Chapter 2
Velton Estate, Realm of Eldridge
F or the second time in his life, Rodric stood in front of the charred remnants of a building and fought the growing fear and rage in his soul. The packs of trade goods he’d brought lay in a forgotten heap at his feet.
The remnants of satisfaction from his annual fall trek burned away as he stared, unseeing, at the charred wood. He’d been gone most of the fall season in his role as a master Preddari Hunter, vetting the young hunters in his designated territory requesting formal recognition in the trade, and offering training to some of the more remote villages.
Now, staring at the smoking wreckage of his family’s business, it felt like an entire lifetime squeezed into a single moment. Soot smeared his hands as he pressed against the blackened remnants of the doorway. He peered into the wreckage but couldn’t make out what used to be, what with the crashed beams and charred debris.
His cousin Veron was vigilant about safety in his blacksmith shop with a young daughter around, especially since Brenna loved to spend time with him in the workshop. There was no way it was caused by neglect.
His hands trembled against the destroyed wood as panic leeched into his mind. Not Brenna. Please, not Brenna.
Determination coursed through him as he pulled away from the workshop remains. He would find no answers there. Though the house was only a short distance away, he broke into a run. He needed to see them, make sure they were okay.
Silence pounded him as he raced across the yard, past the ash-covered gardens, to the sprawling residence. Nothing seemed amiss as he approached—nothing touched by fire or destroyed in any way that he could tell. The absence of sound was heavy, compressing his lungs until he could scarcely breathe. Where was Brenna’s young laughter? The chatter of the estate’s workers as they went about their duties?
He pushed through the side entrance into the large, informal living room and continued down the hall.
“Veron! Brenna!” he called.
“Rodric?” The faint sound was loud in the otherwise silent house, drawing him down the hall. What was his cousin doing in the guest bedroom rather than the lord’s suite upstairs?
Pushing open the door to one of the bedrooms located on the ground floor, he discovered the answer. Veron was sitting in bed, his leg wrapped tightly with stiff bandages, the lower portion splinted with wood. A yellowing bruise marred the side of his face, disappearing into his hair. But he was alive and whole apart from the damaged leg.
“Veron.” Relief coursed through him as he embraced his cousin, pulling back when the man winced in pain. “What happened to the workshop? Where’s Brenna?”
Haunted eyes met his. “They took her, Rodric. I didn’t think… didn’t think it would happen to us. Thought we had time. It’s my fault.”
Who? When? Why? The questions lodged in his throat as anguish swelled inside him. “Explain,” he choked out.
“A few months ago, right after you left, I started letting Brenna work with me at the kiln. She’s been begging for ages and hasn’t been herself since Marion died. I thought… I hoped it might help ease the grief of her mother’s death to have something new to focus on.”
Rodric nodded, understanding the desire to ease the girl’s pain and bring the impish grin to her face. She’d suffered much in the past year, losing the vivacious spark of energy she’d inherited from her mother.
“So, what happened?”
“She was incredible with the metal, Rodric. Gifted. Seemed like she could get it to do whatever she wanted. Her abilities surprised us both.” A hint of a smile mirrored the pride in his voice. “I should have kept her away from the shop when I first suspected—started seeing the signs. But she loved it so much. I didn’t want to take this away from her.”
“Signs of what, Veron?”
“Magic.” Veron’s broken answer was mingled with awe as tears leaked from his eyes. “Brenna has magic.”
Rodric swallowed hard as the air in his lungs evaporated. Burned right out of his chest. No. Anything but that.
Magic.
The word was synonymous with pain, terror, and death in his world. Those who wielded it were hunted viciously in Eldridge. It didn’t matter that magic was innate, not learned. It was a crime. One that saw children taken forcefully from their homes. Families torn apart and destroyed.
“You didn’t think to send for me? I would have come home immediately. You knew she wouldn’t be safe here.” It came out accusatory.
Veron looked away, and Rodric’s heart twisted with the wrenching realization.
“You kept it from me intentionally. Why would you do that?”
“I was afraid for my daughter,” Veron defended quietly. “Of what this meant for her. If you’d reacted badly—”
“She is my soul-daughter! I would give my life for hers. No matter how you thought I’d react, you know that.”
Rage and pain warred within him, both overtaken by the rising viciousness of the hunter at his core. He was angry at Veron for keeping secrets. But mostly, at his own failure as Brenna’s soul-guardian.
