“Good, right? Dillixi venom—sorry you had to go through a bout with that nastiness. But hey, you get to drink spirits to clear it out of you. Strange, don’t you think? That a venom can be purged by alcohol, mint, and ginger tea.”
The Prince stood and recoiled, knocking over the chair.
“How—howdareyou touch me?” he managed to choke out.
The big man rolled his eyes and turned back to the makeshift stove, where sat roasting what looked like the entire leg of some animal. The Prince seized the opportunity to look around the shack while the man’s back was turned, looking for some means of escape.
The shack was small, barely large enough to fit the wooden table, the metal stove, and the large bed that seemed to be its only outstanding features. It had only a single door, which was hanging precariously from a single hinge on the other side of the stove and the giant man. The coal and clockwork pieces that would normally power the stove were missing, and it was instead powered by what looked like the most rudimentary of energy sources: a wood fire. There was a large pack in the corner that had a roll of some kind of fabric and two large bulging things that looked to be made of animal skin attached to it.
But what drew the Prince’s eye was the enormous, sheathed sword propped against the stove. It was a sword the size of which even a Guardian of the Fortress would have had trouble wielding, the largest greatsword he had ever seen.
The sight of the blade seemed to flip a switch in the Prince’s head, and suddenly his memories caught up with him. In a flash he remembered his kidnapping in the Fortress, and the attempt on his life.
“It was you! You kidnapped me!” he shouted at the giant.
The big man didn’t even look up, but kept right on cooking, turning the leg to brown the other side as he packed away the metal canister he’d used to brew the tea.
“Not originally,” he rumbled, vibrating the very walls with his voice, “but now, yes. Because judging by those marks on your and shoulders and back,” he motioned without looking to the Talisman markings visible beneath the Prince’s loose tunic, “you’ve been marked as a potential Bloodmage, maybe even begun the training. And yet here you are, far from Lucien. That’s of interest to me.”
The giant took a poker and broke up the fire before turning to look the Prince in the face—just as the wooden door was flung open so forcefully it almost fell off its single rusted hinge. A shaft of oddly colored light pierced the gloom of the cabin as a young woman rushed in; she had light olive skin andmidnight black hair and wore the same simple browns, greens, and grays that the giant wore.
As she entered, her eyes, bright green, flew to the Prince, and took in his appearance in one swift glance that missed nothing.
The Prince took in her appearance just as quickly, and suddenly all of the pieces fit together. Who else would kidnap one of the Children from the Fortress? Who else would have the audacity to do something of that magnitude in defiance of the Empress?
“Exiled Kindred!” hissed the Prince, recoiling. Again, his hand dropped to his side and his missing sword. Shadows and Light! He needed a weapon!
“Bloodmage!” snarled the girl, having caught sight of the black markings under his tunic. In a flash of movement, two remarkably long, curved daggers appeared in her hands, and she launched herself at him.
“Peace!” roared the mountain of a man. He caught the young woman around the waist and threw her back across the room, where she landed with the nimble grace of an acrobat, daggers still held menacingly.
“He is not to be harmed,eshendai—he is not a danger to us!”
The Prince’s ears perked up at the strange word. The way he’d said it didn’t sound like a name. A title perhaps? He filed it away in his mind to deal with later. His eyes never left the twin daggers, following every small twitch of movement as the Exile girl paced back and forth across the opposite side of the small cabin. The blades themselves were beautifully smithed, over a foot long and three fingers wide. From the way they gleamed in the light and the casual tension with which the girl held them, the Prince had a sneaking suspicion they were well used.
Out of his peripheral vision, he saw a glimmer of light flash through a crack in the wall of the wooden shack and another piece of the puzzle clicked into place as he realized that the light streaming through the door couldn’t be artificial. The color was off, and the angle was wrong.
It was coming from the sky.
How far away from the Fortress am I?
It didn’t matter. He would have time to wonder about his whereabouts after he’d freed himself. The girl was between him and the door; he had to get past her and out.
The Prince feinted left, then rolled under the table. The girl lunged forward, then jumped back and got tangled with the giant. The Prince emerged on the other side of the table and heard a sharpwhisk!sound, felt the air from one of the girl’s daggers ruffle his hair. He dashed forward. The door was there—
The Prince was pulled straight off his feet into the air and flung back across the room to land on the pile of blankets upon which he’d woken. He spun to his feet once more, only to find the girl’s second dagger pressed against his throat. How had she crossed the room so quickly?
“Do it, Exile!” he taunted, sneering in her face. “It would be just like your kind to kill an unarmed man.”
Her eyes flashed with rage, haunting green eyes that watched him with hatred and contempt, and he could see her desire to end his life.
“Remember your oath,eshendai,” the big man said slowly and firmly. The Prince remained silent, staring at her with arrogant defiance. “We are not to kill innocents, not to kill victims of the Empire’s injustice.”
“This is not an innocent!” the girl responded through clenched teeth. “This is one of the Empress’s Bloodmages! This is not even a man, it’s an animal!”
“He’s barely older than you, if at all,” the man pointed out calmly, “and it takes years of training to become a Bloodmage. If anything, he is barely a novice. But that’s irrelevant; I know that he is not part of the Empire. I found him unconscious, left to die from his wounds by a group of the Empress’s men at the bottom of the mountains. He’d been beaten, severely; several ribs were broken, and he had been concussed—”
“You mean you’ve had him ever since I left?”
