Chapter 3
My veins flood with ice. The rhythm of my heart turns wild, like the jaunty tunes played in the roughest pubs in Caer Draen. The stares of both High Swynwragedd are piercing enough to bore through my skull, like they’re trying to stab the truth straight from my mind.
Osian must have found the rebel’s body after unconsciousness claimed me. Until now, he’s kept my secret, but he’ll be furious that I lied to him.
Angry enough to betray me? Maybe.
That thought hurts more than I want to admit, but I can’t dwell on it. Not when I’m moments away from being sent to the stocks—or worse.
“Well?” Lowri clicks her tongue, clearly unimpressed by my silence.
I clear my throat again, like that might conjure the right words. It doesn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I say at last, clenching my hands in my lap. “That aspect of my magic is not something I’m proud of, nor something I wish to use. So I thought it was best to…”
“You know how the Order feels about keeping secrets,” Seren replies, her frown deepening.
When we commit ourselves to the Order, we make an oath to dedicate ourselves to the kingdom and to the innocents who lack the strength or magic to protect themselves.
It means giving up our entire life. We own nothing.
Not a house, not a scrap of land. Not even the clothes on our backs.
We don’t alter our appearance without permission or marry without the Order’s blessing.
We do not sing songs, write fanciful tales, or paint the sun as it sinks beyond the sea’s white-capped horizon.
And we certainly don’t keep secrets.
Especially not one as large as mine.
“I know, I’m sorry.” I drop my gaze to the table, half-expecting several Rhyfelwyr to burst through the door and drag me away. Into the dungeons I’ll go until they decide what to do with me. Execution? No, it won’t be that simple. Even if they mean to punish me, they’ll want a way to use my magic.
I flinch when Seren pats my hand—gently, like she knows my pulse is skittering like a frightened mouse.
“Don’t fret,” she murmurs. “We understand. The Swynwragedd are not accustomed to doling out death. That has always been the arena of Rhyfelwyr and Rhyfelwyr alone. If we wanted you to fight as they do, we would have trained you accordingly. As it is…”
Lowri clicks her tongue again but offers no objection.
I glance between them, scarcely daring to hope. “You’re not angry with me?”
“No,” Seren says, smiling gently. “We wish you would have told us, of course, but that hardly matters now. We’re impressed by the strength in your magic, in death and in life. I know you’re concerned about your partner, but Osian is doing well. Far better than we could have anticipated.”
Relief floods me. “When I stopped by his room earlier, he wasn’t there. Even though I swore his resurrection felt different than the others, I thought I might have been wrong to hope he could survive it.”
“Ah yes, he’s in the lab,” Lowri says. “Where he’ll remain for some time.”
“The lab?” I frown.
“He’s the first of your resurrections to walk among us for longer than a few moments. We intend to run a series of examinations. Determine how much of his body functions as though he were truly alive. We want to understand what this magic is capable of. And what its limits are.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “For how long?”
Seren meets my gaze without blinking. “For as long as necessary. You understand what this means, don’t you?
If you can raise someone fully, you could, in theory, bring back one of the gods.
” Her lips curve. “We would possess quite the weapon. Useful for the war, wouldn’t you say? We certainly won’t win otherwise.”
“Careful, Seren,” Lowri snaps.
The color drains from Seren’s face. She’s said too much.
We have been at war with our neighboring kingdom for so long no one remembers peace. But it’s always been skirmishes in the borderlands. No one has ever dared push for full invasion. We’ve been too evenly matched to risk annihilation. But to hear Seren doesn’t believe we’ll win…
“Why?” I breathe. “I thought the Kingdom of Gelyn’s army was as broken as ours.”
Seren exhales slowly. “Oh, Angharad. It’s—”
“If we tell her,” Lowri cuts in, “every Rhyfelwr and Swynwraig inside this castle will know by dinnertime.”
“I swear I won’t tell a soul,” I say quickly. Mostly because I don’t want to be the one to drop this bad news in anyone else’s lap.
“We should tell her,” Seren murmurs. “We’ll need her magic if we want to accomplish what we’re planning.”
A pause. They both turn their inscrutable gazes on me.
“Very well,” Lowri concedes.
Seren nods. “It’s not the Kingdom of Gelyn that’s coming for us.
It’s a human kingdom from the western continent, or so we believe.
Our scouts spotted their ships near the southern islands and sent a falcon to warn us.
They’re still two months away, at least. But it could be two years, and it wouldn’t matter.
We don’t have the army to defend our shores. ”
For a moment, I can only stare at her, her words spinning wildly through my mind.
War is all I’ve ever known, but it has always felt distant.
Something that happens miles from our city in the borderlands.
Something the king and his soldiers handle while we, the Order, contend with the growing rebel threat.
What’s more, the Kingdom of Gelyn is our enemy, yes, but they’re an enemy we understand.
We know their strengths and their weaknesses.
We know what magic they wield, and what they lack.
These humans…we know nothing.
Then Seren’s meaning settles fully into place.
“And you want me to bring a god back to life so we can beat them?”
It’s…madness.
“Perhaps.” Lowri steeples her fingers beneath her chin. “Only if we can be certain it will succeed. We cannot afford unintended consequences where a god is concerned. Which is why we’re conducting these examinations on Osian.”
“And if the results are promising, then yes,” Seren adds. “We want you to bring back a god. Arawn the Mighty, specifically. With his power, we could fight back the human army and finally overcome our long-standing enemies. It would end to the war. All of it.”
Stunned, I sit back in my chair.
An end to the war.
I have never allowed myself to imagine such a thing. There are a few constants in this world. The sun rises in the east. The wind blows across the hills. The rebels attack the city on the anniversary of our gods’ deaths.
And we are at war.