“You can’t protect her from her magic, Rodric.”
“I can damn well try,” he snapped.
“I was going to tell you, but I thought we had time. Through the winter at least, before it became an issue. Before someone noticed.”
His stomach rolled as he wondered who had sold Brenna’s life to the independent mercenaries who made magic-related problems disappear in their realm. It had to have been a neighbor or someone who visited the blacksmith's shop. Someone they knew, possibly even considered a friend, had sold Brenna’s life.
“You were wrong.”
“I know.” Veron’s grief threatened to pull both of them under its weight. “With my leg injured, I couldn’t keep them from taking her… couldn’t go after them… and now she’s lost to me. Her and Marion both.”
Rodric stood, struggling to breathe as he pushed the smoky remnants of his childhood away. He had enough pain in the present without opening old wounds. He focused instead on picturing Brenna.
Long dark hair, golden-brown eyes and a mischievous smile. Always hiding around corners to eavesdrop. Brave enough to take daring risks, but smart enough to ensure he was around to catch her if she fell—from a tree, her horse, or the workshop roof.
He was supposed to be Brenna’s soul-guardian. Her shield against life’s harshness. But he’d failed her. His bright and beautiful soul-daughter, his sunshine, had been dragged away like a criminal for something she couldn’t control. Hadn’t asked for.
“I’ll go,” Rodric said once he could speak without his voice shaking. “You made me her soul-guardian when she was born. That’s an honor and responsibility I don’t take lightly. I swear to you, I’ll use every skill and resource I have to bring her home.”
Inwardly, he tried to stifle the rising feeling of doom in his chest.
Magic had invaded his life once before, leaving ashy devastation in its wake. This was his to face. His to conquer. It wouldn’t destroy his family a second time. For Brenna, who was his sunshine in a dark and foreboding world, he would face the destructive force that had once ripped his heart out.
Barrett's Forest, Realm of Eldridge – One Week Later
R odric was hunting ghosts. Which should have been impossible.
Argh! He picked up a rock from the soil and threw it over the edge of the ridge to the forest below as he cursed aloud. “Kavesh!”
The pit of fear that had lodged in his gut when he’d returned home to find his ten-year-old soul-daughter abducted grew darker and more vicious each day. He was a Preddari, the most elite class of hunter in Eldridge. Yet he was failing. The mercenary group that had taken Brenna remained elusive, their trail slipping through his fingers like smoke.
Emotions as turbulent as the storm overhead battered his weary soul. The destructive force of magic had once set his world ablaze, leaving him scarred. He’d never expected the flames to reach him again. To take Brenna with such ferocity.
His vision blurred as he fought against the horrifying images clawing at his mind—visions of what might be happening to her. He had to find her. Before it was too late and she disappeared into the slave trade, never to be found.
Forcing the fear to the back of his mind, he found the hunter within and tried to center himself. The sky had grown darker while his emotions spiraled.
Where would they have taken her?
Walking around the clearing carefully one more time, he tried to analyze the people who he assumed had taken Brenna—what choices and actions they might take.
In all but extreme cases or issues within the capital city itself, Eldridge outsourced the headache of dealing with the magic users to private mercenary groups who were all too happy to take care of such incidents for their benefit. Because his home realm maintained such a negative but heavily hands-off approach, even the slightest use of magic was enough to get someone picked up for the criminal offense.
As far as he knew, mercenaries that picked up mages whisked the offenders away to unknown holding locations before offloading them for profit in other realms. Eldridge was physically one of the largest realms in the world. At two weeks ahead of him, and with no further trail to follow, they could be headed anywhere in the realm.
Magic criminals were eventually sold and sent to all manner of places; occasionally returned to their realm of origin to face stronger punishment, sometimes imprisoned indefinitely, and frequently sold to other realms or private operations as industrial slave labor.
Finding her was critical.
A glint of red caught his eye as he turned away from the tree he’d been studying. There were no flowers or berries of that color anywhere nearby. Jumping, he caught the thick strands that were dangling from the branch.
His breath hitched at the sight of ruby thread woven around a small silver medallion.
“Brenna,” he whispered, hope soaring in his chest.
No one ever looks up. He’d taught her that many years ago when instructing her in forest survival. He smiled fondly at the memory. That’s my girl. He’d searched the trees surrounding the clearing, but only to just above his height. She must have thrown it quite high and deep in the thick leaves for him to miss it.
