Prologue
A thousand years ago . . . or so
Evander was incensed. Vexed. Entirely exasperated.
“Are you telling me that you do not want me to address the situation that has developed on the surface?”
Deimos did not blink.
But then, Deimos never blinked. His was the coiled, dead-eyed, hypnotized gaze of a poisonous serpent.
Evander had known Deimos for a thousand years, and would know him for thousands more, but even with all his power to uncover secrets, he’d never exposed a single one of Deimos’.
Death held no secrets, and Deimos was the Guardian of Death.
“I do not wish you to address it,” he said.
“It is important. We do not allow humans to possess the powers the sorcerer is gathering.” Evander knew it was a risk to continue to argue. After all, Death brokered no arguments, either. But Deimos would occasionally be convinced to listen to reason.
Speaking of reason . . . why was Vanya not speaking up, either?
Evander had discussed the situation at length with him, before the meeting of the Conclave, and while Vanya was the Guardian of Belief, both knowledge and reason fell under his purview.
He knew how important this was. Evander had stressed it, both before he’d tumbled into bed with the other Guardian, and after as well.
“Why does this concern us?” Deimos asked. His voice was calm. Deadly calm. Evander had never heard him raise it once, but then, there was no place in death for anger.
“If we are Guardians, then we are the Guardians of the humans’ safety, and their sanity, and their continued existence,” Evander argued. “We are meant to protect them. It is our sacred charge. Our duty. What we were tasked with, why we were created. The sorcerer might not be causing problems today, but if they grow in power, as they intend, they will.”
Deimos held up a hand. The other eleven stayed silent.
They knew better than to interfere when Evander’s stubborn streak collided with Deimos’ intractability. Vanya, Evander realized, a chill sliding down his neck, must have foretold the impossibility of this conversation. He did sometimes.
He had not told Evander to leave it alone, either.
But would you have?
“I ask what concern it is of yours, Guardian,” Deimos said. “You are the Guardian of Secrets. You are not meant to defend the surface.” His gaze slid to Marcos, whose job it was to defend the surface.
Marcos blinked.
How could he not? He was so many things that were human: fear and courage and a blood-curdling, berserker rage. He was all instinct and no thought.
Evander had been dismissing him forever, and it seemed on this point, he and Deimos actually agreed.
Marcos was useless. Good in a battle, perhaps, but utterly hopeless here, in this chamber where the Conclave met, each word a move in the chess match that constructed fate.
“I would defend them, if others will not,” Evander said. “I know the sorcerer’s secrets. He craves power. So much power. Forever life, as we have been given. If he is able to obtain these things . . .” He trailed off, because the Guardians would all know what this could mean.
They would be threatened.
“Guardian Marcos, you are our Guardian of War,” Deimos asked, “have you been consulted by our brother on this apparently grave situation below?”
Marcos shook his head, his eyes flashing. He was clearly offended, and unable to hide it.
Evander was not surprised.
“Then you must not be so very concerned,” Deimos said dismissively to Evander. “There is no problem. It will resolve itself. No human has ever amassed enough power to threaten us. We are everlasting.”
The other eleven recited back with Deimos.
We are everlasting.
It was a habit, after a thousand years, to repeat the words back. They came easily.
“We are everlasting.”
Vanya had warned him, a hundred years before, the time slipping by so smoothly, like beads on a necklace, that Deimos was increasingly uninterested in what happened below them.
We will eventually fade from memory and concern, he’d said. We will become legend; we will be everlasting.
Evander hadn’t been convinced. After all, he knew countless secrets. So many still believed, would never be swayed from their beliefs. Vanya should have known that, too.
But while he hadn’t taken Vanya’s warnings seriously, he’d not entirely dismissed them either. He’d been preparing for a day when the Conclave retreated. When the Conclave no longer concerned themselves with petty human matters. The day had come much sooner than Evander had anticipated.
“But . . .” Evander began to argue again.
It was a risk.
