Prologue
LYRA
Three days after the attack on Bathara….
Iawake to screams.
Loud. Piercing. Sporadic.
For a moment, I am nothing more than a small girl again—tiny fists drumming against tiny patches of land, cruelty carving her skin like a blade.
The marks are permanent. There’s nothing more we can do.
I hear someone say that.
Can they see the flames, too? Do they hear the screams? Have the wounds I carry finally manifested into nasty gashes along my body? I always figured they would someday.
Wait—who is that talking?
The screaming stops then. That’s when I realize the sound was coming from me. A croakish, beaten thing. Like my vocal cords have been rubbed raw by sand and deprived of fluids for ages.
The memories return to me. Almost in a dream-like state, but not.
I see flashes of great power. See ribbons of skin twirling in the air. Black and crimson blood pours down onto rubble like splattered pellets of rain. Strong arms anchor a hurricane; the waves are seafoam and blue.
I see Gray.
See his lifeless body sprawled across the ground as a bloodied blade glints against the moonlight.
Then there are endless bodies. Slain. Charred. Bleeding and broken.
I see a monster.
I see myself.
The screams return; the world goes black once more.
Five days after the attack on Bathara…
This time when I wake up, there are no screams or surrounding whispering voices. There is only the sharp smell of a bitter antiseptic mingling with floral undertones.
“Where am I?” I ask, pressing a hand against my head.
A figure appears behind light that is too bright. Too cheery and radiant. He bends down, handing me a flower.
“Exactly where you should be.”
I take the flower and examine it, noting the strange coloring of the petals and the musky smell at odds with the odor of healing salves.
I twirl the textured stem between my fingertips.
While I do, a momentary peace settles within me.
Until those crimson stained memories again crash into me, splitting me apart.
I scurry to a stand, the velvet petals slipping from my grip.
I trample them as I approach Casimir with the grace of a fawn finding its legs.
I shove his chest with as much force as my throbbing body can muster.
He does not try to stop me. “Murderer,” I seethe.
“Monster.” My vision flickers, snowflake flurries appearing at the corner of my sight.
I do not relent.
“You murdered Gray!”
“And you murdered my own people. Shall I refer to you as a murderer and monster as well?”
There is a blurriness attached to the haze of my memories.
Some of it a distant dream, away from my grasp yet obtainable.
Other parts are a void—a black hole where no light lives.
I remember the slice of the blade as it went through Gray’s neck.
I remember the sheer eruption of anger from my veins.
The explosion of power. I remember burning.
Hearing screams. Until an anchor grounded me.
There was horror in his eyes.
Then there was utter darkness.
“I killed them,” I rasp.
“Every last one of them,” Casimir confirms. “Gone, by your hand. By your magic. By your lack of control and your ripe anger.”
The guilt presses into me, suffocating and piercing, and my heart tightens. A strobing effect consumes my vision, the flurries multiplying.
“I—you—” I drop my eyes as the blood thrumming in my ears reaches an unbearable decibel. I am met by the sight of gnarled ugliness. By a permanent deformity forever reminding me of my unforgivable actions.
The marks are permanent. There’s nothing more we can do.
So my sins are worn on my skin at last.
My chest clenches, and my vision blinks in and out, in and out. I wobble on my feet, wielding an accusatory finger pointed into Casimir’s chest as though it is the tip of a blade.
You killed them, I want to say. You murdered my best friend. Murdered Griff and left him to bleed out in Marcella’s arms.
Yet I don’t say any of that because I can’t. My jaw is locked, my tongue paralyzed. The only part of me that seems capable of moving are my swaying muscles. They move back and forth. Back and forth.
The world tilts.
Then goes black.
Nine days after the attack on Bathara…
Within the stars, a female voice hums. Find me within the stars.
Glittering images flicker in a quick sequence.
A crimson river. A starry-eyed wolf. Ashen ribbon twirling over living blue fire.
I hear the plucked strings of a breaking instrument.
Hear the echoes of confessions, curses, and screams. I see a woman holding a small babe swaddled in cloth.
A father’s command to tell no one. I see two sides of different fires merging together.
