Chapter 2
‘Ithink you have the wrong door,’ Ezer said now, heart pounding. She curled her sweaty hands into fists.
A Sacred Knight.
Standing here in the south, when he should have been at the front lines of war, fighting back against the Acolyte’s darkness with his gods-given magic.
The man who stood in her doorway was most certainly a warrior.
He was her opposite, in every way.
He stood strong and towering when she was small and frail.
His pure snow-white hair was woven into an intricate warrior’s braid, while the sides of his head were clean shaven.
She looked at the sigil upon his chest and found her eyes widening. A pair of white eagle wings backed by a crest of deep orange.
A Firemage.
One whose power came from the god Vivorr.
She’d read about the different Sacred magics, seeking every story she could after her strangeties began to kick in.
Each Sacred Knight was born with perfectly controllable magic, from one of five Pillars in the Sacred Text: Wind, Water, Fire, Realm, and the Ehver.
Each one, represented by its own unique god and their particular power.
Avane for wind, Odaeis for water, Vivorr for fire, Aristra for realm, and lastly, Dhysis, god of all mortal bodies. The symbols for each one surrounded her mother’s ring.
And though the gods could no longer come down and walk amongst mortal kind, they could still bless them with rare gifts.
Magic had been one of them.
It was the first Godblessing ever recorded, given to the purest of hearts, a group of god-fearing warriors that became the first five Sacred Knights, long ago. They had sworn to protect the nomages of the kingdom. And thankfully so. All of Lordach would be dead if it weren’t for the Sacred.
But Ezer knew, from the messages her birds delivered, that the tide of war was turning. And it wasn’t in Lordach’s favor.
She studied the Sacred Knight before her now.
‘Ravenminder,’ he said. His voice was accented. Northern. She supposed she’d have shared the same accent if the wolves hadn’t changed her fate. ‘You’re … younger than I expected.’
She frowned at that.
He looked down at her like he expected her to shrink in the glory of his presence. A massive, jagged scar ran down the entirety of his face, stretching to the neckline of his cloak.
She lifted her own chin as if to better show hers.
Three for his one.
But he was a warrior who had seen more than his fair share of battle. She was just an orphan plucked from the wreckage of a shadow wolf attack. A young woman who had a fragment of useless magic.
Nothing more.
She crossed her arms and stared up at him, fully aware of the feathers stuck in her hair, the ink stains upon her fingertips. ‘Who are you?’
He looked young, perhaps twenty, so not much older than she.
But the Sacred aged at a different rate than nomages. The more magic they used, the more power required of their mortal bodies … the faster a Sacred died.
He eyed her cell with not a hint of emotion on his face.
The open window, the near-shredded blanket upon her stained cot.
The piles of books she’d read cover to cover to fill her days alone; the parchment and the bird waste that she’d yet to scrub from the rounded stone walls and perches.
All the birds studied him closely, as if they, too, felt the power that emanated from such a godsblessed being.
His eyes lingered a bit longer on her awful scars.
‘Well?’ she asked and tapped her toe impatiently. Anxiety had always sharpened her edges, made her feel like a weapon poised to attack.
‘You are the Ravenminder of Rendegard. Are you not?’
The question surprised her, for the answer should have been obvious.
‘Who’s asking?’ Ezer said.
‘Lordach,’ the knight grunted. He inspected her from head to toe and sighed. As if he were disappointed by what he saw.
But now her heart was racing. Because she knew what it was like when a summons came.
And there was only one person she knew that would bring a summons to her door. One person that had packed his bags and traveled north on a recruiting wagon, two years ago.
‘Read it,’ the knight said.
And pushed a worn scroll into her hands.
King Draybor Laroux’s sigil – a set of eagle wings topped by an arch of five small crowns – sealed the back.
Her legs felt weak. Her stomach was going to turn itself inside out, right here on the tower floor.
She opened the scroll and began to read:
Ezer of Rendegard, Ravenminder, has-
She glanced up, eyes widening.