It was always a risk to argue with Deimos.
“The decision is made,” Deimos said, his steely tone growing harsher.
This time the risk had not paid off.
“I do not ask for assistance, especially the Guardian of War’s assistance,” Evander said, “merely permission to deal with the situation myself.”
Deimos’ stare contained millennia of dread.
Even for one such as Evander, powerful and knowing, it humbled.
“Guardian of Secrets, your audience is finished,” Deimos said with finality.
“You are taking far too many chances.”
Evander was not surprised to see Vanya lounging on his bed when he entered his chambers. The oil lamps in the corner flickered with flame, and touched on Vanya’s bare chest, his olive-toned skin glowing in the light.
He was beautiful, but then they were all beautiful, even Deimos in an unnerving way.
“That was not taking too many chances,” Evander retorted as he crossed the room, examining the tray of meats and cheeses that had been left on his desk. Vanya had likely ordered it in. Their assignations were not regular, but happened often enough that nobody would have blinked at him asking for food to be sent to Evander’s rooms.
“You also insulted and angered Marcos,” Vanya pointed out silkily.
“That hothead?” Evander muttered.
“He is not stupid, no matter how much you wish him to be. And Deimos is certainly not stupid.”
“No, but he is wrong,” Evander said steadily.
“And yet you will do nothing about it.”
Vanya was rarely as forceful as Deimos. He had no need to be. Love bred belief more strongly than power ever did.
Evander popped a piece of meat into his mouth. “I have not yet decided,” he said.
“Come here,” Vanya said, patting the soft ivory coverlet next to him. “Come here, and we will forget all about this.”
“I cannot,” Evander said wryly. “You know that I can discover every secret and every lie and, more importantly, every single truth people hold close. The sorcerer will be a problem. He must be dealt with.”
Vanya looked irritated. “Then let Marcos deal with him. Or Hyperion. Maybe mauled by a wild animal, he will be less power-hungry and more bent on basic survival.”
“You would really give him over to Hyperion?”
“Oh, you know I am joking,” Vanya said, smiling now. The persuasive smile that won more belief than any orders in the universe. “I mean that we should forget about it tonight. Forget about it tonight, and tomorrow, and for the next thousand years, if you know what is good for you.”
“How could I?” Evander was good at hiding his own bitterness. But there was no reason to hide in front of Vanya.
He was his best friend. His lover. The only one on the Conclave that he felt like he could truly trust.
“Not this again,” Vanya said, and stretched out further, his nude body on full display. “Come, let me help you forget. About this sorcerer, and about this silly resentment you have for your Guardianship.”
“It’s not silly,” Evander said. “You would not know what it’s like to have everyone distrust you, because you are the opposite.”
“There are plenty of discordant beliefs,” Vanya reminded him.
“But secrets?”
“I am not trying to dissuade you from your feelings,” Vanya said. “I am merely pointing out that you can do nothing about them. You were the Guardian of Secrets from the moment you were created, and you will be the Guardian of Secrets for many, many years to come. Embrace it.”
He had. For a long time.
For what felt like an eternity, he’d put one foot in front of the other, gathering secrets, and for much of that time, he’d found at least some satisfaction in being the receptacle for things that people both desperately wanted and had no more use for. Nobody trusted him, not completely, because he always knew too much, but he did have Vanya, and occasionally one of the others. Hektor was not so bad. Kadir, either. He even got along with Gael.
Evander wasn’t sure when he’d gotten so dissatisfied. Was it when he’d started hearing the whisperings and the rumblings of this sorcerer and he’d realized he could do more, be more? Other Guardians had more defined powers. Jae and Hektor tended the earth. Marcos dealt with violence and anger. Kadir was the master of time. But Evander? He could discern secrets, but not always. There had to be purpose to his scrying for them, or else they needed to be attached to a strong emotion for him to sense them. Many believed that he could read minds, but he had never been able to. He could hide, he could skulk around in dark corners, he could change shape at will, far better than any of the other Guardians could, and he often knew people better than they knew themselves. He’d even discovered a nifty trick of transporting his spirit away from his corporeal body, unbeknownst to those around him. But as for an actual task? He’d never felt he had one, not like the others. Not like Gael, who controlled the wind, or Lyric, who gave the gift of song.
