Chapter 1
Seventeen Years Later
My footsteps echo off the walls of our near-empty row house.
I’m going to be late and Feron is going to murder me.
He values punctuality above almost everything else.
If he decides to stop training me because of my tardiness, I don’t know what I’ll do.
Feron’s lessons are the only sliver of joy in my otherwise bleak and controlled life.
I tie my long bright red hair in a knot as I sprint down the stairs, skipping every second step.
I pause with my hand on the jagged handle of our damaged front door, sure I’ve forgotten something.
“Mama! Where’s my dagger?” I holler back up the stairs to my mother, who doesn’t answer. Typical.
I try to remember the last place I had it. The sitting room! I was carving designs into the floorboards last night when I was bored and forbidden from leaving the house. I run to the room. Nothing.
“Mama!”
She continues to ignore me. If I hadn’t seen her when I woke up this morning, I’d think I was alone. I tear through every room in our small house, finding all of them empty or nearly empty, devoid of anything that might give the space warmth or character.
I scurry back into the narrow hallway that leads from the front door to the stairs, stopping at the small, beaten-up table near the front door; one of our only pieces of furniture left.
Probably because it isn’t worth anything.
I wrench open the table’s only remaining drawer.
There, on top of a pile of parchment, my dagger shines up at me in the midmorning sunlight streaming through the small transom window above the door.
The dagger was a gift from my father before he died three years ago.
I never actually met him, but he would often send gifts and trinkets to my mother and me, especially on our birthdays.
We haven’t celebrated one since he died though.
We can’t afford to. My mother would sometimes get a letter from him.
When this happened, I knew not to expect much from her for a few hours.
She’d lock herself in her room and I’d hear her laughing through the door.
It wouldn’t take long for her laughter to turn to tears.
I tried finding those letters once. Practically tore her room apart just so I could get a glimpse into my papa’s mind.
I never did find them. I learned later that she always burned them. I never found out why.
I inspect the dagger in my hand for any signs of damage, who knows how my mother treated it when putting it away.
The folded steel blade is both strong and whimsical.
The snakewood handle adds to the feeling of motion in the weapon, and the silver and gold filigree along the guard makes it almost ethereal.
My attention snags on the parchment in the drawer.
At the top of the page are bold, angry black letters that read “Wanted for Murder.” My heart sinks.
Underneath the words is a drawing my mother had commissioned of Maziar Montbeth, the Exalted patriarch of the House of Preservation.
That Exalted house is known for its strength, pride, violence, and temper.
I crumple the paper in my hand and storm back up the steps.
“Mama!” I slam the door open to my mother’s bedroom. She’s there, as I knew she would be, lying on the bed prone, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Still ignoring me.
“Mama. We’ve talked about this!” I wave the parchment at her, even though she’s not looking at me. She knows what I have in my hand. “You can’t keep doing this! He’s a powerful man, Mama!”
She rolls her head to look at me, her eyes dark and listless, her voice barely above a whisper. “He killed your papa.”
“No he didn’t, Mama! Papa was a nobody Condemned, just like us. He was a fisherman, for Death’s sake. Why would Maziar Montbeth care about him enough to kill him?” We’ve had this argument countless times in the years since my father died.
My mother rolls her head back and returns to staring at the ceiling, signaling the end of this discussion. I growl in frustration and throw the paper onto the still-glowing embers in the fireplace. “And stop using so much firewood. It’s a pain in the ass to get in this godsforsaken borough!”
She doesn’t respond. I don’t expect her to. She hasn’t been the same since Papa died.
There are only two boroughs in Kalsevden, the capital city of Lyclaven.
The Rookery, where the majority of the population lives in filth and poverty, and where I currently reside with my mother.
And the Estates, where the wealthy and the Exalted live.
It’s about the same size as the Rookery with about a quarter of the population.
I watch until the parchment catches fire then storm out of her room, down the stairs, and out of the house.
I make sure the door is locked before leaving.
Gods only know what my mother would do if someone broke in.
