PART I
SEEKER
CHAPTER ONE
FARON
FARONVINCENT HAD BEEN A LIAR FOR LONGER THAN SHE’D BEEN Asaint.
She’d learned from a young age that lies were a form of currency. They could buy freedom and earn forgiveness. They could alter reality faster than any kind of magic. A lie well told was itself magical, and Faron was nothing if not convincing.
She’d told three lies since this morning, and they’d each felt like a spell. She’d told her teacher that she’d try harder to bring up her grades before the end of the year. She’d promised her sister that she would go straight home after classes were over. And she’d sworn that she wouldn’t use summoning to beat Jordan Simmons in this race.
Was it her fault they always believed her?
To be fair, Faron didn’t always know she was lying in the moment. She’d intended to keep at least two of those promises—maybe all three, if she felt like acting particularly respectable. Then someone had spread around the schoolyard that she would be missing class to attend the Summit, and trouble had found her in the form of Jordan Simmons.
While the adults across the island of San Irie considered Faron a holy child, the same could not be said of her schoolmates. Jordan had approached her outside the gates, where she’d been standing in line to buy bag juice. The weather was the kind of hot that made her sorry to even bealive, and rolling up the sleeves of her shirtwaist had offered no relief. Faron had been watching the frost clouds curling from the vendor’s open cart with such longing that she hadn’t noticed Jordan until he was inches away from her.
“Missing school again, Vincent?” he’d sneered, flanked by two other fifth-form boys. Their horselike snickers had been a discordant note in her otherwise harmonious day. To anyone else, this might have signaled danger ahead. Faron, on the other hand, had only been bored. “Being the Empyrean is quite the con, isn’t it?”
“If it were agoodcon,” Faron had said without turning around, “then I wouldn’t still be smelling the dung that comes out of your mouth.”
She hadn’t bothered to mention the reality of war or the lingering nightmares or the heavy expectations that came with being the Childe Empyrean. Five years ago, when the gods had first given her that title and the unique ability to summon their infinite magic, she had only been thinking of protecting San Irie. She hadn’t realized what she was signing up for—or what she was signing away.
But even if she’d wanted to get into all of that with anyone, Jordan and his gang would have only used it against her. No one wanted to hear that being chosen by the gods to save the world was a curse rather than a blessing. She was a symbol, and symbols didn’t complain.
Instead, Faron had traded a handful of silver coins for apineapple bag juice. While biting a hole in the corner of the bag to drink from, she’d eyed Jordan’s calculating expression. He was the kind of bully who was too strategic to lose his temper. He thought about the best way to hobble his victims andthenhe struck to kill. So it had come as no surprise when he’d tried to hit her where it hurt: her pride.
“If you’re so brilliant, then race me after school,” he’d said. “No gods and no magic. The war is over. It’s time to prove you’re no better than any of us.”
And Faron had never met trouble that she didn’t want to get into. She’d extended her free hand with a smirk. “Thirty rayes if I win?”
“It’s a deal.”
With a handshake, Jordan Simmons had sealed his fate. Or so she’d thought then.
Now they were halfway through the agreed-upon track, surrounded by a screaming crowd of neighborhood kids, and Faron was losing.
Loose braids slapped her back and neck where they’d escaped from her head wrap. Palm trees waved in the wind. Her skirts were tied around her waist, allowing her nimble feet to dance over tan dirt and smooth stones. But here she waslosingthe footrace that would end at the fossilized dragon egg in the town square.
On this stretch of road, there were no shortcuts to take or obstacles to throw in her opponent’s way. There was only a straight sprint to the egg and too much space between her and the boy in first place. Deal or no deal, that was unacceptable.
Faron held what little breath was still in her lungs and called on the gods.
Time slowed to a crawl, a second stretching into an eternity. The world took on a liquid haze, as if she’d plunged into the crystal-clear Ember Sea that surrounded the island. Her soul swelled into a beacon that screamedcome to me, come to me, come to me.…
And, like always, it was the gods who answered her call.
Irie appeared in a flash of light, her golden crown piercing the sky like a blade. She wore a hoodless robe, wide sleeved and embroidered with gold thread, over a white high-necked dress that fell to her calves. Her full gold-painted lips twisted into a frown. Even with her pupilless eyes shining amber, the sun goddess Irie, ruler of the daytime and patron goddess of the island, looked as if she should be going to see a play in Port Sol, not making house calls to a seventeen-year-old in the landlocked Iryan town of Deadegg.
But that washerproblem. Faron had called. Irie had answered. Five years, and that hadn’t changed.
Lend me your strength.
Faron gasped as she felt Irie’s power flood her body. At first, it was almost too much. Summoners trained for years to hold the magic of justoneof their ancestral spirits, known as astrals, without dying. Even the most advanced santi—summoners who had dedicated their lives to the temples—didn’t dare channel more than five astrals at a time. But there wasn’t a single summoner on the island of San Irie who could call upon a god.
Except for her.
