Splinter

"You saved me," the witch whispered, clasping her quivering hands on the man's cool cheeks. "I can't let you die here."

"If you want to help me, run," the stranger muttered, resting his forehead on hers. "Hide somewhere, survive. That's all I want."

The woman's lips, wet with tears, swept over his wounded, blood-stained mouth. A simple touch, not a real lover's kiss, and yet was enough to make the brunette sob again, caressing his face in her hands.

"I don't know who you are or what role you play in my life, and I don't know when I'll be able to remember it all, but if you survive, I'll find you," the witch promised, again, like a butterfly's touch running her lips over his for the last time. "I promise."
*
There are curses that not even love can break. There are world-changing choices.

Arachne, a young witch of the Ravenfeather clan, learns the truth about her origins after years of living a lie. Raised by witches incapable of warmth, and convinced from an early age that she was abandoned to die in the snow, she vows to herself and the gods that she will take revenge on anyone responsible for the murder of her parents. But how can she do that when the magic she wields is ravaging her body and slowly bringing her closer to imminent death?

In an attempt to gain power, Arachne takes the desperate step of kidnapping one of her former sisters, holding her captive in an abandoned, deemed haunted, cabin. Unfortunately for her, an assassin in the service of Ravenfeather, Fennic, a man who inspires fear in even the strongest of the clan, sets out to find missing witch. Bound to the witches by blood magic, forced to obey all orders, the Assassin of Kings begins to snoop around, not knowing that what he finds will soon lead him to the green-eyed lover who captured his heart years ago.