Chapter 1
One
Ivy
Aonce exalted general is pointing a sword at me—and somehow that feels like the least of my problems.
Stavros’s grip on the sword tightens enough that his light brown knuckles pale in the dim twilight. He takes a wary step up the curving staircase of the tower toward me.
Toward the woven vines I’m standing on that fill the gap where daimon smashed several of the stone stairs. The vines that my monstrous magic called forth.
The same magic twitches in my chest, tugging at me to let it push Stavros away, shatter his sword—defend me.
I clamp down hard on the urge. Releasing my power is what got me into this mess in the first place.
There’s got to be a way we can all walk down from this tower alive.
My hand starts to lift toward the torn folds of fabric on my chest where a fall ripped open the bodice of my dress. Stavros twitches both his head and the sword.
“Don’t move an inch,” he says in a voice so low and dark it sends a shiver down my spine.
I suppose it wouldn’t do any good to cover up the bare skin he’s already seen—the smooth flesh between my breasts where nearly anyone else would bear a godlen brand. The absence of a brand means I shouldn’t be able to wield any magic at all.
Other than the kind that’ll get me executed, that is.
The massive man has always cut an imposing figure, but I’ve never felt so close to death, not even when he held a sword right against my throat. Through the rattle of my frantic pulse, I register that the sword he’s holding now isn’t his usual blade, which is still sheathed at his hip.
No, it’s the short sword with the royal crest on its hilt that he gave to me just hours ago, when he told me all he wanted was to keep me safe.
As tense as I already am, my stomach balls even tighter.
I’m never going to hear sentiments like that from Stavros’s lips again.
He takes another step, his gaze sliding past me for just a second. For long enough that even his unsteady vision will be able to pick out the body slumped on the platform just above me.
The man I nearly killed.
It was nearly, not completely. I can take a shred of pride in the self-control I held on to, even if the former general won’t see the situation that way.
The words tumble out of me. “I didn’t kill Wendos. I only— He was summoning daimon to attack the city.”
I sense one of those spirit-creatures flitting past me with a ripple of my skirt, and then it’s gone. The several daimon that pinned me down on Wendos’s orders all appear to have fled.
“I had to stop him,” I go on. “But the Crown’s Watch will still be able to question him, find out… find out who he was working with.”
My voice falters with the hardening of Stavros’s expression. I hadn’t thought his stunningly chiseled features could get any fiercer than they already were, but I was wrong.
“What exactly did you do?” he demands.
My hands clench at my sides. I can’t help glancing past him toward the other two men poised farther down the staircase.
Alek has managed to straighten up a little, though his bronze-brown hand is still braced against the wall as if he needs the support.
It’s always hard to judge the scholar’s reactions with his polished leather mask covering most of his face, but his full lips are set in the stiffest line I’ve ever seen.
He jerks his hand down his front in a shaky gesture of the divinities—three fingers tapping forehead for sky, heart for sea, and gut for earth before they all fist over his sternum. I restrain a cringe at the thought of any more godly attention being drawn to us.
Casimir—the man who welcomed me from the start, who treated me like a friend and sometimes more—simply stares at me. His gorgeous face has drained of color, leaving his normally peachy skin as sallow as my own. None of his usual grace shows in his rigid stance.
They all know. They know what they’re seeing, what this scene must signify.
Denying it will only make me look guiltier.
A rasp creeps into my voice. “I don’t want to be what I am. I don’t want this power. I don’t use it—I haven’t been using it—I tried everything and there was nothing else, and he was going to destroy the city. I managed not to hurt anyone but him.”
Which would be a first.
The other participant in our standoff, the ghost who’s an uninvited guest inside my head, pipes up a little shakily. Ivy, you’re… you’re riven?
I hadn’t wanted to say the word myself. I don’t see the need to answer Julita. Even to a minor noblewoman who’s barely been outside her own county and the capital city’s royal college, the source of my godless magic must be obvious.
Stavros’s sword hasn’t wavered. He makes a scoffing sound. “And you expect us to believe you? Of course you’d claim all that now that you’re caught.”
It’s a battle already lost. The riven are reviled throughout the continent, and Stavros hates magic like mine more than just about anyone.
Still, I can’t stop myself from arguing. “Other than just now and keeping myself from dying yesterday, I haven’t let my magic out in seven wretched years. I’d snuff the power right out of me if I knew how.”
But the problem is how I’m torn already. The cracks in my soul that let endless magic seep through me, taking and sacrificing without limit if I give it free rein.
Alek finally speaks, his voice thin. “Riven sorcerers go mad with their power. It consumes them. That’s what always happens.”
I swallow thickly. “Well, apparently it’s possible to at least delay that outcome for a while, if you’re stubborn enough. Why do you think I’ve been refusing it? The magic would like me to bring it out every blasted moment I could. You can be sure it never shuts up about how disappointed it is.”
Casimir eases up a step, his deep blue gaze gone pensive. “Is it because of your magic that Julita… Is that how her soul ended up inside you?”
Julita’s presence shudders in the back of my skull. Gods above, maybe it is.
I answer both her and the courtesan at the same time. “I don’t know. I didn’t use any magic when I tried to save her. If I had, she’d be alive and we wouldn’t be here right now, and somehow I don’t think you’d be upset about it then.”
Stavros’s lips draw back from his teeth in a silent snarl. “You wielded the power meant as divine punishment in the greatest temple in Silana—in the All-Giver’s own fucking tower. Don’t try to take the moral high ground.”
