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PROLOGUE
The stone sky god Skallagrim always thought he’d have more time. An affliction of immortals. Or perhaps just an affliction of a certain sort of male. The penchant to look fate in its relentless eyes, scoff, and simply tell the inevitable that it will have to come collect its due another day.
But even a god ca
I always thought I’d have more time. That was what Skalla said to himself when he felt his mind begin to blacken at the edges. They were the last words left in his skull before language began to dissipate like fog around him, inside him, until there were no words left but the broken echoes of what had once made sense.
I always thought I’d have more time.
Time to find her. The one mortal creature in the whole shuddering scope of the universe who could have saved him.
And saved everyone else.
When Skallagrim felt his mind start unspooling, when the mate madness first took hold, he went to the one immortal he could fully trust. The one stone sky god who knew him deeply, who loved him, and was, he believed, strong enough to subdue him. He went to Sio
But Wylfrael was no match for Skalla in his rampage. Skalla’s berserker blood, inherited from his Bohnebregg mother, was an accelerant to the flame of mate madness. He became something formidable and terrible and not at all himself.
Wylfrael was defeated twice, evaded endlessly, until there was nothing and no one left to halt Skalla’s cosmic riptide of rage.
No one...
No one except the one small, singular, mortal creature he should have been searching for all along.
His fated bride.
His salvation...
Or his undoing.