The Heir to the Second Line, Lierick Hanovan, uses his persuasion powers to take hold of the mind of Vox Vylan, lover of Avalon Halhed and Heir to the First Line. Using the powers of his Line, Lierick Hanovan forces Vox Vylan to turn his gun on himself, shooting himself in the heart. This is witnessed by the Recreationist, and she resets time to her last Swell, although she is still unaware of what that moment means. A time where she is loved and secure. A safe place. Fortunately, it is only hours beforehand, with her other lover, Hayle Taeme.
I looked up at Lierick Hanovan. He looked almost… contrite. Pulling back my arm, I punched him in the face as hard as I could. His nose crunched beneath my knuckles, but it wasn’t enough. That instinctive rage I’d felt earlier made sense now.
“You fuckingkilledhim? You killed him, and you have the audacity to sit across from me and smile that smug fucking expression at me?” I dived across the table, and we crashed to the ground. He lay there as I hit him, throwing every ounce of training I had behind my fists. Lierick didn’t even try to dodge my blows, taking every single one like a penance, until Hayle pulled me back and into his arms.
“A different Lierick did that. A Lierick who didn’t know you even existed, not really. I wouldn’t do it now, knowing what he means to you. I swear it on my life, and the life of my people.” Lierick’s face was both sad and earnest, and I hated that I believed him.
I breathed heavily, the tears stinging my eyes. Vox’s expression was hard. “Fucking explain,” he muttered ominously.
Lierick nodded. “It’s better that I start at the beginning.”
Two
Lierick
“You must appeal to the Conclave again. It isn’t time.” My father was a cautious man, maybe too cautious. It had meant we’d lived in an age of prosperity, and everyone had enough, but we didn’tthrive.We were still trapped here, separated from the lands of our forefathers by secrets and blood.
“You don’t think we’ve tried, Arthur? We’ve asked over and over, and every time, we are rejected. Vylan doesn’t want to hear it; he’d be more than happy if we were all dead. Taeme and the Third Line have done what they could, but we both know those boats didn’t accidentally sink in the Alutian Sea. He’s trying to starve us into extinction, and if we don’t drastically shake things up now, I fear he’ll succeed.” Jacob Abaster sat in front of the fire beside my father. “It is even more dire for the Twelfth. Babies are starving at their mothers’ breasts. The time for hiding is over, Hanovan. We must rise up against Vylan and the First Line, and we can’t do it without the Second Line.”
Desperation was pushing at the edges of his words. The Baron of the Eleventh Line really had tried everything.
I agreed with him. It was time. Not only did the Eleventh and Twelfth Lines need this, our Line needed it too. Ozryn was isolated from the rest of the world—perched high in themountains of Ebrus, we were inaccessible from the mainland, except for a small and dangerous mountain pass through the Eleventh Line Barony.
As far as anyone in the rest of the country knew, there was nothing up here but mountain cliffs and ice plains. A lie we’d carefully curated and manipulated over generations, until no one knew it as anything but fact.
I understood my father’s hesitation, though. To expose ourselves now was opening the Second Line up once again to genocide, one that might actually be successful this time. It would jeopardise the agents we had scattered in even the smallest corners of the country. People would die.
But we would be free.
I looked at my father. “Baron,” I said, using his title. “It’s the right thing to do.”
My father’s jaw tensed, and I could see his fear, despite the confidence in his expression. Fear for his people. Fear for me, his Heir and more importantly, his son.
Sucking in a deep breath, he inclined his head. “Go to the temples. Ask the Votresses to read the stars.”
My father was a deeply faithful man. Faithful to his Goddess, to his family, to his people. It was why we loved and followed him. I stood, nodding respectfully to Baron Abaster on the way out the door. His return expression was grateful. Even if we didn’t go to war, he knew I’d try to change my father’s mind.
The temples of Ozryn had been here longer than the stronghold itself. The temple was a maze beneath the city, and I doubted any of us truly knew the full extent. The Votresses—the acolytes of the Goddess—had given their lives to worshiping her and holding her magic, and were equally as mysterious. We didn’t delve too deeply, respectful of their existence.
There had always been something about them that made my skin prickle, like they possessed too much magic. A wild kind of power that made the rest of us look… tame.
Pausing in the large antechamber, I removed my shoes and weapons, then stepped up to the small alcove. It held two bronze bowls, one filled with water, the other filled with ash. In a gesture that I’d done for as long as I could remember, I dipped my finger in the water, pressing a wet tip beneath the corner of my left eye. With my right hand, I dipped a finger in the ash, pressing it beneath the corner of my right eye.
Moving to the left, I lit the wick of a heavy, black pillar candle, one of dozens pressed into individual alcoves on the wall. They’d explained to me as a child that the ritual was a celebration of birth, life, and death, but I was no theologian, so I didn’t really understand the significance of each step.
Stepping through the gauzy dark fabrics into the temple, I smiled softly at my favorite Votress. Perla was old; she was hunched, and her skin held a deep wrinkle between her brows. Maybe it was from years on her knees, offering up prayers to the Goddess, or maybe it was from years of shouldering the burdens of the people of Ozryn. Maybe she was just really fucking old. Despite the age of her body, her eyes were sharp and bright, and it wasn’t hard to imagine the young woman she must’ve once been.
“Votress,” I said politely, bowing deeply.
“Young Lierick. It does my heart good to see you. You know, if I were sixty years younger, I might have given you a run for your money.”
I laughed. I had no doubt she would’ve. The Votresses had to self-sustain somehow, and many men would have fallen into the bed of Votress Perla to celebrate life the way the Goddess intended. Even now, there was the sound of giggles echoing upthe dense halls, the children of the Votresses playing. There was even a young, pregnant Votress doing her daily prayers.
I winked back at Perla. “If you were sixty years younger, I doubt I would have been running anywhere, Votress.” We bantered every time I visited, but today, I had a purpose. I kept seeing the desperate expression on the Baron of the Eleventh Line’s face, kept hearing his words about starving infants.
I knelt in front of her, and she patted my head. “Such heavy thoughts today, Heir Hanovan.”
“The time has come for us to step out of the shadows, Votress. Ebrus starves, due to the greed of a few, and we can’t stand by and let it happen.”