He didn’t know when exactly his discontent had begun, but he did know that he could not lose himself—not again—in the feel and pleasure of Vanya’s body.
Not when he finally felt like he could finally set his powers to good use.
“What is it you always say? We choose our own destiny?” Evander did not mean to say it so mockingly, but he heard the derision in his words. None of this was Vanya’s fault. None of it was anybody’s fault, that was the biggest problem.
There was nobody for Evander to blame.
Nobody he could exact slow, painful revenge on.
Just himself.
Vanya shot him a reproving look. “I don’t actually say that,” he reminded him. “It’s only attributed to me. A fact you are perfectly aware of.”
“If you’re here to tell me things I already know or to try to make me forget what happened in the Conclave, you might as well leave,” Evander said bluntly.
Vanya knew his bad moods better than anyone, knew them well enough he shouldn’t be hurt by them, but Evander saw the flash of it in his eyes before he could hide it away.
“You’re going to do something very stupid and ill-advised,” Vanya said as he rose from the bed, smoothly and gracefully. He draped his linen shift over his head, then fastened a bejeweled golden belt low on his hips. “Let it be known that I tried to change your mind, and that I did try to distract you from whatever insane course you’re plotting.”
“You did,” Evander acknowledged. “But you had to know I wouldn’t change my mind.”
Vanya nodded, and as he passed by him, as gracefully as he did everything else, pressed a kiss to Evander’s forehead. “I knew,” he said simply. “But I had to try anyway.”
The door closed behind Vanya with a soft click.
Evander turned to the plate of food on the desk.
He noticed then that there was only enough food for one.
Vanya had known that he wasn’t going to be sharing the meal after they fucked. He’d gotten it just for Evander.
He slumped down into the chair, and picked at the meats and cheeses, shredding some of the honey flatbread that was his favorite as he considered the plan he was forming.
Vanya was right; it was inevitable that Evander was going to do something about the sorcerer.
The thirteen of them were evidence that too much power corrupted, and for a human it would be even more dangerous.
Something had to be done, but the question was . . . what?
Whatever he ended up deciding, there was no way around making more exploratory trips to the surface. Three or four hundred years ago, that would not have been so unusual, but as time had passed and Guardians involved themselves less and less in human affairs, they’d naturally spent less time with humans.
But to gather the information Evander needed, there was no way around it—he needed to go to the surface, and that was a risk because Deimos, like Death, was all-seeing.
He’d occasionally used Vanya to distract Deimos’ attention from what he was doing, but he could not rely on Vanya to help out with this. He’d made his feelings plenty clear.
There were other Guardians he could ask.
They would know why, even if he lied, and he couldn’t be sure of any of them, not like he was sure of Vanya.
Vanya’s suggestion of using Hyperion resurfaced in Evander’s thoughts, and he was in the midst of considering involving the Guardian of the Wild when there was a knock on the door.
He wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone, but he stood anyway and walked over, pulling it open with more force than was strictly necessary.
A figure filled the doorway—the entire doorway.
Of course it was Marcos.
Evander should have expected that he’d show after the discussion in the Conclave.
“I saw that Vanya left . . .” Marcos said, his voice trailing off.
Evander stared at the man, daring him to say more.
But he didn’t. Because that was Marcos.
Why use words when his fists, and his sword, and his many, many knives worked so well?
“What do you want?” Evander finally asked.
“The sorcerer,” Marcos stated succinctly.
Evander pulled the door open further. “Come in,” he said, “we don’t need to discuss this in the hallway.”
The door shut behind Marcos, who’d barely crossed over the threshold.
“Is he truly a threat?” Marcos asked.