He whistled loudly for his preddari brother, Sev, who was helping him hunt.
A few moments later, the shadows shifted to show Sev striding out of the trees farther up the path. The setting sun shimmered in a dusky amber glow through the trees, haloing Sev’s wealth of long, wavy hair as he moved. Power, grace, and fluidity marked his movements as he walked stealthily through the forest.
Sev was an incredible hunter, and the single friend Rodric trusted without reservation. A fellow preddari, Sev was responsible for the territory bordering Rodric’s. As soon as he’d realized the direction the mercenary group was heading, he’d called on his friend to help.
Though Sev’s eyes were nearly the same shade as his dark brown hair, they shined with warmth and concern. The man’s compassion had always confounded Rodric, considering the tragedy and hardships his friend had faced.
“Found something?” Sev asked.
“Brenna’s bracelet.” He held out the precious keepsake.
The ruby threads were frayed, torn off the rest of the bracelet, which was dark brown leather. It had been specially made by her mother, turning one of Rodric’s hunter medallions into a wearable symbol of his place in Brenna’s life, presented to her when he was named her soul-guardian. It was a traditional gift for the occasion, usually kept in a box after the child outgrew the small charm. Brenna, however, had refused to take it off, and had insisted on having her mother weave it onto a new bracelet that could grow with her.
Sev took it and gently rubbed the dirt away from the face of the medallion. “Your territory’s Preddari mark. Definitely hers, then.”
“Yes. She threw it so high I almost missed it. But there are no tracks to indicate where they went after camping here. Anything where you were searching?”
“Nothing.” Sev shook his head as he handed the medallion back. “Which is… concerning.”
Rodric sighed in frustration, running his fingers through his own hair, pushing the strands away from his face. He was going to have none left by the time he found Brenna. “These people are like ghosts in the woods.”
“Ghosts, huh? That’s a new one.”
“Thought maybe we’d missed something farther back, but Brenna’s bracelet changes things. They were here, I know it. I just can’t see it.”
“Mmm.” Sev made a non-committal sound as he knelt to study the ground around the tree that had gifted them Brenna’s bracelet. Ran his fingers through the debris on the forest floor.
“You’re nearly as good as I am at tracking. Maybe better,” Sev said.
“I’m definitely better.” Rodric smiled slightly at his old friend.
They had been trying to outdo each other since they’d first learned the trade together, having met when one of them had angered a ferocious mother leopard. The deep peril had solidified their friendship.
“Eh… Maybe,” Sev hedged and smiled. “But the hard truth is, if that trail is really gone… you might have bigger problems.”
He was afraid of that. “Tell me what it is I’m not seeing.”
Dark, probing eyes met his, assessing him.
The back of Rodric’s neck tingled as unease began to slither down his spine. “Sev. Tell me.”
“You only have blinders about one thing, Rodric. The one thing you refuse to talk about, even to me, and we’ve seen each other at our worst.”
He studied the slightly challenging look on Sev’s face. “They magically made the trail disappear. That’s what you think happened.”
“All I’m doing is reading the markers, same as you.”
Rodric tilted his head to look at the darkening sky as he tried to work through that concept. “But why would mercenaries who hunt mages be using magic? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Makes more sense than ghosts.”
He huffed at his friend’s ridiculous statement.
Sev lifted both hands to ward off the visual daggers. “Maybe they’ve made an exception so that they can cover their trail. Or someone else is involved. It’s possible they crossed paths with someone they shouldn’t have encountered, and you’re seeing the result. I can’t answer the why. But the tracks don’t lie, Rodric.”
Smiling compassionately, Sev rose and squeezed Rodric’s shoulder in support. "You wrestle with that while I find our horses. That storm is moving in fast. Our time to search these woods has run out.”
Wrestle was a fitting description for the battle raging within him. This whole situation brought up things better left forgotten. Hard, painful things that had wrecked his family and wrung out his soul. Rodric dropped his head to his hands under the weight of it.
Stars. Avery, I wish you were here. Except if she was, he wouldn’t be here. Everything would be different.
Rodric had spent years avoiding anything and everything having to do with magic. For once, he wished he hadn’t. Then maybe his instincts would be better honed for such a unique situation.
Forcing his feet to move, he walked away. There was nothing more to be found. No trail, no evidence. No Brenna.
He needed a solution, fast. But magic simply wasn’t talked about in the open. It was talked about in hushed tones in closed-off basements and hidden rooms where secrets could be kept safe. Until someone let something slip to the wrong person and everything went up in flames. Asking questions was likely to get him arrested or killed.
