Chapter One – Mira
Chapter One
Mira
Ice whipped across my face like hundreds of tiny blades. The Kalurian winter was merciless – as cruel and unforgiving as the wrath building in my throat.
I gripped the hilt of my sword with frostbitten fingers, itching to draw it and run the man in front of me through.
My mother’s murderer. And the butcherer of my people.
Roran smiled faintly, fully aware of my warring impulses.
He towered over me just as he had in the arena a year ago.
And though I didn’t fear him as I had then, I would be lying if I didn’t feel a chill as I took in the blood darkening his golden armour, or the hellish, raised scar bisecting his face.
‘Not pretty, is it?’ Roran traced the scar with an idle finger, but his hard green eyes were fixed on me. Predatory. Assessing. ‘Healers offered to remove it, but I like the reminder.’
The last thing I wanted was to indulge him. ‘What reminder?’ I gritted out.
Roran moved forward, his boots thudding against the frozen, rocky ground.
We had met halfway between the Kalurian capital and the boundary of the Wilds, on a desolate mountain plateau.
His delegation – twenty black-garbed killers from the Order of Warriors – looked on from behind a white banner of truce.
I felt their longing to end this war with a single, bloody strike.
For once, we were of the same mind.
I resisted the urge to glance behind me – to where twenty of my best fighters watched from a nearby ridge, mounted atop their horses. I f Roran attacked me, I would retaliate, and so would they. And perhaps my mother would finally be avenged.
But Roran stopped a slight distance from me and murmured, ‘A reminder to raze the Wilds to the ground.’
‘And here I believed that you wanted to negotiate.’
‘Oh, I’m prepared to negotiate.’ His breath was hot on my face. ‘Surrender now, and I’ll offer you a good death. Quick and clean, like the one I would have given you in the arena.’
Staring up into his pitiless face, I had to swallow down rising bile. ‘Never,’ I breathed back. And then, more loudly: ‘I’ll never surrender to you.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Roran’s tone was dismissive.
‘You don’t have the numbers to pose a threat to me, and when you do come out of hiding, I’ll skewer you along with your so-called army.
Perhaps I’ll mount your head on a spike after I’m done, and fix it to the gates of the Kalurian palace. A fitting homecoming.’
‘If you’re threatening me,’ I said coldly, ‘then I must be doing something right. What was it that cut the deepest, Roran? Was it when my people burned your army’s stores? Raided their camps? Slit their throats?’
His smile was a terrible thing. ‘Not without casualties.’
‘Always higher for you, I hear. That’s the thing about guerrilla warfare: it’s easier to do damage on my end. After all, we have a large target to work with. It isn’t hard to make you bleed.’
‘You’ve landed a few cuts, I’ll give you that. But I’m not the one who’s about to bleed, Mira.’ Roran stepped closer, until his armoured breastplate brushed mine. ‘ You are.’
This close, his features were highlighted in familiar, terrifying detail. With his red hair and emotionless face, Roran could have been Emperor Kalias brought back to life.
My heart pounded a jagged rhythm against my chest, so loud that I wondered if he could hear it.
And a terrible suspicion began to take root.
Roran’s eyes glittered as understanding dawned on my face. I never should have accepted his truce. He had come here for one reason, and one reason alone: to torment me.
‘You could have . . . sent me their bodies,’ I managed to say, my voice hoarse. ‘You didn’t need to arrange this farce.’
‘Ah,’ Roran grinned, flashing his teeth, ‘but where is the fun in that? Every one of my soldiers you killed, every piece of machinery and grain of food you destroyed . . . I added all of it to your tally. And now it’s time for you to pay.’ He nodded to his Warriors.
They parted like a dark sea, revealing the two bound captives at the heart of Roran’s contingent. A morbid centrepiece.
Darius looked up at me from his knees. His face was coated in dried blood, and one of his sea-green eyes was swollen shut. Beside him, Nari seemed to have fared better, though the Kalurian warrior favoured her right side. I made an involuntary move towards them.
‘You can see perfectly well from here,’ Roran said, holding up a hand.
As if it was a signal, two Warriors stepped forward. Though neither drew their sword, the threat was clear.
‘How should I do it, do you think?’ Roran asked. ‘A beheading, like your mother? That has sentimental value, I suppose, but it’s positively merciful. Too good for cowards who attack under the cover of darkness.’
I tried to block out his words, but I still felt the horror of them. ‘What can I give you in exchange for their lives?’