Evander studied the man in front of him. He was beautiful, like they were all beautiful, but instead of elegant perfection, like so many of them, Marcos was the beautiful fierceness of a hawk, with the intensity and steel-sharp focus of his dark eyes. His hair was shorn short, much shorter than anyone else’s, but all the no-nonsense cut did was leave in stark relief the wild magnetism of his features.
Gael had once said—or maybe it had been Hektor—that Marcos was the most attractive of any of them.
Of course Vanya had taken that to heart, and Taavi had sulked about it for ages with him.
But looking at him now, Evander could see it.
Everything about Marcos, even after a thousand years of knowing him, was alien to him, but Evander couldn’t deny he was attractive.
Not that he’d ever do anything about the realization; Marcos had the single-minded focus of one of the human monks, the ones who worshipped them and eschewed every single comfort and indulgence.
Marcos would never dream of entertaining a pleasurable dalliance.
He was just not built for it.
“The sorcerer is a threat,” Evander finally said.
Something about Marcos, always on alert, relaxed. “What will you do about it?” he asked.
“Who says,” Evander asked, as he walked back to his desk, digging around on the demolished platter for a hunk of cheese, “that I will do anything about it? After all, I have been forbidden to interfere by Deimos himself.”
Marcos did not roll his eyes. That would be just as foreign to him as indulging in a quick, pleasurable fuck. But Evander felt the look he gave him just as viscerally. “I am not stupid,” Marcos said, enunciating each word slowly and carefully. “You will not leave this alone.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because you know the very worst of all of us, and of every human. You know what lives in this sorcerer’s heart. What eats away at his brain. If he is a problem, then you know it, better than anybody else.”
“Yes,” Evander said shortly.
Vanya’s words echoed in his head. You were the Guardian of Secrets from the moment you were created, and you will be the Guardian of Secrets for many, many years to come. Embrace it.
How could he embrace something that was considered so vile and abhorrent without becoming vile and abhorrent himself?
Evander had yet to discover that particular secret.
“Then you know he is a threat. A real, true threat. And you will not rest until the threat is extinguished.”
“Now,” Evander teased, even though Marcos was hardly one for flirtatious banter, “you make me sound just like you.”
“Maybe we are not so different, you and I,” Marcos suggested softly.
Except Evander knew there was nothing soft about the man. Nothing.
Just like sometimes it felt like there was nothing true about himself.
“Are you suggesting we work together?”
In all the many hundreds of years the Conclave had existed, he and Marcos had worked together only a handful of times, usually with a group of other Guardians—but never just the two of them.
“You know the mind of the sorcerer, and the heart of him, and I can stop him with whatever weakness you can discover,” Marcos said.
“If it was so easy as to simply slip a dagger between his ribs, I could have already done that,” Evander pointed out, standing and beginning to pace back and forth.
“As you don’t merely collect and keep secrets, I do not merely kill,” Marcos pointed out dryly.
Maybe the man had a sense of humor, after all.
Evander was not surprised that it had taken almost a thousand years to come to fruition.
“He and what he knows must be destroyed,” Evander said. “He must be erased. Eradicated. As if he never existed.”
“We do not need his power passing on to the next,” Marcos agreed. “We must burn it from the earth. Are there others, yet?”
Evander did not know. Something he very rarely liked to admit to. “There is more to discover about this sorcerer still,” he said. “There must be reconnaissance, before a final plan is formulated.”
“You mean to make repeated trips to the surface?” Marcos sounded surprised.
No doubt he also realized the inherent difficulty of preventing Deimos from seeing them.
“Just two—one journey for information, and then a second journey, to unfold the plan,” Evander said. “Two may go unnoticed by Deimos.”
“Except it is unlikely,” Marcos said, his dark brows drawing together. “I think it best we deal with this in one trip. I will go with you. We will burn out everything we can, everything we can find. That is the best solution. Deimos might be unhappy we defied him, but if we have already accomplished our goal . . .”
