The Emperor's Betrothed Consort

Eleven

I had always imagined that a blood mage would be a filthy, hooded man who lived in a house made of bones. The stories we told around the campfire of blood mages were of the horror of their work.

My mother only said that the Imperium also told stories about us from the Northern Kingdom, how we slept in the snow and were so large because we mated with the animals we hunted.

But when the last of the blood mages was killed, it was simply one more crime committed by the Imperium for the sake of magical purity and a united continent. Now, I wished I had asked my mother more, asked her if she had ever met a blood mage.