Chapter 1
Roark
Dravenmoor, twelve seasons earlier
The pain was enough to bring tears.
No. I would not cry. Not in a thousand full seasons would I let on how the sharp bite of heat running up my arm from my wrist had me holding in a sob. The way I’d landed, my limb was twisted beneath my body and felt ready to snap.
Gods, Gunter and Auki would never let me live it down if I rose with tears on my cheeks. No mistake, Gunter would call me the blubbering prince and Auki would find a way to make it so all our classmates in the schoolroom would know ‘Roark cries when he spars’.
I was twelve seasons now. Too damn old to cry when my body ached.
“G’off me.” I grumbled and tried to leverage onto my knees.
Gunter’s stupidly lanky body rolled off in a heap by my side. He was a few months younger, but already half a head taller and seemed made of more bones than meat.
He laughed, the dull blade he’d used in the sparring circle clinked against the shaft of my spear. The point of the weapon was hardly sharp enough to spear a dove.
The sparring ring was positioned in one of the back courtyards.
Shadows from the slanted rooftops of the Draven palace kept the sun from scorching our skin and cast a chill in the air.
Stone walls marked the space, and every few paces were shelves and racks filled with dull blades, round shields, practice spears, and padded gambesons embossed in the double-headed raven.
When I rolled onto my back, the soil had smudged the skull head of my raven. The one head of the Draven sigil that was a symbol of our connection with the souls of the fallen.
Soul craft made our clan. A gift the gods entrusted to our folk. Better than the bone craft of those stupid Jorvans. Better than the eerie blood craft of Myrdans. My folk, my clan, we guarded the realms of souls, the nearest realm to the gods.
I’d always taken a bit of pride in the fact Dravenmoor was favored with such a craft.
But it fueled a spark of hatred for Jorvans, for the way they kept trying to corrupt the souls of the fallen. Their betrayal to those souls who only wanted to rest in the halls of Salur had already cost enough Dravens their lives. My own House had suffered from the cruel greed of the Jorvan king.
Soul bones. I spit on the soil at the thought. Gods, I hated soul bones.
I couldn’t wait to join the Dark Watch and kill the twisted up Berserkir’s crafted with those soul bones. Monsters, that’s all Berserkir’s were. Creatures stuffed together with dark craft to become killers.
Soon enough, we’d stop them.
“I won.” Gunter shoved my shoulder, his lavender eyes flashed.
I think I wanted to hit him in the jaw.
“You cheated, you ass.” I kicked at his ankles, swatting his hand away before he could make the defeat wretchedly worse by helping me from the dirt.
“Ah, don’t be a piss-poor loser, my stupid prince.” Gunter bowed at the waist, low and theatrical, all to claw under my skin.
He knew I didn’t care for titles out here. Not with friends.
“You can’t use”—I scrambled to my feet with a grunt and shoved his shoulder— “a second blade.”
Gunter circled a small knife in his palm, an aggravating half smirk on his mouth. “Tell me that when we’re facing Jorvans one day.”
From across the ring, Auki snorted. “Roark’ll wanna be all diplomatic.”
I narrowed my gaze at my other friend. “Bet I slit more Jorvan throats than you, Auki.”
“I’ll beat the lot of you.” Brynn, Auki’s twin sister, strode into the ring.
Brynn was only eleven seasons and hadn’t yet grown into her bones as her mother put it. True enough, she was smaller than the rest of us, but Brynn had the Draven fire. She did not back down from a fight.
Her brother tended to draw it out often. Auki hooked one arm around Brynn’s neck, tugging her close. “You’d like to think so, Brynnie.”
She shrieked and swatted at his arm, clawing and thrashing. Auki didn’t relent.
“But you’ll—two hells—” he said in a hiss when his sister landed a kick to his shin. Auki brought Brynn down to the dirt, trying to pin her shoulders. “You’ll…be…you’ll be here rearin’ the—”
“Don’t say it.” Brynn pinched her brother’s newly pierced ear between her fingers.
