Prince of the Undying: A Dark Fantasy Romance (Undying Desires Book 1), page 1
Prince of the Undying
UNDYING DESIRES
BOOK ONE
KAREN KINCY
Prince of the Undying – copyright © 2024 – Karen Kincy
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or any other form), business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Editor: Laura Apgar
Book cover artwork: Saint Jupiter Graphic
Created with Vellum
1
Icursed under my breath when I found him, because I was almost too late.
A man knelt in the bloodstained snow, his head bowed, his face hidden by his long black hair. His ragged breaths fogged the air. He clutched his arm with pale fingers, though that did little to slow the crimson soaking his clothes.
He had to be the necromancer.
I had hunted him down at last. In this snow-blanketed forest, there was no one else but the dead.
He looked too elegant for the battlefield, with its mud and broken bodies. With shaking hands, he unbuttoned his black coat of wool and wolverine fur, which was much too fine for a soldier or rebel. It belonged in a wealthy gentleman’s wardrobe. He tossed aside the coat and gripped his arm tighter. Red trickled between his knuckles.
When snow crunched under my boots, every muscle in his body tensed.
He staggered to his feet. “I’m unarmed.”
He had a honey-gravel voice that made his words both smooth and rough, and he spoke German without any trace of an accent.
Where was he from?
“Don’t move,” I commanded, also in German.
His hair still obscured his expression. My fingers tightened around the hilt of Chun Yi, my sword. Its familiar sharkskin was a comfort.
When the wind blew his hair from his face, I forgot everything but him.
Starkly handsome, he had cheekbones so sharp you could cut yourself on them. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw. His lips curved into a smirk, as if he knew exactly why I was staring at him. His stunning eyes glinted a pale, absinthe green.
Looking into his eyes was a mistake.
They were haunted—the eyes of a man who had seen too much, done too much. The emotions in his gaze ran so deep that it was impossible not to drown in them. Worse, he stared at me with what could only be longing.
Tension thickened the air between us. My heartbeat was hammering in my throat.
He kept smirking. “How are you going to kill me?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” I lied. Lying seemed safest.
“I would prefer your dagger. It looks sharp.”
“Sword.”
“Ah. My apologies.”
I narrowed my eyes. How glib he sounded, like we were in a fencing match, and he had merely lost. But this wasn’t a game.
“I know what you are,” I said. “Necromancer.”
He arched his eyebrows, though he didn’t deny it. “Do you know who I am?”
“No,” I admitted.
“My name is Wendel.”
No longer nameless, he was more than just the necromancer now. I glanced into his eyes before forcing myself to look away.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said, to disguise my unease. “I will make sure it goes on your grave.”
He laughed, despite himself. “You won’t have to wait long.”
“You’re bleeding out.”
“Very observant.” Pain sharpened his voice. His gaze wandered away to the forest. “I might die before you kill me. God, I’m disappointed in myself. What a commonplace death.”
I have to save him.
My fingers tightened so hard around Chun Yi that the sharkskin imprinted my skin. To save him, I would have to touch him.
Necromancers were abominations. He could revive the dead and puppet them as his minions. His magic violated death itself.
“May I sit?” Wendel swayed on his feet. “I don’t think I can…”
He fell to his knees swiftly, like a glacier cracking. A moment later, he collapsed on his side. His fingers splayed, he reached out and grabbed a fistful of snow as if to claw himself upright. A war dog’s stiff corpse lay nearby. Its blood melted the snow where Wendel had fallen. His gentleman’s clothing was altogether ruined now.
I sheathed my sword, my muscles shaking with fatigue. “Wendel.”
He reached out again, groping blindly, and his hand closed on the war dog’s paw. When he shuddered, the dog kicked its legs.
Fear jolted into my veins. I drew Chun Yi and stepped into a defensive stance. The dog climbed to its feet and growled at me despite its ruined, gaping throat. Its fangs glinted in the daylight. No breath clouded the winter air.
I braced myself as the dog charged. Paws pounding the snow, the dog veered for my left arm, jaws wide. I dodged right. The dog remembered its training and spun, nimble for such a huge mastiff—for such a dead mastiff.
I retreated, blocking the dog with my sword. The dog leapt high, aiming for my throat, and I brought Chun Yi up to meet him. With gritted teeth, I sliced through the reanimated corpse’s neck and beheaded it cleanly.
The animal crashed to the snow. Dead again.
I wiped the blood from my blade and pretended my hands weren’t trembling.
Wendel huddled sideways on the ground, his teeth chattering, clearly weaker for having used his necromancy. A widening bloom of blood stained the snow. There was something remarkably like fear in his eyes, but he smiled.
“Well,” he said, “it was worth a try.”
His eyes flickered shut before he collapsed. I edged closer to him and nudged him with the flat of my blade.
Nothing.
A shiver rippled down my spine and pooled low in my belly. Fear mingled with a dark desire to find out what he felt like.
