It was because she did not love the gods with her whole heart, like Ervos did. She’d tried. For years, she had lit the right colored candles and said perfectly recited prayers, and she sang all the songs on Allgodsday beneath the light of the full moon. She’d memorized the stanzas in their Book, and she’d even blessed the bread each time she and Ervos sat down for a meal.
And still, the Five had abandoned her.
Still, they had allowed terrible things to happen to her, and shedid not have it in her heart to forgive them. To give her entire heart and mind and soul to serving them.
Not yet.
Not until they answered her.
Not until they showed her they werereal.
And she had not been forgotten.
‘I am not my father,’ Arawn said, keeping his voice low. ‘You’d be wise to trust me with your gifts.’
A spike of fear jabbed her in the gut when he spoke of King Draybor Laroux.
He was double-pillared, capable of sending invocations to not one buttwogods. Very few Sacred had ever been capable of surviving such power required.
For twenty years now, King Draybor had torn himself down, bit by bit, to defend them from the Acolyte in battle. He could wield both fire and wind at once, a deadly combination. And with each granted invocation that surged power through his body …
She’d heard the rumors that he was aging fast these days.
That he was on the battlefield less and less, needing to recover between bouts of using his magic.
And if the rumors were true, then soon enough, Draybor Laroux would be well on his way to a classic Sacred end.
A death, too young.
Another sword plunged in the snow.
And thenthisman before her, this cold prince of the north …
He would become his father.
And she would be another anomaly that the kingdom feared, just like her ravens.Different.
Dangerous.
She wouldn’t dare give Arawn an inkling of her strangeties.
It wasn’t safe.
Arawn seemed to sense the battle writhing within her, because his voice softened. ‘If you allowed me to help you with that hidden magic of yours … it’s worth honing. It’s worth discovering which pillar you lean into, because it saved me. And it can save you, too, with what’s coming next.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Fear washed over her anew.
Arawn’s jaw twitched. ‘You have been reassigned.’
‘Towhat?’
‘To Kinlear,’ he said.
She raised a brow.
‘To do what you do best,’ Arawn said. ‘Minding.’