He pretended to consider. Then he said, ‘Nothing. I’ve already told you what I want: your surrender.’
‘In return for a quick death,’ I reiterated.
A curt nod.
‘ And their lives?’
Darius shook his head at me, his expression anguished. The cloth in his mouth made talking impossible, but if he could, I knew he would beg me not to do this. So would Nari, who believed wholeheartedly in protecting the Wilds.
‘Two grunts in exchange for a queen?’ Roran said. ‘I’m willing to make that deal.’
I kept looking at Darius and Nari – at the conviction burning in their eyes. They were willing to die for me, just like the Kalurian Governor had been. Didn’t I owe it to S?ren Halvor, and to the countless Kalurians who had died in this war, to continue fighting?
‘I heard about your military conquest in Etheria,’ I said, shifting to face Roran once more.
‘The courtiers laughed about it back in Ravalia. The long line of slaves snaking down to the mines. The ones you strung up on posts along the way, as reminders.’ I paused, sucking in a steadying breath.
‘I can’t allow you to do that here, even if it means watching my friends die.
But I have another proposition for you.’
‘And what might that be?’ Roran asked, twirling a dagger in his hand.
‘I have your brother in my dungeons.’ I could only imagine the damage Cassius could do if he was reunited with his older brother, but it couldn’t be helped. ‘If you give me Darius and Nari, I will return Cassius to you unharmed.’
‘ Cassius ?’ Roran released a booming laugh.
‘You think I care about that little deviant? I’m grateful you locked him up.
’ Still chortling, Roran caught the dagger and pointed with it back towards the encampment.
‘How about this: you can pick one of them to survive. I’ll allow whoever you choose one minute to run to your side.
If they reach you in that time, I will let them live. ’
‘What’s the catch?’
‘No catch. I’ll keep my word. But whichever you don’t choose, I will feed to my hounds.’
Tears welled in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Roran’s offer wasn’t a mercy – far from it. But if it meant I could save one of them . . .
I gazed from Darius to Nari and back again.
Darius had survived so much back in Ravalia, rising up to lead the Ravalian resistance.
He had proved equally valuable here in Kalure, but more than that, he had become something of a father figure to me.
I couldn’t look at him without being reminded of all the stories we’d shared about my mother.
Letting him die would be like watching her die all over again.
But Nari wasn’t merely a Kalurian warrior or the head of clan Volsung. She was also the sister of V?lund, the warlord the clans had chosen as their leader. If I chose a Ravalian over her, I risked alienating V?lund and losing the support of his warriors – which meant losing this war against Roran.
I can’t do it , I realised, looking at Darius with blurry eyes. I can’t save you .
Darius blinked once, as if telling me that he understood.
‘I choose . . .’ My gaze was drawn to Nari, who was watching me intently. Despite her fierceness, despite her resolve to die with honour, she wanted to live. ‘. . . Darius,’ I finished. ‘I choose Darius.’
Nari’s expression turned as cold and distant as the snow-capped mountains around us. I had dangled hope in front of her and then snatched it away – the cruellest torment of all.
She couldn’t possibly hate me more than I hated myself. But I didn’t try to reverse my decision. I couldn’t.
‘Release him,’ Roran called, and his Warriors complied.
Darius stumbled forward, and I gasped at the mottled bruising and raised scars criss-crossing his pale chest. It had only been two days since I’d lost contact with him. Two days –
‘Shouldn’t you be running?’ Roran asked mildly.
Panic flared in Darius’s eyes. He lurched forward with all the grace of a drunk person, and I realised with a surge of terror that Roran hadn’t merely had Darius beaten, or deprived of food and water. He had weakened him with some toxin or drug.
‘I thought Ravalians prided themselves on honour,’ I spat at Roran.
‘There is no honour in war.’ He kept his voice low, so that only I could hear him. ‘Every true leader knows that, Kasmira. It’s time you learnt it, too.’
Furious tears flowed down my cheeks. Darius was making ground, but he wasn’t moving fast enough. His own body was betraying him; a body that he had trained and honed and relied upon for decades. Watching him lurch sideways only to right himself temporarily and push on was more than I could bear.
Then he fell.
Blood poured from his nose as he struggled to rise, using his single arm to push off the ground.
My legs tensed, preparing to run to him–
‘You do that,’ Roran said, the point of his blade pressing against my sternum, ‘and this truce is over. I will have the excuse I need to kill you and the rest of your people.’
I looked up at Roran, hating him more than I had ever hated anyone in my life. Even Emperor Kalias.