It began long before I was born, and I’ve always assumed it would rage long after I’m gone. If it ever ended, I thought it would only be because there was no one left to swing a blade.
The possibility stirs something in me. Hope. But that hope is tangled in brambles.
Osian made me swear that I would never use my magic on him. And now that I have, he’s being poked and prodded like some rare specimen, denied even the comfort of his own bed. He did not agree to this.
Guilt floods over me.
“Can’t you research all this without keeping Osian trapped in the lab?” I dare to ask.
“We do not know how long your magic can sustain him,” Lowri replies. “It’s essential he remain under constant supervision.”
“Is there no other way?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
Seren and Lowri are not wrong. With a living god on our side, a god who was once renowned in battle, we might survive. Without him, our destruction feels inevitable.
“Well,” Seren says slowly, exchanging a glance with Lowri, “it’s interesting that you ask.”
“We do hate to experiment on any member of the Order,” Lowri continues for her. “The well-being of you all is, of course, our priority. So there is…an alternative.”
A small pause.
“But it is dangerous. And we cannot guarantee success,” they say in unison.
I sit a little straighter. “I’ll do almost anything to get Osian out of the lab.”
“We suspected as much,” Lowri says with a small smile. “Which is why we’ve drawn up an assignment for you. If you accept, you’ll need to leave immediately.” She turns to shuffle papers on the desk, exceedingly calm, as if this moment has been planned for months.
It annoys me more than it should. The High Swynwragedd do not play games, especially not with matters of this magnitude. And yet I still feel as if my puppet strings are being tugged.
“I trust you know of the exile living along the coast,” Seren says without preamble.
“Taliesin Wynn,” I reply automatically. He’s the one who threatened to bury Caer Draen in ice if we refused his demands. And he has the magic to do it. A chill snakes down my spine. “Why?”
“We would prefer to experiment on him rather than on your Osian,” Seren says, far too calmly for the horror her words suggest. “To do so, you would need to go to him, kill him, and then resurrect him before bringing him to us.”
Silence crashes down around me. Surely I am still sleeping, for her words are as nonsensical as any dream-addled babbling. And yet when I blink, she is still there with her hands laced on the table and an eerie smile curving her lips.
If it’s not a dream, it’s a nightmare I can’t escape.
Not that I’ve dreamed in years.
“Excuse me?” I manage.
“I know it sounds mad,” Seren continues, “but we have long hoped to use him for something useful. We simply weren’t certain what that would be until now.”
I open my mouth, then snap it shut.
“If you’re concerned about his power, you need not be. His location is heavily warded,” Lowri adds.
“You want me to kill him…and then resurrect him…so you can experiment on him?” The words feel foreign in my mouth. If they are asking for this, they might have discovered the full truth of magic, whether or not they say it aloud.
And they want me to wield it in a way I swore, both to Osian and to myself, that I never would.
“Better him than Osian. Better him than anyone else, wouldn’t you agree?” Seren asks softly.
I should agree. And yet, it leaves me feeling cold.
“My magic only worked for Osian because of how well I know him. I do not know Taliesin Wynn. I’ve never even met him. If I resurrect him, he’ll live for no more than a moment or two.”
“You know a great deal of him, the infamous bastard, as we all do.” Seren shrugs. “Spend a week or two with him, if need be.”
Spend a week or two…with the exiled threat.
“Isn’t that dangerous? Even if his powers are muted by the wards, won’t he want to kill a member of the Order that trapped him there?”
“Tell him you are a Swynwraig on the run from the Order. Trust me, he will have a soft spot for you.” Seren smiles. “Perhaps it’ll even help convince him to open up to you, so you can learn him well. The better you know him, the longer we can examine him.”
I swallow, stomach twisting. “I don’t think it would be enough.”
Lowri folds her arms and glares at me disapprovingly. This is not the answer they want, and suddenly I feel the urge to retract every objection. Letting down the Order goes against the very core of who I am.
“If we have any hope of you resurrecting a god, it will have to be enough,” Seren insists.
“You will not have the occasion to know one as well as you know Osian, unfortunately. You must make do with what we have.” She slides a paper across the table to me, labelled with the exile’s name. “Our recorded histories.”
“In fact,” Lowri leans closer, voice low, “we do admit Osian isn’t the best candidate for our examinations. He shares so little in common with how you’d handle bringing back a god.”
“But if he’s all we’ve got, he’s what we’ll use,” Seren adds.
“I see,” I whisper.
Their answering smiles feel as sharp as any sword.
I’ve heard of their cunning, but I’ve never felt it directed at me until now. It twists my stomach, this feeling of being trapped in a spider’s web. A web designed to make me think I can escape, even though it’s hopeless.
I could say no. For now. But they will find another way to force me to comply. Already they are using my love for Osian against me. I see it so clearly. And yet recognizing it changes nothing.
I swallow. “Fine. I accept your assignment.”
Lowri slides another document across the table. It’s my assignment, laid out in meticulous detail, with a space at the bottom waiting for my signature. Then she passes me Arawn the Mighty’s blessed book, the leather cover curled and softened from centuries of use.
“Make the oath,” Seren says firmly. “I will end the exile by my own hand.”
I hesitate only for a moment as I place one hand on the book and the other around the quill.
There must be another way. Anything but this.
But then my thoughts drift to Osian, to his fury in his eyes after what I did.
I was the one who put him in his cage, and I know Seren and Lowri well enough to understand they will never back down.
The only way he’s getting out of this is if I do what they want.
“I will end the exile by my own hand,” I whisper, signing my name in unison with my spoken words.
A chill runs through me. I’ve done this a hundred times for dozens of other assignments. The oath is nothing more than ceremonial. But this time, it feels different. Like it’s the first step toward my doom.