See a void of sharpened blackness as it swallows and consumes.
Gold melts. Power explodes into the sky.
That’s when it begins, the melodic voice warns. That’s when you must find me.
In a world of mist and smoke, I am shown a burning kingdom and a blood-soaked battlefield. I am shown arrows, swords, and spears of magic lancing in front of a full, glowing moon. War drums drill their chilling heartbeat into my heels. It rattles my lungs and freezes my joints.
It is coming, the voice hums.
You must find me.
When I awake again, I am in a nondescript room wrapped in silk, my body aching and tight like unused hinges.
I sit up slowly, my head woozy and feeling two times its actual weight.
There is a crystal glass filled with what I presume to be water resting on a table beside the large canopied bed cradling my sore muscles.
A broad mahogany wardrobe rests against the wall facing me, and a small window exposes a thin streak of starlight.
Night time, then.
Perfect.
I throw the feather-soft covers from my body and slide off the plush mattress, my heels kissing cool stone while the pain from stiff, unused muscles kisses me.
After my eyes adjust to the darkness, I notice that nearest the window, there is a door, while another larger door fills the center of the opposite wall.
I check the smaller door first, deciding it has the lesser chance of being the exit.
I crack the wood open and peek inside. Through the silver moonlight washing in from a rectangular window at the back wall, I luckily find nothing more than an attached bathing chamber.
Which means the other door must in fact be the exit as I suspected.
Great.
Now that that much is settled, I need to search this room top-to-bottom, looking for anything useful. Any clues. I would say any weapons as well, but… I am not foolish enough to believe Casimir would leave such a thing in my holding chambers.
Regardless, I have an escape plan to make.
I do not sleep at all for the rest of the night.
Yet I do rest my eyes, feigning sleep. Once the sun blinks its golden eyes open, coating the room in gilded morning light, I lay upon the plush mattress and silky sheets.
I keep my eyes shut and breathing steady as I hear footsteps come and go.
I count two different sets of them—one whose movements are light and airy, almost like I imagine a dancer’s to be.
The other set is slow in their movements and nearly mute against the stone floor.
They only visit my chamber once, and stay no longer than a minute or two.
The dancer’s footsteps return around what I presume to be dinner time, something metal rattling in their hands.
They lay what I suspect to be a tray down on the table beside me and position themselves at the very edge of the bed.
The person takes my arm in their cold hands, and I say silent prayers in my mind that I can maintain this ruse effectively.
I do not.
They tap the crook of my elbow a few times, then I feel a sharp pinch as something cold pierces through my skin and into my vein.
I jolt at the unexpected pain, which results in the person pausing their movements.
Even with my eyes closed, I can feel the weight of their stare as it crawls over every inch of me in close observation.
Deciding it best to play into the disturbed sleep a bit better, I nestle my head into the pillow and sharpen my breathing before letting it fall back to a steady, slow rhythm. Luckily for me, this seems to satisfy whoever the person is, and they continue with whatever the hell it is they’re doing.
I hear the rustling of a bag, and then next thing I know a powerful wave of warmth floods my veins accompanied by a pleasant humming sensation blanketing over me.
Healing magic, I think. The strange filling sensation finds every crevice—every inch of my body—before the hunger pangs previously torturing my stomach disappear, the need to chug five pitchers of water going along with it.
So that’s how they’ve been keeping my body replenished.
I wonder what substance they’re pumping into me? Perhaps an extract from piper’s weed or longtails—both plants known to be filled with enough nutrients to sustain a body by itself.
When the person is finished, they pull what I now know to be a needle from my vein and pack up their belongings, small tings ringing into the air as they stack one object after the next back onto their metal tray. Then, they leave the room.
As I wait for the sky to fill with stars, I tally the time between each passing visit.
Recount my approximations for how long they were in my room and what time of day they entered.
It is only once night is well on its way and I am confident nobody is coming back into my chamber that I again throw the covers from my legs and revisit my ongoing escape plan.
Tonight, I decide to daringly creak the main door open to glimpse what is on the other side.
If it’s a guard, I sign my own prison sentence.
If it’s an empty corridor, I may just sign my own freedom missive.