I crouched beside him and searched for a pulse in his neck. His faint heartbeat raced under my fingertips. His skin was warm and soft enough, like any other person’s. Not like a necromancer’s. He was still handsome, even unconscious, and even covered in filth and blood. I shuddered and wiped my hand on the snow.
The burning cold almost erased the feeling of having touched an abomination.
2
Ididn’t want him to die.
Snowflakes drifted from the sky. They melted slowly on his cold skin.
Quickly, I slung my pack onto the ground and took out my healing supplies. He was bleeding too much from his arm. A blade must have nicked an artery, which would be fatal if I didn’t help him. I knotted a tourniquet to slow the blood loss, then cut off the sleeve of his ruined shirt. He had been stabbed just above his elbow.
Wendel jolted awake.
He grabbed my wrist hard enough to hurt. His necromancy skittered like icy fire over my skin. I gasped at the shock of magic. His eyes betrayed his own surprise, as if he couldn’t believe he was touching me.
When he spoke, his voice sounded more gravel than honey. “Why didn’t you kill me?”
His words hit like a punch in the gut and took my breath away.
“Because I need you.” I gritted out the words.
He stared at me with such quiet desperation that I couldn’t tell him the truth. He clung to my wrist like he was drowning, and I was his only hope.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Let me help you,” I said.
When his eyes closed, his fingers loosened from my wrist. His hand fell back down to the snow before it curled into a fist.
“Don’t take me back to them,” he said.
“Who?”
He didn’t open his eyes. “The Order of the Asphodel.”
“Never heard of them.” It was the truth.
Some of the tension eased from his body. “God, it’s cold.”
“You lost a lot of blood.” I wrapped a bandage around his wound. “Can you walk without passing out again?”
“Perhaps.”
I helped him stand. Deathly pale, he leaned on my shoulder while we walked.
I had borrowed a horse, a dappled gray mare who waited between the pine trees. Wendel reached out to the mare, letting her sniff him. The horse didn’t shy away from him despite his bloodstained hand or his necromancy.
“Do you know how to ride?” I asked.
“Of course,” he replied with a hint of arrogance.
He had to be rich. Or at least he came from a prestigious family.
I helped him climb into the saddle. Though his jaw tightened with pain, he didn’t protest. I took the reins and led the mare through the forest.
We walked in silence, broken only by the crunch of footsteps in the snow.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked, so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.
I glanced at him, worried he might pass out again. “You need a surgeon. There’s an army camp not far from here.”
“Which army?”
“The Empire of Austria-Hungary.”
“You work for them?”
“Yes, for the Archmages of Vienna.” On the lapel of my jacket, I straightened a golden flower pin—an edelweiss, the mountain blossom of the Alps. “They sent me to find a man who could raise the
“That’s why you need me.” Bitterness tainted his voice, impossible to miss. “I wondered why you swooped down like a guardian angel.”
My stomach clenched with guilt. “I’m a mercenary, not an angel.”
“Tell me your name.”
“Ardis.”
“I won’t forget it.”
A thrill skittered down my spine when I turned my back on him—like I was turning my back on danger.
By the time we arrived at a tiny village, the snow fell as thickly as goose feathers. Soldiers for Austria-Hungary had pitched camp on the outskirts of the village. Smoke unfurled from scattered campfires between tents.
Wendel slumped in the saddle. With his head bowed, his long hair obscured his face.
“Wendel?” I asked.
He slid from the horse and crumpled on the ground. I rushed over to him, my heartbeat hammering, and checked his pulse.
Barely there. His skin felt like ice.
“Fuck,” I whispered, before shouting, “I need a medic!”
I waited outside the field hospital tent.
The medics wouldn’t let me inside. They had important work to do, they said, in a tone that invited no argument. I paced around the camp, polished my sword, and paced some more, feeling utterly useless. I’m better at killing people than healing them.
What would happen if Wendel died?
A knot tightened in my gut. I had heard terrible rumors. You didn’t want to kill a necromancer. If you killed him, he would come back ten times stronger. If you killed him, he would lose the last traces of his humanity and become a monster that mercilessly hunted you down in revenge.
Was that true? I was afraid to ask the medics.
Finally, a medic emerged from the tent and beckoned me. “He’s awake.”
Relief rushed over me. I hadn’t failed my mission.
And I was glad he was alive.
Inside the tent, faint light filtered through the canvas walls, supplemented by kerosene lamps. It stank of sickness and disinfectant. The wounded lay on makeshift cots, wrapped in bloody bandages, many of them lost in a morphine haze that dulled their pain. A patient near me shrank back, whispering a fearful prayer, and I knew he must be a rebel. As if I would murder him in a place of healing.
I found Wendel in bed.
He rested against a pillow like a prince lounging on a throne. Even more distracting, he was shirtless. He had a lean, hard body as pale as a marble statue. Scars marked his skin, a crisscrossing tally of all the fights he had survived before. How many times had he been hurt?