“You would risk angering Deimos?” Evander did not mean to sound so surprised, but he was.
He was further shocked when Marcos stilled for a second, then his spine straightened, and he seemed to grow inches, or perhaps even feet, and his magic filled the room in a dizzying rush.
He makes himself small. He makes himself forgettable because he is so dangerous.
The realization alone was perilous, because now Evander knew this secret.
A secret that Evander guessed Marcos had never wanted him to know. But he’d revealed it anyway, likely to build some kind of trust between them.
“Deimos,” Marcos said in that deep, dark voice of his, “does not scare me.”
Death would not scare a Guardian as strong as Marcos.
It was then that Evander realized just how much he’d been hiding.
“Deimos does not scare me either.”
Evander had always wanted to be scared of Death, but even though he found the Guardian unnerving, he’d never been afraid. But perhaps he should have been. Vanya was right, he’d taken too many risks over the years. Done a hundred tiny, petty things that annoyed Deimos, and every one of them had pushed Death closer to the edge.
“I know,” Marcos said, and that was the third surprise. Three surprises, and one was usually extraordinary for Evander.
“We shall meet and travel together,” Evander suggested, deciding that he needed to get Marcos out of his rooms before he discovered anything else astonishing, like that Marcos actually felt things. “We will meet at the main portal in four hours. It will still be late enough, after a Conclave meeting, that nobody should miss us.”
Evander saw Marcos hesitate.
“No,” he finally said. “I have an alternate route I have been cultivating. I will meet you on the surface, near the Well.”
“You have created another method to reach the surface?” There it was—the fourth surprise.
Marcos shrugged. “You should understand. The enemy needs to not see you coming. Everyone knows the portal exists.”
Evander almost asked who the enemy was, but then decided that perhaps, in this one circumstance, it was better not to know every secret of Marcos’.
“I will meet you in four hours,” Evander said with a quick nod. “Do not be late.”
Marcos astonished one last time before he opened the door and left—he flashed Evander a quick smile, full of white teeth, fierce and unexpectedly charming, and said, “I am the Guardian of War. I cannot be late, and I cannot be early. The skirmish cannot begin until I arrive.”
The Castle at the Top of the World, where the Guardians lived and where the Conclave met, was silent and dark as Evander crept down the hallway.
Being the Guardian of Secrets, he was exceptionally good at moving undetected—the one vulnerable location would be the portal, set into the floor in the main Conclave chamber, that combined with a Guardian’s magic, could send them to the surface.
He passed Vanya’s room without hesitation, because he knew if his friend and lover had another opportunity, he’d try to forestall or stop him again. And now that Evander had found an unexpected ally, he had no intention of letting Vanya attempt to change his mind again.
He’d promised Marcos he would meet him in four hours, at the Well. Then they would do a short reconnaissance of the sorcerer’s dwelling, and commit every bit of magic and knowledge they had to eradicating his power from the surface.
It was a simple enough plan—and foolproof—if he could get to the Conclave and its portal undetected.
The Castle was full of artifacts from their history. A thousand years of battles and victories and advancements of the human world below. Evander sidestepped around the shadowed outline of a plow, the first to be constructed, that Hektor, Guardian of the Earth, had brought to the Castle and had preserved in gold.
A sundial, courtesy of Kadir, the Guardian of Time, stood on a tall column at the end of the hall.
Lyric, the Guardian of Music, had an entire room of instruments that he fussed with.
To say nothing of the massive armory that Marcos had spent the centuries filling with every conceivable weapon.
And then there were the gardens, property of Jae, Guardian of Plenty, that Hyperion, Guardian of the Wild, had filled with statues and marbles of every known creature that existed below them.
Perhaps that was why he and Vanya had always gravitated towards each other: they had no artifacts, no concrete reminders of the power they held. Secrets, like belief, could not be seen or held or touched.
The antechamber was empty and still dark, only a few candles set into the wall recesses lighting Evander’s way, but he wouldn’t have needed them anyway. He functioned better in the dark, another point that he continued to feel bitter about.
