Chapter One
The cart we ride in is also a cage. My arms are stretched over my head, manacled to a ring in the ceiling. Iron bars dig into
my back, bruising my spine with each jolt down our rocky mountain path. My sister, Anja, swings limply from her own manacles,
her head lolling against my shoulder. Strands of her once-shiny blond hair whip against my cheek, snake into my mouth with
the wind. Dead hair from a dead girl.
I shift to avoid her, which wrenches my shoulders so hard that my eyes fill with stinging tears. So I press my lips tight,
as if keeping her hair out of my mouth can keep her death out of my soul.
She passed into Cerastes’s embrace hours ago. So did the boy across from me, a blacksmith’s apprentice who did work for my
mother’s inn. He spent his entire captivity changing the colors of his fingernails. A useless Gift if I ever saw one, but
I suppose it was the one thing he could control. They were bright orange when he starved to death.
“Only the strong survive,” one of our guards hissed at me this morning when I pleaded with her for more food, or at least
ointment for my sister’s infected sores.
I’m one of the strong ones. Always have been. But even we survivors—only ten of us now—are so bad off, sunken with hunger and covered in filth, that we are unrecognizable as Grimsvolders. The moment Anja died, so did my hope, and I began begging Cerastes for her swift embrace.
The cage cart lurches to a halt. I crane my neck to see what made us stop in the middle of the highway, blinking against a
cold, bright sun. Our cobbled road is hemmed in on both sides by evergreen mountain slopes. The air is tart with drying pine
needles, the scent of a waning autumn. But it’s impossible for me to see what lies directly in our path.
Enslaving Grimsvold citizens is illegal, and a cartful, especially in this state, would attract attention. Please be the king’s men, I pray, though without true faith. Please.
Our caravan is medium sized—two cage carts with six captives in each, a handful of heavily armed enslavers guarding our rear
on foot, a few on horseback riding parallel, all led by a single wagon filled with weapons and supplies. The wagon driver
holds up a fist—the signal to be on alert.
“Ahoy, caravan!” booms a low voice. The mountains give it strength and timbre, making the sound monstrous.
“Ahoy, traveler,” answers the driver. “You and your horse are blocking our road.”
“This is the king’s road, my friend,” says the voice. “And he does not welcome enslavers on it.”
At this, our captors whisk their swords from their scabbards. The man riding watch notches an arrow.
I exchange a look with the old man sitting beside the dead boy. A stonemason by trade, who had the misfortune of being in
the inn’s common room when the raiders burst in. “Be ready,” he whispers. “Could be royal patrol.”
I look away, refusing to acknowledge the hope rekindling inside me. Instead I strain against my bonds despite the pain, hoping for a glimpse of the stranger with a voice like thunder.
“We’ve as much right to travel this road as anyone,” the driver says. “By treaty with the Surat Confederacy, your king will
not interfere in Suratian business.”
In the ensuing pause, the stranger’s horse sidesteps enough for me to catch a sliver of a glance—a shoulder, an arm, a broad
thigh, all covered in buckskin that fringes over a black leather boot caked with dried mud. It’s not so caked that I can’t
see the wink of its steel toe. His clothing says trapper, or rover. But that steel-toed boot is the finest thing I’ve seen
in a long while.
“Bria, who is it?” the mason asks. “A soldier?”
“A rich man disguised as a trapper.”
The mason droops against his manacles.
“I meant no harm, of course,” the stranger says at last. “Just warning a fellow traveler.”
“Of course,” the driver says, his voice thick with annoyance.
The stranger moves his mount to the side of the road, and I finally get a clear but distant view. He’s younger than I expected,
massive and broad shouldered, with eyes like amber gems and red-brown hair that curls down to his chest. He has some Dhakaran
blood, no doubt about it, and he’s making no effort to hide it.
One of his huge hands rests casually on the pommel of his saddle, yet I am certain he could spring to action at any moment. And I marvel that his black steed, magnificent though the stallion may be, can carry such a creature and still have energy left to dance in place and toss his mane.
The stallion is one of the Thordin, if I don’t miss my guess. From the high plains of Corth, specially bred for endurance
and war. A fine, fine horse to go with those fine, fine boots.
