Chapter Two
Ten years earlier, I stood at the gates of Castle Pyka, watching as my family rode off for war.
My father, tall as a mountain on his destrier, his golden hair flowing behind him.
My uncle, his general, younger and darker, but no less deadly.
My brother and my sister, seventeen and eighteen, each the spitting image of my father, each as powerful with their fire magic, each as devastating with the blade.
Our blue and green banners blowing in the cool sea air.
My mother had left weeks earlier. She was shadow-born like me and from a lower house, but my father loved her anyway. Her mission was different. Secret. There was no parade for her parting. No banners, no trumpets. She left without a word in the dead of night.
In the castle courtyard, only Larus remained with me. The Guardian of our house, a man with dark skin and long locks of coiled hair who would never be mistaken for our kin. And yet he was as loyal to our house as any of them. More loyal, even.
I cried silently, my tears burning hot tracks down my freckled cheeks. I didn’t scream or yell or beg for them to come back. I knew at eleven that they wouldn’t, no matter how much I wanted them to. I knew by then that there were things that mattered to them more than me.
Larus pulled me to him, wrapping his arm around my narrow shoulders. “You’ll see them all again soon,” he said. “You’ll see.”
Larus was the best person I knew. He ran my father’s house, one of the Great Houses of Nithyria.
He managed the castle and the port. He trained the children in the art of combat, in magic, in manners.
He would have served as a general in his army if my father had let him.
When my father asked him to stay behind to care for me, to care for his house and his legacy, he didn’t complain.
I trusted Larus more than anyone in the world.
When he told me I’d see my family again soon, I took him at his word.
I dried my eyes and went back into the castle, practicing all day and night, preparing to join the fight as soon as my magic settled.
As soon as I could, I would see them again.
At home, if the war ended quickly, or on the battlefield if it didn’t.
Larus said I would see them all again.
Larus was wrong.
“What are you waiting for?” asks Adria.
The woman is frozen against the carriage, her teeth chattering from fear despite the harsh desert heat. My sword is inches from her chest. She should be running, hiding, doing anything but just standing there.
This is a test. I know what Adria thinks of me. I know that she still sees me as her baby sister, the girl who stayed behind while she led my father’s armies after he fell. She doesn’t believe I can do it. Not just that I can’t kill this woman. She believes I won’t kill Ronan.
There’s a part of me that wants to do what she asks simply because she’s the one asking. A part of me that longs for her approval, that wants to show her that she’s wrong about me.
But killing this woman isn’t the same as killing Ronan. To kill Ronan is vengeance. It’s the vengeance that I’ve dreamt of every night for the last six years. Every night since the night the letter arrived. The black mark on the page. My father’s death, a stain on the paper and my memory.
This isn’t vengeance.
This is murder.
Maybe this woman was hired by Ronan to kill us. Maybe he invited us to the festival just to lure us out onto this road, to take us out before we could do the same to him.
Or maybe, as she said, she didn’t intend to hurt us at all. Maybe she was hired by a merchant to take out a rival. Maybe she was starving and did only what she had to do to survive.
I understand why Adria wants her dead. She sees everything as a battle and everyone who isn’t us as an enemy. It’s the safest choice. It’s what has kept her alive.
But I’m not like her. We have only one enemy, and his name is Ronan.
I lower my weapon and turn to face Adria, to plead with her to spare this woman’s life.
But before I can do so, there’s a deep, guttural yell from behind the carriage, and the sound of a man slumping to the ground. Then Larus sheathes his blade.
“Is everyone alright?” he asks as he rounds the carriage.
Larus has been the Guardian of House Verran since before I was born, but he barely looks different now than he did when I was a child.
There’s more white in his beard and eyebrows, and his locks are so long now they nearly reach his waist, but his skin is still smooth, and his eyes are still bright.
And he’s every bit the fighter he always was. He’s breathing heavily, and there’s a burn mark on one of his leather pauldrons, but he looks otherwise unharmed.
He stops next to the cowering woman, glancing at my outstretched blade. “Who’s this?”
“One of our attackers. My sister seems to think we should let her live.” Adria’s voice is mocking as she walks over to me and places a finger to the small cut on my throat.