An enormous tapestry filled one entire stone wall, a joint effort between Taavi, the Guardian of Love, and Abram, Guardian of Healing, that depicted the first marriage, the first family and the blossoming of the humans’ relationships.
Evander had always hated it.
Sure, it was ugly, and it was unnecessarily flashy, but it wasn’t the colors of the embroidery or the composition that truly bothered him.
Vanya’s words from earlier came back to him: You were the Guardian of Secrets from the moment you were created, and you will be the Guardian of Secrets for many, many years to come.
Below, Vanya’s followers preached that anyone could set their own destiny.
It was an irony that Evander had never had the chance.
He turned away from the tapestry, and had just entered the main chamber, his goal the portal set in the middle of the mosaic floor, when a movement just out of vision caught his attention.
He pulled up, still half a dozen steps away. “Who’s there?” he said sharply.
A tendril of dark smoke weaved through the air, and then another, and Evander’s stomach sank.
“After all this time,” Deimos said, gliding out of the shadows, his black hair gleaming in the dim candlelight, his smile oily and wretched, “you still believe yourself the only Guardian who thrives in the night.”
Evander considered making a break for the portal. He could make it through, and Deimos could not stop him. But what if Deimos had laid a trap for him on the other side? He would be unprepared and vulnerable, coming through the portal. And when he returned? If he returned? Deimos would still exact a punishment for Evander’s disobedience. A punishment likely to be more severe if he attempted to dodge it the first time.
“We are not alike,” Evander said. “I resent the implication.”
“As do I,” Deimos retorted. “I ordered you to not interfere with the sorcerer. And yet here you are, ready to commit disobedience.”
“Is it disobedience? I thought your orders were merely suggestions.”
The frown lines on Deimos’ handsome face deepened. “You know very well they are orders. I lead the Conclave. My word is final. I ordered you to leave the sorcerer be. And now you must pay the consequences.”
Evander fully expected some sort of tame slap on his wrist. He’d received them before.
But this time, Deimos drew himself up to his full height, and Evander was suddenly reminded of Marcos.
Marcos, who had been the only one who had known he was going tonight.
Marcos, who knew when.
Marcos, who knew where.
Marcos, who he had been right never to trust.
A surge of anger and resentment crested through him. “You,” he spat out at Deimos, “have only the word of a traitor, and it is the word of that traitor against mine. I could be going to do anything on the surface.”
“But you are not. I know you are not. The so-called traitor knew you were not.” Evander felt his fury growing at Deimos’ confirmation that he had been betrayed. “Thus, you will face your fate.” Deimos was inexorable. As far as Evander was concerned, it was one of his worst traits.
“As you wish,” Evander said, giving an insolent little half bow towards Deimos, who had always wanted to be a king.
But he had only ever been a Guardian.
“You are growing in insolence and also in power,” Deimos said, his voice booming, and suddenly, the chamber was lit. And it was full.
Every chair was full, with a Guardian. Except Evander’s, which was empty.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vanya, disappointment in his eyes.
He saw Marcos, too.
His face, however, was completely blank.
Later, Evander would think back to this moment, and that empty chair.
The herald of his doom.
And the one who had brought it.
“You have defied me. You have searched for allies to array against me,” Deimos continued. “You resent your place, and your Guardianship. To my other Guardians, I propose that a Guardian who does not wish to be a Guardian, who does not act as other Guardians act, not be a Guardian.”
Deimos’ words fell into the utter silence of the room.
This, Evander realized much too late, was not going to be a petty punishment.
Vanya had tried to warn him. This time, and so many other times.
Panic swept through him as Deimos continued intoning his judgement of Evander’s many crimes against the Conclave.
“. . . disrespectful, dismissive, rude, and unbecoming nature,” Deimos concluded. “He does not belong with us. He never belonged with us. I propose that Evander, Guardian of Secrets, be forevermore banished from this Conclave, with his vote going empty in absentia. I propose that his powers be stripped down, and as he cares so much for the humans, that he be sent to the surface until such time as he learns humility and his place in this Conclave. Who agrees with this proposal?”