The Sacred Knight only stared past her, studying the birds.
So, she went back to the scroll and read it hungrily.
Ezer of Rendegard, Ravenminder, has been legally drafted into the service of the Lordachian Army on this 12th Godsday of Avane’s Month.
‘What …’ Ezer breathed out.
‘You’ve been drafted.’
‘But … I’m already in service here.’ She doubted he knew about the mountain of debt. ‘I can’t just leave.’
‘You can, and you will.’
She crossed her arms. ‘Says who? I’m contracted to work for the prison master until …’
She wasn’t certain exactly when until was.
The Sacred shrugged. ‘Your contract is paid off. Your mission is elsewhere now. It’s time to go.’
Her heart began to beat faster as she realized what that all meant.
‘The prison master sold me?’ she asked, breathless. ‘That bastard.’
Heat rushed through her. For two years he’d kept her here, pocketing all the money for her work, only to accept payment for shipping her off to the warfront. To the place where everyone met death.
‘Your last Ravenminder,’ Ezer asked. ‘What was their name?’
‘It is not my duty to answer your questions,’ said the Sacred. But as he stared at her, he sighed and said, ‘He said his name was Ervos.’
She could have sworn the floor fell out from beneath her feet.
‘Tall man, red hair, booming voice?’ Ezer asked.
‘If memory recalls.’
Gods.
She knew he was alive. She knew she wasn’t still alone in this world. For the first time in ages, a bit of hope ignited in her chest.
He’d become the Ravenminder of the warfront. And now he must have been transferred again to another tower
… So why hadn’t he written to her?
Why hadn’t he come home?
Because of the debts, something whispered within her soul.
No, she thought. He wouldn’t do that to me.
Something suddenly felt off.
‘Take me to him,’ Ezer said, and stepped forward as if to move from the tower.
‘I’m taking you north, to serve as all citizens must serve.’ The Sacred Knight’s large frame blocked her way. He sighed, as if this entire conversation was already a waste of his time. ‘But not to him. He’s … gone.’
‘Gone where?’ Ezer asked. ‘To another garrison, another town? You can deliver me safely to wherever he is and I’ll serve—’
It was then that she noticed it. The way his pale eyes had shifted, how his frown had deepened ever more. And it made sense, why Ervos hadn’t returned.
‘My uncle … he’s dead. Isn’t he?’ she breathed out.
His jaw hardened, lips pressed in a thin line. ‘War is not kind. People often pay the price.’
Ervos was the only one who’d ever cared about her in this godsforsaken realm.
She’d never imagined a world without him.
And now he was gone.
She could feel the absence of him, suddenly. Like her chest was going to split in two.
Like she was floating, untethered, in a deep black abyss. And there was no one left to reel her back in. To bring her home.
There was not a hint of kindness in the Sacred’s words as he said, ‘Are you ready to leave now?’
Ezer’s head snapped up. ‘That’s all you can say?’
‘I’m here to escort reinforcements north.’ He frowned. ‘I’ve already given you more than your fair share of time, if we’re to remain on schedule.’
A spike of heat slammed into her. The ravens ruffled their feathers as if they too sensed it, and suddenly … she imagined how satisfying it would be to feel his nose crunch beneath her fist. She imagined the pleasure she would feel at making him bleed.
She hated him.
She hated him more than she’d hated Ervos for the past two years for leaving her here without him.
For only writing her a single godsdamned letter.
For never saying goodbye.
‘You have two minutes to pack your bags,’ the Sacred said. ‘Take only what you can carry. The Minder’s tower has all the necessary supplies to accomplish your work: quill and ink and parchment, a uniform to be worn. We leave with the next recruiting wagon.’
He turned, slamming the door shut behind him.
The moment he left, her knees buckled. The dust settled around her, but she felt like she was still falling. She curled her hand into a fist around her mother’s ring, waiting for the calmness to wash over her. For some sense of peace to settle across her shoulders like it always had.