Auki cried out, but managed to flip his sister over until she was face down. “You’ll be rearin’ all the royal babes, while we’ll be fighting.”
Brynn shrieked. She kicked and thrashed, taking Auki by stun alone, and rolled him over onto his back. She had her legs around his waist in the next breath, her small fists pummeling her brother’s shoulders.
My cheeks heated at Auki’s insinuation. Last season, I learned how littles actually happened after catching a Dark Watcher with his soul bond in the trees doing something that sounded like it made them stop breathing.
Brynn was the one who opened her mouth with questions to her mother, then that led to a wretched conversation at their long table with Kaysar, the twins’ father.
His wife made him speak to the lot of us, like a warning not to attempt to try what we’d seen the Dark Watcher doing until we were seasons older.
I’d listened until my face felt like it might burn off my bones as Kaysar mumbled (like he wanted to be anywhere else much the same) how babes ended up in their mother’s insides.
Apparently it involved a lot of naked skin and those odd not-breathing sounds that made me want to retch.
The notion that Brynn would be the intended match for me unless either of us found a true soul bond with another, left my skin boiling in horror. We were friends, had been since before we’d even learned to talk. I didn’t want to…do that together.
A few of the Dark Watch warriors stopped on the outer rim of the sparring ring, taking pause at yet another fight between the twins. Some seemed ready to intervene. Others appeared more motivated to take gambles on which of the two would rise as the victor this time.
Until a horn echoed.
Brynn and Auki stopped their battle. Dark Watchers stiffened. Blood thudded in my head.
“It’s the call.” Gunter’s voice was soft, hardly more than a whisper. His face had grown pale, almost bloodless.
Shouts filled the courtyard. Heavy boots pounded over the flagstones of the pathways.
Keepers of the fara wolves brought forward their beasts.
Fara were enormous and vicious, but the loyalty of the wolves was unmatched.
My favorite memories were watching games with the fara wolves, a way for the keepers to show what the creatures could do through revelry and competitions.
Within the next three full seasons, I might have my own fara if the gods favored me.
“Roark.” Gunter nudged my ribs with his elbow. “It’s your mother and Nivek.”
Across the courtyard, I caught sight of my mother’s black onyx circlet above her long braid. The queen used her hands to speak wildly to the two men at her sides.
On one side, my Uncle Virki nodded. His body was warrior strong, and the sides of his scalp were shorn close. Three fara wolves kept pace behind him. Virki was skilled as a fara keeper and bonded to more wolves than most.
Once I admired the man, but the last few seasons, the sight of him left my insides upside down. He treated Emi like she was a thrall in his household, not his daughter. Brynn insisted the other week, Emi had a bruise under her tunic. She only caught it when my cousin’s sleeve slipped.
If Virki was hurting Emi, my father and mother would not stand for it.
On my mother’s other side was Nivek. My brother stood two heads taller than the queen, shared the same dark shade of hair as me, and had a layer of whiskers over his sharp jaw. Brynn and Auki’s mother always insisted Nivek was too handsome to be without a wife at twenty-one seasons.
I was glad for it. Meant whenever my brother wasn’t on his many trade assignments to the Night Ledges, he had more time with us—teaching the blade, telling tales of what creatures lived near the ledges.
He had more time with me.
But lately, there was a burden on my brother’s shoulders, a weight that almost curved his spine. Like he knew times were unsettled. Like he was merely waiting for the blade to fall and Jorvans to bring war.
Today, the way Nivek and Virki shouted back and forth over my mother’s head as they hurried toward the great hall, I wondered if the whispers of approaching battles were finally here.
My lip curled.
Let them come. I’d meet Jorvan blades with my own. The clan of Stonegate corrupted the souls of the fallen. They used abominations to create their Berserkir armies.
They used melders, rare folk with corrupt craft that could fuse bones of the fallen to bones of the living. They stole souls from their rest and forced them to bond with a living soul. It brought darkness, wickedness, and violence.
I despised melding craft, but if war was beginning, then the lost melder had, at last, been found.