PROLOGUE
There are very few reasons for a meeting between two cloaked gures in the
dead of night.
Unsurprisingly, the list is as short as it is unseemly.
For some, it is love. For most, it is lust.
Lust for money. Lust for purpose. Lust for revenge.
But in some cases, it is love that rst spurs these lusts. Or rather, the loss of it.
Though these odd contradictories are rare, they are consistently tragic.
A man leans against the wall, his stoic expression swallowed beneath the gaping
hood.
It’s been several minutes now, though the sudden wave of impatience seems
to sneak up on him. Every wary glance begins to weigh heavily atop his cloaked
shoulders. Because buried deep beneath that hood is a mind that screams at him
to go through with this, persistently drowning out a much gentler, coaxing voice
that tells him to walk away, a voice that makes him ache. Still, he leans heavier
against the wall, as if to anchor himself to this moment, this decision, before
inevitably sinking with the consequences of it.
Moonlight slips between the slivers of crumbling stone surrounding the
alleyway. It makes him uneasy for some unexplainable reason, as though the pale
ngers are clawing their way toward him.
Yes, he much prefers the sun to its eerie opposite.
The cloaked gure straightens suddenly at the sight of a shadow slinking
closer. It stops before him, morphing into something far more tangible, mortal.
They stand, assumably, eye to eye, though their hoods shroud any hint of an
identifying feature.
“Do you know what you have to do?”
This second shadowy gure speaks like gold, rich and soft. He has the
practiced ability to spin words into something far prettier than the meaning
