The moment Ciridan stepped into the wind-blown field leading toward the fae girl’s family home, something twisted in his gut. Wrong. Everything felt wrong.
The air carried no familiar signs of his scouts—the quiet whispers of presence, the glint of armor in the trees, not even the comforting weight of their wards layered over the land. Instead, the wind howled with a voice of its own—feral, unrelenting—and beneath it, he smelled blood.
Elf blood.
The iron-sweet tang laced with old magic clung to the wind like a ghost's wail, tugging at his senses, knotting tension across his shoulders.
“Dare they spill elf blood,” he seethed, fingers tightening around the hilt of his sword.
Elf blood hadn't been shed in decades and the High Elves had specifically seen to it. The Shifters, though stron