Slowly, Evander watched as hands went up.
Gael, the Guardian of the Winds, perhaps even more inexorable than Deimos ever was. He had never seen anything in shades of gray, only ever in black and white. Of course he would vote with Deimos.
Hektor and Kadir.
Jae. Hyperion. Osias, the Guardian of the Oceans. Lyric, Taavi, and Abram were the last to raise theirs.
No, that was not true.
There was still Vanya.
And Marcos.
Marcos, who had betrayed him.
Why was he hesitating now?
Then finally, Vanya’s gaze met Evander’s. There was a thousand years of love and friendship and laughter and pleasure in that gaze. But layered over it all was disappointment. Disappointment and hurt.
Vanya raised his hand.
That left only Marcos.
Evander knew the condemnation had to be unanimous, or Deimos could not cast him out.
Why, then, did Marcos not complete his betrayal and raise his hand?
Deimos looked to his Guardian of War.
“Why the hesitation, Marcos?” he asked.
“There is supposed to be a proper trial.” Marcos’ chin tilted in a stubborn angle. “You know this.”
Deimos waved a hand. “That is merely a formality. We are all in agreement. Evander has expressed that he does not wish to be a Guardian. A trial would be an unnecessary waste of the Conclave’s time.”
But he hadn’t. He’d only wished to not be the Guardian of Secrets.
Marcos looked straight at Evander. For a second he was burning with righteous indignation, with the flame of unquenchable courage and strength. But then, like it had never existed, it was gone.
Marcos raised his hand, and it was over.
“I, Deimos, Guardian of Death and leader of the Conclave, thereby do banish and cast out you, Evander, Guardian of Secrets, until such time as you have learned to be humble and obedient.”
Through the burn of humiliation and fear, Evander heard the chuckles around him at Deimos’ words.
Nobody believed that he would ever be either.
And he wouldn’t be.
They could banish him, but they could never take his pride. He straightened, and stared straight at Deimos as he muttered the incantation.
Then he was falling, falling, falling, not through the portal, but through a funnel of fire and wind and rain, hot and impossibly cold at the same time, the sensations dancing across every nerve ending.
He only knew a second before he was going to land, had only a breath to brace himself for the jarring pain.
For a very long time, it might have been minutes or it might have been hours, Evander lay there, on the hard ground.
He felt . . . different.
Deimos could not strip him of all his powers. He would still, always, be immortal. He could feel pain, but he could not die.
Otherwise, surely the impact from falling all the way from the Castle would have killed him.
Finally, Evander leveraged himself off the ground.
It was as good a time as any to take stock of his powers—or what remained of them.
One by one, he tested them.
He could no longer turn invisible.
He could no longer project his form in another place.
Without another being in front of him, he could not determine whether his power to tell if someone was lying or not was intact.
But what did remain angered him.
One of his fundamental powers, the one he’d always resented the most, the ability to shape-shift into something else, was the one he still possessed.
All the Guardians had that ability, to some extent, but his had always been the strongest, the most potent. He could become an exact copy of anything or anyone, just by thinking it.
But Evander usually resisted using that power, because he had only ever wanted to be himself.
Deimos, Evander decided with anger surging through him, was even sicker than he’d imagined, to leave him with the only power he’d never wanted.
He flopped down on the ground. He considered, briefly, changing form, but what was the use? What was the purpose?
He had no purpose any longer.
It took days.
Maybe even weeks.
But eventually Evander began to explore the land around him.
It was uninhabited. He’d seen no evidence of any humans in the length of time Evander had been in this valley.
Because it was a valley. It was ringed on one side by mountains, and shaded by trees, but the valley floor was a meadow.
Hektor and Jae would have loved it here, Evander thought as he walked through the wildflowers, blooming riotously.