Probably nothing but lie there and allow the intruders to ransack the place. Not that they’d find much.
I break into a run partly because I’m now extremely late for my training with Feron and partly because I can’t wait to get there and work out my anger with my dagger and whatever other weapon Feron has for me today.
“Concentrate!” Feron barks at me. He’s even more of a grump than usual. Most likely because I was late. I refocus on the target on the other end of the field.
Feron’s tiny, one-room hut sits on what was once the edge of the city with a dirt field stretched out behind it.
Many people over the years had tried to build on the field, but Feron either threatened, intimidated, or fought them to stop them.
He’s not completely heartless however; he has only kept enough land to train on.
As the Rookery expanded, the more encircled the field became.
Now Feron’s small but well-built hut is surrounded by makeshift homes and ramshackle buildings. Something he’s not too pleased with.
I take a deep breath and release the dagger Feron provided from my grip.
It lands in the center of the target. I smirk at Feron, who is sitting in his usual chair beside me.
He grunts and hands me another one of his daggers.
I would use my own, but Feron says it’s too fine of a weapon to risk damage while practicing.
The man can fix damn near any blade, but he says folded steel is a different beast. Says he doesn’t want to try to fix it if he doesn’t have to.
I’ve been training with Feron for as long as I can remember.
When Papa died when I was fourteen and my mother was unable to continue to pay him, he’d agreed to keep training me free of charge.
He’s been the most consistent person in my life.
Mama never fully recovered from losing Papa.
She decided not long after that he was murdered by Maziar Montbeth, and she’s been loudly and vehemently accusing him of murder ever since.
It’s the only time I see any real emotion from her. When she’s not just an empty, heartbroken shell.
I release another dagger, this one landing directly beside the first. Feron grunts again from his chair. I could swear he’s half pig for the way he grunts.
“That’s enough for today,” he grumbles, groaning as he goes to stand. His body is giving out on him more each year, and it seems like he’s in constant pain now. My heart hurts as I reach out to help him. He bats my hands away.
“I may be getting old, Vayna Cahira, but I can still stand on my own.” I hold my hands up in surrender, a smirk dancing on my lips. “It’s getting late. You better get home.”
I sigh, knowing he’s right. The sun is beginning to set and my mother doesn’t like me out after dark.
Not that I blame her. The Rookery is the most dangerous at night.
Thieves, beggars, rapists, murderers—desperate people doing desperate things.
The cover of darkness makes them bolder, less predictable.
We enter his hut through the back door that faces the field, and I take the approximately ten steps to the other side and the front door.
Feron starts fussing about the fireplace, making himself tea.
It’s amazing to me that such a large, round man can live comfortably in such a small space.
His bed alone is half the size of mine, stuffed in the corner beside the fireplace. I pause in the doorway.
“Feron?”
He grunts.
“What do you know about the Exalted?”
He pauses but won’t look at me. Exalted is like a curse around here. Uttering it in the wrong place at the wrong time could get you killed, or worse.
“Like I’ve told you the other thousand times you’ve asked me, that’s a question for your mother, kid.”
“She won’t tell me anything. All she’ll say is they’re evil, not worth the breath it takes to discuss them. Except, of course, when she’s griping about Maziar Montbeth. And I’m not a kid.”
He grunts again but doesn’t respond. This is how Feron is. Big, bald, and cranky. Instead of accepting his nonanswer this time, I close the door and plunk myself down at his kitchen table, refusing to leave until he answers my question.
“Curiosity’s a bad trait Vayna,” he grumbles. Still, I don’t move to leave.
He sighs and pours two cups of scalding peppermint tea.
He pulled the herb from his small garden out back.
Feron grows things that aren’t readily available in this borough, like peppermint, lavender, and basil.
For such a gruff man he’s shockingly gentle with his plants.
He hands me a cup and sits on the other side of the little round table.
He knows me well enough to know when I’m going to be stubborn.
To be fair, there is rarely a time when I’m not stubborn.
“What do you know?” he asks.