Wendel caught me staring and arched his eyebrows. Heat scorched my ears.
The medic glanced at a clipboard. “He’s stable for now. The field surgeon repaired the lacerated artery in his arm.”
Wendel waved at the bandage. “Am I done?”
“You need another blood transfusion,” said the medic. “Without that tourniquet, you would have bled to death in minutes.”
“I can’t stay.”
I crossed my arms. “You passed out. Twice.”
The medic nodded. “He needs plenty of fluids and rest. Morphine for the pain.”
Wendel said nothing, staring at me until the medic left. “I can’t stay,” he repeated. “If I stay, they will find me.”
“Who? The Order of the Asphodel?”
His eyes burned with intensity. “Yes.”
When he looked at me like that, shivers rushed over my skin, an echo of his necromancy on my body.
Holding my breath, I let it out in a rush. “We leave for Vienna soon.”
“Soon?”
“Whenever you are well enough to travel.”
He swung his legs over the bed. Thank God he was wearing trousers and wasn’t naked. “We need to go back.”
“Back to the battlefield?”
“I lost something very valuable there.” Barefoot, he stood. “Excuse me.”
I blocked his way. “No.”
Taller than me by several inches, he stared down at me. His close proximity took all the air out of my lungs. I put my hand flat on his chest to stop him from leaving.
Touching him was a bad idea.
He kept his magic restrained; there wasn’t even a tingle of necromancy. But I was still riveted by the feeling of his skin against mine. His heartbeat thumped under the palm of my hand and betrayed his true reaction to this intimacy.
Fuck, intimacy? That was dangerous.
“You can’t stop me,” he said.
His words sounded like both a threat and a statement of fact. He seemed, at best, mildly amused by my attempt to stop him from leaving.
How arrogant of him.
I kept my hand on his chest and pretended touching him didn’t matter. “I didn’t hunt you down just to let you go.”
“You don’t even know who I am.”
“I’m beginning to find out.”
The hard muscles in his chest flexed as he bent closer to my ear. “What do you want from me?” he murmured.
3
His dark voice sounded like a sinful temptation. I clenched my thighs against desire that pounded with every heartbeat. My body had never reacted like this before, though I was hardly an innocent virgin.
I needed to stay in control of the situation.
“I want you to cooperate,” I said. “Come with me without fighting, and I will bring you to the Archmages of Vienna.”
“Yes, ma’am.” But he was smirking. “After we return to the battlefield.”
“Not like this.” I backed away from him, putting a safe distance between us. “Put some clothes on first.”
“Of course. Whatever you say.”
He sounded flippant, his eyes glinting, as if he enjoyed teasing me. I glared at him, but he wasn’t looking at me now.
You don’t even know who I am.
Who the hell was he? He had almost bled out on the battlefield, but he thought he could defeat me in combat. And he wanted to escape the Order of the Asphodel so badly he was willing to once again risk bleeding out.
Wendel dressed in a borrowed shirt and black long coat. He seemed steady enough on his feet, no longer in imminent danger of collapse. I watched him closely so he wouldn’t escape, never mind how damn intriguing he was.
I returned to my gray mare, while he chose a raven black one with a wild mane.
We rode together through the snow.
“Tell me more about the Order of the Asphodel,” I said.
His expression froze, as hard and brittle as ice. “How little do you know?”
“Next to nothing.” I squared my shoulders. “Enlighten me.”
“They come from Constantinople, though they claim to be older than the Ottoman Empire itself, and will likely outlast it at this rate.”
“Constantinople? I’ve never been.”
“I spent many years there.” He met my gaze again, his eyes glinting.
“Why are you running from the Order?”
“Because I refuse to go back. Why do you fight for the Archmages of Vienna?”
“Money.”
He laughed. “My compliments on the Hex. It really keeps these rebels in line.”
The Hex had been cast by the Archmages of Vienna to negate gunpowder and stop a war. Fighting back, the rebellion against the empire had switched overnight to medieval weaponry and magic. We all had.
Wendel smirked as he kept talking. “Though the Transylvanians have a knack with scythes, pitchforks, and butcher’s knives.”
I winced. “A butcher’s knife got you?”
“Yes,” he said airily.
“God.” My wince deepened.
“The Hex almost makes me miss guns. I was a good shot, you know.”
“Why are you in Transylvania?” I asked. “You’re a long way from home.”
Wendel’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Constantinople isn’t home. And the last time I checked, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary were allies. Which means, conveniently, we’re allies.”
“Good. I won’t have to drag you to Vienna.”
He arched his eyebrows. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Just doing my job,” I deadpanned.
A bitter wind stung my skin and flung my hair into my eyes. I braided it over my shoulder without even looking.
“How far have you strayed from home?” he asked.
I sighed. “You think I look exotic, and you want to know where I’m really from.”