But Hektor was not here, and neither was Jae, and Evander realized, as he did every single time he thought of one of his friends and companions, that he would probably never see either of them again.
It was easier to think of Guardians he would not miss, like Hyperion.
Like Lyric.
Like Taavi.
He could not think about Vanya. The wound was too fresh, and far too painful.
He did think about Marcos, and what he would say—what he would do—to him, if he ever laid eyes on the Guardian of War ever again.
Marcos was deadly, but Evander was angry.
He’d betrayed him, as easily as breathing, and then pretended to argue with Deimos, a faux sham of insisting on a trial, and then in the end, he’d voted to condemn him anyway.
There was not much else to think about in the valley.
Evander subsisted on berries and edible plants, and lay there in the grass, thinking of Marcos’ betrayal and how he would exact his revenge.
But revenge, with no end in sight to his banishment, grew to feel pointless.
One season turned to the next.
It grew colder.
And Evander realized that time passing so easily, so quickly, had been far more comfortable in his tower room, with its soft, comfortable bed, and Vanya for warm companionship.
Here, on the surface, time seemed to crawl.
There came a point in which Evander no longer had a choice, and he was finally forced to leave the valley. He had no tools with which to build a shelter, and he would need food, with the autumn turning to winter.
He found a village, and for the first time since he’d fallen, shape-shifted. Not significantly. Just enough, making himself taller, uglier, rougher, so that he would not seem particularly noticeable.
When the first man he met asked his name, he could not give his Guardian name, so instead he said he was named Rhys.
Nobody looked twice at him.
Evander had often gone unnoticed in the world of humans before, but always by his choice. It was an entirely new experience to do so because there was nothing particularly memorable about him.
Trading a few days of labor for some old tools, he returned to the valley.
He could have stayed in the village. They had not welcomed him with open arms, but his presence had been tolerated. But Evander could not forget that he was different. There was no longer a place he fit in.
He was not human, and he was no longer a Guardian.
He was something in between, a cast-out, a reject, an outsider.
So he retreated back to his valley, casting what remnants of magic he had around it so he would not be bothered.
He built a crude shelter. He planted crops. He returned to the village now and again, always in the rough disguise of Rhys, to obtain a cow, chickens, and occasionally a lamb that he would raise.
It was a boring existence. Crude. Unimaginative.
Evander nearly forgot what it was like to be anything other than a recluse—except he could not quite forget.
Late at night when he lay in his bed—not as comfortable, nor as warm as his in the Castle had been—he remembered, and he burned with indignation.
And so life went on, full of hard work and a hand-to-mouth existence, until one day when a vaguely familiar power pushed, almost haphazardly, at the edges of the valley, at the edges of his mind.
While Evander had never forgotten the circumstances of his banishment, he’d focused entirely on the ones to blame: Deimos and Marcos. He’d ruminated on Vanya and how much he missed his friend.
He’d even learned to miss some of the others. Hektor and Jae. Hyperion. Kadir. Even Taavi.
But he had forgotten about the sorcerer. In his rage, he’d forgotten entirely about the sorcerer who he’d been so determined to quash, the power he’d insisted did not belong on the surface, with the humans.
Now it was back, and it was pushing at the magical barrier he’d raised around the valley so he could sulk properly—alone, with nobody to bother him.
Someone was bothering him now.
It had been many, many years since the sorcerer had lived. It was possible, but as Evander froze in the fields, his fingers tight around an iron trowel, he realized that the taint of the magic felt different from that of the other sorcerer. This was a new power.
So the magic had not died out with the sorcerer. And unsurprisingly, Deimos and Marcos had deigned it unimportant and insignificant, and had not dealt with it either.
It was still here, that power.
The trowel dropped from his fingers.
It took two days, but after Evander closed up his farm tightly, he rolled everything he owned into a tight bundle, slung it over his shoulder, walked through the magical barrier of the valley, and went to find the power, power that never should have existed here to begin with.
He had a new purpose.