But there was only silence.
Emptiness.
The birds shifted on their perches, uneasy, as Ezer knelt there in the shavings of her tower, the letter in her hands as she reread it.
Ervos was gone.
And she realized, as all hope died within her, that she was to replace him again.
The wind danced with the scent of salt and storms. The stars were so bright, the moon a delicate silver plate balanced in the sky.
Beautiful.
So, so beautiful, the time when death was closest.
She closed her eyes, tipped her head to the sky, and breathed it in.
Freedom, she thought. A pity, to feel it for a moment … only to have it ripped away again so soon.
The birds followed from above, wings drenched in fog as the Sacred led Ezer away.
After a harrowing, humiliating walk across the creaking rope bridge – a pity, for a Ravenminder’s biggest fear to be heights – they reached the front of Rendegard.
There, the prison’s steps unraveled down the cliffside like a dark spool of thread.
They ended at the towering prison gates.
Beyond them, a thick span of woods separated the prison from the city.
Distant smokestacks trailed into the night sky, stretching from spires and tiled rooftops, while candles flickered in second-story windows.
Their color was changed depending on the godsday.
Tonight, it was green for Aristra, god of realm.
Others had probably donned small carvings of bears on their windowsills to represent Aristra’s animal form.
It had been two years since Ezer had stood beside her uncle and lit a candle. Two years since she’d prayed to the Five, some part of her always doubting the words that tumbled from her own lips.
‘Hurry up,’ the Sacred grunted, drawing her attention back to him.
She turned to see a wagon awaiting her. And not simply any normal covered wagon, but an enormous prison wagon, with reinforced iron sides meant for liars and thieves and murderers, all manner of people who’d broken countless of Lordach’s laws.
The worst thing Ezer had ever done was curse, and one time she’d kicked a cat in defense of her birds.
Gods, she hated cats.
They entered a room thinking everyone blessed because of their presence.
Ezer glowered up at him. Gods, he was massive. ‘But you can’t mean to make me ride in there, with …’
Her voice trailed off as she glanced at the line of prisoners.
‘I can,’ the Sacred said. ‘And I will. It’s safer than what we’ll face traveling north. The open road is no place for a lady, especially at night.’
‘And neither is a prison wagon,’ Ezer snapped at him.
A muscle in his perfect jaw twitched. ‘You would be wise to watch your tongue, Minder, before you arrive in the north.’
Her eyes met his. ‘My tongue, Mage, is of no concern to you.’
She could have sworn his face reddened as he turned away. At least the rumors about the Sacred were true, then. They never laid with another until they were matched.
She watched him walk away as she waited in the rain, shivering like a sewer rat as the prisoners clambered aboard.
When she climbed inside, she found herself shoved in the back corner, in the depths of darkness, amid the stink of sweat and piss and prisoners that had at best been petty thieves. At worst, cold-blooded killers.
And perhaps some were like her, with small, spoiled magic, useless to the kingdom but still capable of being feared for their differences, mistaken for someone loyal to the Acolyte.
There was no telling which of them she sat between.
‘Escorted here by him?’ the woman beside Ezer asked. ‘You must be of some worth after all, tiny.’
‘And why’s that?’ Ezer asked as the rain picked up and the wagon doors began to close with a groan.
The woman lifted a filthy brow. ‘How long have you been in your cell?’
‘Not a cell,’ Ezer protested, but the woman cut her off with a bark of laughter. ‘And why would that matter?’
It was dark as pitch, but with her small magic, Ezer watched the woman’s filthy brows raise, clear as day. ‘Because anyone with half a brain would recognize that handsome face. He’s Arawn Laroux, the Crown Prince of Lordach.’
A whip cracked.
A horse whinnied from outside the wagon as it jolted, and the wheels began to move.
The crown prince of Lordach, Ezer thought.
Strange that he’d come to pick up a wagon full of prisoners, when he should have been using that famed magic for the war.
And gods, what an ass Arawn Laroux was.