kids—”
And he breaks down. His next words struggle through sobs, and I manage to catch about half of them. Blue eyes. From Annondale. Came here as a wedding present, I think?
I start walking again, half dragging the man with me so we don’t cause any more of a damn scene. The few vendors still at their stalls this late are starting to stare at me, and hells, if this stranger knows I come from the Towers, they probably do too.
That’s another thing I hate about Silver City. Of course everyone knew everything about everyone else in my tiny little village. But in the big city?
Well, hells. It turns out everyone knows everything about everyone else here too.
I sigh, then turn back to the man. I want to say something, make some promise, but I know better. Sure, I’m one of the Elites. I get to wear black and get private lessons with the masochists with their silver chains of magic. But I know better than anyone how very little that means.
And I don’t make promises I can’t keep.
Her face flickers in my memory, dark eyes and soft lips in the candlelight. She’d been staring at the window, watching the stars trace their silent paths across the ocean of the night, as tears rolled down her cheeks. I held her so tightly I half worried I’d leave bruises.
“Come back to me,” she whispered. “By all the gods, Pytr Gardnir, you had better come back to me.”
I shake my head. We’re almost to the street with the gaudy, pretentious tavern my friends love for some reason. I’m sure they’re already inside, no doubt placing their first orders and wondering if I somehow managed to get lost walking in a straight line.
I stop, then glance at the man at my side. He’s pulled himself together, a little at least, but he still looks vaguely deranged. I want to tell him to go home, get some rest.
But is that what I would do if the Towers had my wife?
“I—” I begin, then stop to clear my throat. “I’ll see what I can do,” I say.
And then I practically run into the tavern before the poor bastard can say anything else.
Chapter Two ~ A Man Who Leaves His Wife
Liv
“Are you sure you want to do this?” my mother asks.
I cross my arms over my chest and try not to glare at her. Yes, godsdamn it, how much more certain could I possibly be? I’ve already sold everything I own, down to the pretty white dress I wore on our wedding day. Seems like it’s a little late to back out now.
My mother shakes her head and waves her hand in the air, almost like she’s trying to blow out a candle. Or push what she just said out through the window.
“It’s just—” she begins. “If you’re doing this, you need to be certain—”
“That he wants to see me,” I finish. “Mom, I know.”
She huffs an irritated sigh, then turns to the window. The last light of the setting sun makes the clouds look like spun gold. The last of the light catches on her silver hair. I open my mouth to tell her to stop worrying, that the man I married is nothing like my father, who left on a river barge right after my little sister was born and never came back.
But I stop myself. I’m leaving as soon as our neighbor shows up with his cart, and I don’t want to spend what could be my last night at home fighting with my mother. The gods know we’ve spent enough time fighting already.
I turn to my bag, which I’ve already packed, unpacked, and repacked a dozen times. It’s all I have left in the world, and hells, it doesn’t look like much. A change of clothes. A warm cloak. And coins sewn into the padding, where hopefully no one would think to look for them.
My chest pulls tight as I look at that sad little bag. The years of saving to buy a place of our own. Pytr working in the fields for anyone who would take him, leaving before the sun rose, coming home by the light of the moon. Moaning in his sleep as his muscles protested.
I shake my head. It’s no good to think about that now. The past is an empty field, buried under snow. All I can do now is keep moving forward.
A man’s voice calls from outside, and my mother comes to her feet. She acts like she’s not crying as I pull the door open, pick up my bag, and turn around to give her a hug.
“You can always come home,” she whispers as I embrace her. “You know that.”
My eyes sting as I pull away. I pat her on the shoulder.
“I will,” I tell her. “We’ll both come home.”
She nods, but I can tell from the tight set to her lips that she doesn’t believe a word of it. No one ever comes back here. Not when they leave for Silver City.
“You coming, girl?” our neighbor, Old Rae, calls from the road.
I leave the door to my mother’s cabin open behind me and turn to face the road. The sky is a brilliant dark blue, and the first of the stars are winking from that deep velvet. I’d like to think it’s an auspicious night for journeys, for new beginnings. And why not? Who’s going to disagree with me?
I’m grinning as I pull myself up next to Rae and hand him the coin I promised for the journey. His cart is filled with pigs, squealing and snorting behind us. He clucks under his breath, and the cart lurches forward as the horse turns his head toward the Ever-Reaching River. We’ll travel through the night and arrive at the port of Deep’s Crossing by first light, in time to catch the barges. Or at least that’s the plan.
For the first few hours of the journey, as the cart sways and jolts and the pigs cry out in protest, Rae snorts, coughs, and spits over the side. He doesn’t actually speak to me until I pull out the biscuits I saved and offer him one. He takes it, chewing slowly.
“So,” he finally says. “You’re off to find your husband, then?”
I nod. “He said he’d be back in a year.”
And it’s been almost two since he left. I don’t bother to add that, because I’m sure Old Rae is well connected to the gossip machine that hums below every small town along this road. And everyone, even as far away as Deep’s Crossing, knows that Pytr left me.
“Sometimes,” he continues, “a man that leaves his wife doesn’t want to be found.”
I snort and cross my arms over my chest. It’s not like that with Pytr, but the gods know I’m not about to have that conversation with Old Rae. I don’t want to risk getting thrown out of the pig cart and having to walk all the way to Deep’s Crossing.
The cart rolls on. An owl calls from somewhere nearby, and wind rustles the leaves above us. I pull my cloak tighter around my shoulders.
“Shame about your husband,” Rae says suddenly. “Now, just saying, if you’d chosen my grandson instead—”
Rae’s grandson has flipped the skirts of every girl from here to Deep’s Crossing. When he got me alone behind the barn during the harvest festival, I punched him in the gut. He doubled over, wheezing, and then called me names that would make a stone god blush.
“Maybe I should have,” I reply, through gritted teeth.
Meredith Hart 