My jaw sets on edge. “If the gods had a problem with it, I don’t think one of them would have been egging me on.”
“What?” Alek blurts out, swiping his messy black waves back from where they’d shaded his eyes.
“He told me to use it after I was stabbed. Practically ordered me to. I would have let myself die otherwise—I didn’t even exactly agree—and he spoke to me again just now—”
Stavros cuts me off with a sputter of a laugh. “You are insane. If the gods even noticed you were here, they—”
Then his voice dies too, with a widening of his eyes and another subtle twitch to refocus his sight. At the same moment, Alek and Casimir freeze all over again.
Alek’s lips part in apparent shock. Casimir’s eyebrows jolt upward.
A tingling sensation like a waft of magic brings my own gaze down, to the spot on my chest they’re staring at. My pulse lurches.
The skin between the torn flaps of my bodice was bare a moment ago. Now a godlen sigil shimmers there, an unearthly glow against the thickening darkness of the night.
Two lines arch from a central apex, with two smaller points poking from their peaks like little horns.
Kosmel’s sigil.
Well, I figured he was the most likely of any of the nine lesser gods to support my riven magic. The godlen of luck and rebellion is known to appreciate a little chaos.
But I keep staring at the glowing mark just as the men are, my jaw gone slack. That’s divine magic shining against my body.
Like I’ve been claimed, without any say in it.
Kosmel must be trying to help my case here. If he didn’t want me dead from a knife wound, he won’t want me ending up with a noose around my neck either. He’s confirming my story.
Part of me recoils all the same. I didn’t ask for this—I purposefully skipped my dedication ceremony. I’ve avoided the attention of our deities in every way I know how.
My soul’s been ravaged by godly retribution enough without anyone else sticking their divine fingers in.
For the first time, Stavros’s sword wavers. Even he isn’t going to suggest that a riven sorcerer could get away with blasphemous fraud in the grandest building that bears all the gods’ blessings.
He doesn’t outright lower the blade either, though.
“You—” he starts, and Casimir’s head jerks to the side with a ripple of his tawny hair.
“Someone’s coming,” he says quickly. “Probably the Crown’s Watch. Stavros—we can’t hand Ivy over to them. Not when Kosmel himself is watching over her. We should at least give her more of a chance to explain. She’s never hurt any of us, and gods know she’s had plenty of opportunity.”
Alek purses his lips. “We need to understand exactly what’s going on.”
Stavros inhales with a hiss through his teeth, but his sword hand drops to his side. He glares at me while he answers the others. “What are we going to say happened here, then?”
As my spirits rise with the unexpected reprieve, fragments of an idea come together in my head. “Let me handle that. I’m the one who was here for most of it.”
Stavros grimaces as if he’s going to argue, but right then the sound of hurried footsteps reverberates from just around the bend in the stairs.
My pulse stutters for a different reason. “This battle isn’t over. There are other scourge sorcerers out there. If they find out we were working together—”
I don’t need to say any more. I doubt the former general cares about protecting my identity at this point, but he spins to charge down the stairs and meet the incoming brigade while motioning Alek and Casimir farther up the steps.
The glowing sigil has faded away. I snatch at the torn fabric of my bodice to cover my lack of dedication brand just as a familiar blond head comes into view beyond the other men.
“I’ve brought the full squadron of royal soldiers,” Benedikt announces.
The king’s bastard half-nephew sounds a little ragged but still manages a jaunty lilt.
“Although from the fact that all the shaking and crashing stopped a few minutes ago, I assume we’re not quite as urgently needed as expected? ”
A couple of men in the rich blue uniforms of the Crown’s Watch appear behind him at the front of the squadron. I draw farther to the side where I’m less visible. My mouth has gone dry.
One word from Stavros, one swerve in his resolve back toward ridding the world of all illicit sorcery, and I’ll be meeting the hangman tomorrow.
His voice comes out terse. “It appears everything is under control now. There’s only one villain up here, and he’s been subdued. You’re welcome to bring him down the tower to take him into custody.”
Benedikt lets out a soft huff. “Barely needed at all, then. Well, I was happy to lead the charge all the same.”
One of the soldiers in view lets out a snort he doesn’t even try to stifle. Benedikt’s grin stiffens just for a second.
He turns toward the squadron. “The threat has been quelled. It’s been an honor ushering you into battle even if it never happened.”
The other soldier I can see barely spares Benedikt a glance, his attention focusing on Stavros. “Are you sure all’s clear up here, General? This fop didn’t seem to know much about anything.”
The self-proclaimed “bastard’s bastard” lets out a light chuckle as if he thinks the insult is a joke. Stavros taps his prosthetic hand against Benedikt’s arm in a subtle gesture of solidarity.
“None of us was sure what we were going to be dealing with,” he says. “But the immediate danger has passed. I need to speak with the king. If a few of you could go ahead and inform him that I’ll require a private meeting—”
“I could—” Benedikt starts to volunteer.
But the first of the nearby soldiers is already turning away from him to shoulder down the stairs. Benedikt falls silent and gives an awkward shrug.
Stavros strides back up the steps and over the woven vines, I suppose to collect Wendos’s unconscious body. But he pauses beside me just long enough to speak in a dark murmur.
“You’ll come with me and follow my lead to the letter, or gods help me, Kosmel will find himself missing a Hand too.”