He stood strong and towering when she was small and frail.
His pure snow-white hair was woven into an intricate warrior’s braid, while the sides of his head were clean shaven.
She looked at the sigil upon his chest and found her eyes widening. A pair of white eagle wings backed by a crest of deep orange.
A Firemage.
One whose power came from the god Vivorr.
She’d read about the different Sacred magics, seeking every story she could after her strangeties began to kick in.
Each Sacred Knight was born with perfectly controllable magic, from one of five Pillars in the Sacred Text:Wind, Water, Fire, Realm,andthe Ehver.
Each one, represented by its own unique god and their particular power.
Avanefor wind,Odaeisfor water,Vivorrfor fire,Aristrafor realm, and lastly,Dhysis, god of all mortal bodies. The symbols for each one surrounded her mother’s ring.
And though the gods could no longer come down and walk amongst mortal kind, they could still bless them with rare gifts.
Magic had been one of them.
It was the first Godblessing ever recorded, given to the purest of hearts, a group of god-fearing warriors that became the first five Sacred Knights, long ago. They had sworn to protect thenomagesof the kingdom. And thankfully so. All of Lordach would be dead if it weren’t for the Sacred.
But Ezer knew, from the messages her birds delivered, that the tide of war was turning. And it wasn’t in Lordach’s favor.
She studied the Sacred Knight before her now.
‘Ravenminder,’ he said. His voice was accented. Northern. She supposed she’d have shared the same accent if the wolves hadn’t changed her fate. ‘You’re … younger than I expected.’
She frowned at that.
He looked down at her like he expected her to shrink in the glory of his presence. A massive, jagged scar ran down the entirety of his face, stretching to the neckline of his cloak.
She lifted her own chin as if to better show hers.
Three for his one.
But he was a warrior who had seen more than his fair share of battle. She was just an orphan plucked from the wreckage of a shadow wolf attack. A young woman who had a fragment of useless magic.
Nothing more.
She crossed her arms and stared up at him, fully aware of the feathers stuck in her hair, the ink stains upon her fingertips. ‘Who are you?’
He looked young, perhaps twenty, so not much older than she.
But the Sacred aged at a different rate thannomages.The moremagic they used, the more power required of their mortal bodies … the faster a Sacred died.
He eyed her cell with not a hint of emotion on his face.
The open window, the near-shredded blanket upon her stained cot. The piles of books she’d read cover to cover to fill her days alone; the parchment and the bird waste that she’d yet to scrub from the rounded stone walls and perches. All the birds studied him closely, as if they, too, felt the power that emanated from such a godsblessed being.
His eyes lingered a bit longer on her awful scars.
‘Well?’ she asked and tapped her toe impatiently. Anxiety had always sharpened her edges, made her feel like a weapon poised to attack.
‘Youarethe Ravenminder of Rendegard. Are you not?’
The question surprised her, for the answer should have been obvious.