The weight of the ruby bracelet was a warm comfort in his pocket, over his heart. At least Brenna was still alive. He still had a chance to save her.
Quickening his gait, he caught up with Sev to find his friend crooning softly to Rodric’s horse, Zora. The two had their heads bent together and Zora was rubbing her face against Sev’s chest.
Despite the horror of the day, Rodric laughed at the familiar sight. “You have an unhealthy obsession with my horse.”
Sev grinned as he rubbed the itchy spot behind Zora’s jaw. “That’s because I know she’s both the brains and the beauty of the operation. I count on her to keep you alive.”
“Hah! Well, there’s probably some truth to that.”
“Come on. Let’s get this beauty of yours stabled before the rain starts for the night and figure out how you’re going to find Brenna.”
Rodric took Zora’s reins from his friend, shaking his head at the sour look she gave him for separating her from Sev. She nipped threateningly at his hip as he checked the saddle over and tightened it.
“Watch the teeth, or you won’t be getting any sugar mints tonight,” he murmured to his sassy horse. Her ears perked at the mention of a treat, and she resumed a polite stance, standing still as he mounted.
Sev chuckled from the back of his own horse. “Like I said, she’s the smart one.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Rodric said, lips twitching before he sobered at the quest ahead of him. “You got any ideas on finding Brenna?”
“Just one. And you’re not going to like it.”
“What’s that?” His base set of skills was failing him, and he’d do anything . Forfeit his own life, if it would somehow help.
“Find someone better suited to hunt magic—seek help in Calderre.”
Rodric’s mind rebelled at the idea, but he wasn’t willing to disregard it just because he hated what he needed to do. He’d vowed to do whatever was necessary to succeed and bring Brenna home safely to her father. Something he hadn’t been able to do before.
He hadn’t been able to bring his sister Avery home alive.
“Calderre.” He tasted the foreign word on his tongue.
“Just don’t catch a leopardess by the tail while you’re there and you’ll be fine.” Sev winked at him. “I hear they have some fierce snow cats there. Walk on two legs and leave a burning flame in one’s soul.”
Rodric laughed despite the tension. Don’t catch a leopardess. Right. Like that’s going to happen. He shook his head, still smiling, and kicked Zora into motion.
Seeking an expert in Calderre made an unfortunate amount of sense. He didn’t like it, but it was rapidly becoming apparent that he was missing a critical resource—magic.
Calderre was the minority where magic was concerned, treating it with acceptance and respect instead of controlling it out of fear and trepidation.
Eldridge was the opposite, preferring to hold on to the status quo and minimize the potentially shattering impact a world filled with magic threatened. It was a charged political and social dilemma that much of the world was choosing to ignore for as long as possible.
It would take him a number of days to get to the realm that bordered them to the north, but he and Zora could move fast, conditions permitting. Luckily, they were just barely entering the winter season, so there hadn’t yet been any heavy storms to cover the mountainous realm in snow and ice.
“You really think that’s the best option?” he asked Sev.
“It’s your only option, but yeah, I think it’s also the best one. Magic made that trail vanish, my friend. Maybe you need magic to make it reappear. Just think, you’ll be able to find out if the mythical Lightning Teams really exist.”
“Of course that’s what you want to know.” Rodric huffed a laugh at his friend’s love of legends. The man really could have been a storyteller with his extent of mythical knowledge. Or perhaps a barkeep.
“It would do you good to go there,” Sev said. “Once you find Brenna, you’re going to need a whole new set of resources. Calderre welcomes refugees fleeing from all over the world.”
Rodric sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m trying not to think about that yet. What it will mean for her future. For mine.”
“Then you’ve got more than one reason to go to Calderre. I know you have history that makes you abhor magic, but don’t forget, it’s part of all of our history, if you go back far enough.”
Wisps of old stories floated to Rodric, his mother’s soft voice whispering to him and Avery by candlelight, entrancing them in stories of magic and wonder. Stories of the ancients, who made their homes in special hidden places throughout the world, forgotten over centuries of war and changing tides.
If his mother’s bedtime tales were to be believed, perhaps Calderre was one of those old, enchanted places, where the ancients had studied magic and performed rituals. Where magic still lived.
The precious bracelet renewed his hope. Just hold on a little longer, sunshine, I’m coming for you.