She doesn’t cauterize it, thankfully. Gods, it hurts when she does that, although it does stop the bleeding quickly.
Instead, she holds her bloodied finger in front of my face for emphasis.
“She nearly thought herself to death, by the looks of it.”
“Sylvie?” Larus gestures for me to approach him. “Are you hurt?”
I lower my sword, grateful for this distraction. The poor woman doesn’t even move. I walk to Larus and lift my head, revealing what I imagine to be a nasty little cut, judging by its persistent sting.
“You’ll need an elixir for that,” he says.
“She surrendered, Larus,” I say, gesturing to the woman. If I can get him on my side, maybe I can save her. “She said they were paid to attack someone. Maybe not us. She said it wasn’t the right carriage.”
He turns to Adria. “Probably one of Ronan’s men that paid her.”
“Agreed,” says Adria.
The woman has sunk to the ground. She’s crying softly. Defeated. She’s helping my argument by looking so helpless.
“Larus, we can’t just kill her after she surrendered. It isn’t honorable.”
This is the right thing to say, and I know it.
Larus is nothing if not a man of honor, and though I doubt he’d show her the same mercy if we were at war, he knows that we aren’t at war.
Not yet. He wipes the sweat from his brow, looking between Adria and me.
“Fine. Let her go. She’s clearly no threat to us.
Let Vahlo decide if she deserves to live. ”
“Thank you,” I say to him, ignoring Adria’s scowl.
The woman, who has surely been listening to our every word, doesn’t move.
“Go,” I say to her, helping her up. She takes a few cautious steps away, looking over her shoulder as if she’s worried we intend to shoot her in the back. Even Adria wouldn’t do something that dishonorable.
I don’t think she would, at least.
Then, with one last grateful look in my direction, the woman flees out into the wastes, vanishing behind the sand-covered rocks that must have concealed them when the attack began.
“Earth-born,” says Larus once she’s gone, glancing at the damage to the road.
He spits at the ground. “Dull and dirty blades, all of them. Shameful with an earth-born among them.” Many of the earth-born have a command of metal in addition to the rocks and dirt, but perhaps this one didn’t.
Though magic is divided into schools, and though those schools are largely determined by your personality when your magic settles near adulthood, there’s a great deal of variation in specific abilities.
Larus is earth-born himself, and he has an affinity for steel: crafting it, honing it, wielding it.
“What did I tell you about keeping your blade sharp?”
“I know, I know. Blades sharp, wits sharper,” I say.
“Although I can’t say I’m truly upset. If they’d kept their blades sharper, you might not be here.”
I swallow and look down. Larus, to his credit, doesn’t push any further. He’ll save the lecture for when we’re alone.
By the time the other carriages arrive and we get underway again, it’s nearly nightfall. For once, I’m grateful to be shadow-born as I watch the landscape shift from desert sands to the fertile river valley through the carriage window, something no one else can see in the dark.
They’ve all seen it before, anyway, though not since the war.
No one from House Verran has returned to the capital since Adria’s surrender except Typhon, the king’s emissary who has reported our every breath to the Grand Vizier since the war ended.
And I’ve never been. It wouldn’t have been safe for me to go, even before the war.
I was the future of House Verran. The backup plan, in case the others failed.
I guess some things never change.
When we arrive in Fenval, we’ve missed the ferry we’d planned to take down the River Mara, forcing us to stay a night at an inn.
It’s a rough place, far from the wealth and opulence of Faros.
I doubt they’ve hosted one of the Great Houses in quite some time, maybe ever.
But the host is gracious, the beer is strong, and I’m grateful for a night in a real bed after three days on the road.
It's late when we arrive, but it doesn’t stop Adria from going hard at the bar.
It’s difficult to say whether she’s more likely to find someone to fuck or to fight tonight.
Knowing the fire-born, it’ll probably be both.
Either way, I don’t want to be around for it, so I find a quiet spot in the shadows where I can see but not be seen.
Larus finds me there anyway. He knows me too well for me to hide from him.
I sigh as he takes the seat across from me.
“Sylvie,” he says, his voice low. “What happened out there?”