The cart jerks forward; my sister’s head cracks against the nearest bar. But I can’t tear my eyes from the stranger, and I
twist against my manacles as we approach to keep him in view. My shoulders burn. I’m being foolish; the next lurch of the
cart could tear them from their sockets. I’m about to settle back on my filthy bench when his gaze shifts.
Our eyes meet. Something wells inside me—a hope as bright as an ember, a surety like distant thunder, and a terror as cold
as a glacier. He frowns.
“We are not Suratian!” the mason screams, and I jump. My right shoulder tears, and hot pain shoots up my neck. “We are Grimsvolder!”
he yells. “We were taken—”
His back arches. A bloody sword point protrudes from his body, its tip only inches from my breast.
The sword is yanked away with the sick, slick sound of steel against tendon and tissue. Blood bubbles on the mason’s lips.
He stares at me with wide-eyed surprise, as if something horrifying lies through me, or maybe beyond me.
“Cerastes keep you,” I whisper.
I twist in place one last time, ignoring my injured shoulder, hoping for a final glimpse of the stranger who made my very
bones chill, but either we have moved beyond him, or he has melted into the evergreen forest.
Because of the mason’s outburst, our caravan does not stop when the sun sinks below the mountain peaks. And when Alwin the Pale rises, leaving her moon twin behind to light the world beyond the Edge, our captors press on in shadow.
We come to a barely visible track and turn off the highway. The pine-choked path is just wide enough for our wagon and carts.
It winds up the nearest mountain, crosses a brook, descends into a tiny clearing. At last the driver calls a halt.
“No grub tonight,” one of the enslavers growls. The right half of his head is shaved in the way of Suratian warriors, and
a gold ring wraps his bottom lip. “And none tomorrow night if I hear even a whisper from one of you.”
I almost remind him that we have dead in this cart, that their decomposing bodies will kill off the rest of us soon enough,
not to mention attract the monsters that roam these mountains at night. But I think better of it and clamp my mouth shut.
The enslavers usually let us out and chain us to the wheels during rest stops to preserve our arms. We’re bound for the Dhakaran
mines, after all. But not tonight. Thanks to the mason, they need to be able to flee at a moment’s notice.
I shift my weight to my feet and half stand—just enough to curl a leg beneath my rear and sit back down. My leg will be asleep
by morning, but the added height takes some pressure off my injured shoulder. I roll it experimentally. Pain shoots down my
arm. It’s not dislocated yet, but another good jolt might do it.
Sighing, I lean down and kiss my sister’s cold scalp. I close my eyes and pray. Please, Cerastes. Bring me home soon. I was strong in life. I can be strong for you in death.
I wake to the sun beating against my eyelids. But this is not what has awakened me.
Someone yells. A thunk sounds nearby. Then another.
I fight exhaustion, trying to make sense of it all. My sister slumps beside me, her pasty-skinned body sinking even lower
than before.
Bile creeps up my throat. Her arms are no longer in their sockets. Not long until her body tears away, leaving dismembered
arms dangling from the manacles. I turn my head to the side, trying not to vomit.
An enslaver dashes by, screaming. An arrow shaft protrudes from her back.
I sit up straight, hope surging so fast and hard that my eyes sting.
Whoever attacks us does so from the trees, sending arrow after arrow into the raiders’ midst. Two already lie dead beside
the wagon wheels. The others are slow to react; they’ve been caught completely off guard. Several run toward the wagon for
the bows and shields stashed there.
I kick at the boy next to me. “Wake up!” I whisper. As he stirs, I do the same to his mother, sitting across from us. We three
are the only ones left alive in our cart. “We’re under attack,” I say. “Keep your heads down, but be ready.”
They open their mouths, but wisely choose to say nothing.
Enslavers are known to kill their cargo rather than lose them to bandits or, worse, rescue.
We need to be invisible. The prisoners in the cart behind us are all still alive for now, ducked as low as their manacles will allow.
The whites of their eyes are stark in contrast to their filthy faces.
I don’t know the exact moment it happened, but at some point since waking, my prayers changed. Please, Chelydrus. Keep us safe. Let us live to be free again.
Fire streaks the sky. A nearby pine whooshes into flames. One of the enslavers must be a fire thrower. It’s an unusually grand
Gift, but I’ve no time to dwell on it, for another approaches the second cage cart, dagger in hand.
“Please, don’t!” sobs one of the captive women. “I’ll help you fight. I’ll—”
He was one of the kind ones who snuck water to Anja and me at night. But fear has made him as cruel as the rest, and he reaches
through the bars and swipes the blade across the woman’s throat. Her face goes slack, and her head lolls forward as crimson
floods the front of her dress. The boy beside me whimpers.
The enslaver turns to the next captive.
Something screams. The enslaver freezes.
The hair on my arms stands on end, and my skin shivers as the sound comes again, piercing the cold morning with killing rage.
A banshee? We’re high enough in the mountains for it. The boy beside me begins to sob in earnest.
More screaming, human this time. Hurried footsteps. The jangle of light armor. The clearing fills with smoke from the now-blazing
pine tree. The raider with the dagger cries out. Not in fear, but frustration and fury. He will lose his captives, and he
knows it.
Another roar from the banshee thing—closer this time—spurs him to action. With renewed vigor, he quickly slaughters the remaining captives in the second cart. When he wipes the soaked blade on his pants and turns to us, his eyes feverish with bloodlust, I’m the one who whimpers.
I strain uselessly against my manacles. My shoulder pops, and I shriek. The enslaver lunges and stabs the boy beside me in
the back. His mother screams, thrashing against her bonds. The boy’s mouth opens in a tiny O, and then he topples to the side
to hang from his wrists.
The enslaver turns to me and sneers.
I close my eyes against what comes next. None of this is real. It’s too horrible to be real. I was serving mead in the common
room of my family’s inn just three weeks ago. Less? Maybe I’ll wake from a terrible dream. Anja and I will laugh together
over the nightmare of her death as we change the rushes and sweep the floor and bat away the roaming hands of our customers.
But just in case it is real, I mutter one last prayer. I commend my spirit into your embrace, Cerastes. I was strong in life. I will be strong for you in death. I relax against my manacles, awaiting the dagger. At least the pain in my shoulder will soon be gone.
I wait. I expect. But death does not come.
Finally I crack open one eye.
The raider is gone. No—I crane my neck to see outside the cart. He lies on the ground, staring up at the sky. His belly is
flayed open; his offal steams in the near-freezing air.
Overwhelming relief wars with revulsion. My stomach heaves, but it has nothing to give up.
I take a glorious, selfish moment to breathe, to exult in the way icy air hollows out my lungs, to fully absorb the searing pain of my shoulder. For I am alive. Alive, alive, alive.
But I’m the only one. Raiders lie dead all around the cart, some from arrows, and some, like the one with the dagger, have
been ripped open. The woman across from me slumps, an arrow jutting from her back. A Suratian arrow, with cormorant fletching.
Alive, but alone in a sea of death.
I’m sure to join them soon, for I’ve no way to free myself. Even if I did, the banshee thing that mangled these enslavers
is still out there. I’m safer in this cage.
How long can I last? Days? Maybe only hours. I’m half starved and freezing. My mind fogs with pain, and my breath comes in
gasps. A body is not meant to feel such things for long.
“I found a key,” says a voice in my ear, and my heart leaps. “Hold on.”
The scrape of a lock, the squeak of the door swinging wide. The cart tips with someone’s weight. Suddenly the massive stranger
crouches before me. His red-brown hair curtains half his face, but his revealed eye narrows. It’s the smell. I’ve become almost
numb to the reek of this cage.
He studies the length of my body, and I cannot tell what he seeks. He hmphs, as if confirming something. Then he straightens
and reaches for my manacled wrists.
His buckskin jacket brushes my nose. He smells of pine forest and woodsmoke and—
I scream as the bones of my upper arm grind into my shoulder. Distantly, beyond the red haze of my vision, I know I’ve just been freed, but it doesn’t seem to matter as I topple forward helplessly.
Strong hands catch me. Fingers palpate my shoulder socket. The light of the world dims.
“I’m going to fix your shoulder,” he says. “I’ll count to three. One—”
He yanks it into place. My whole world teeters.