A serpent of water rearing overhead, slamming down.
Twenty feet of crystalline liquid rose into the air, taking the shape of some great wyrm from the old stories. Its scales caught the light, and its eyes seemed to burn with my own fury.
When the wyrm crashed down, the vendor was thrown backward, his head striking the stone edge of the fountain. Blood pooled beneath his skull like spilled wine.
I hadn't meant to hurt anyone.
But in Logres, intent didn't matter.Magic was death.
King Arthur's law was absolute: any display of magical ability meant immediate execution. It didn't matter if you'd saved a drowning child or accidentally lit a candle with your fingertips. Magic in the hands of anyone was considered an act of rebellion against the crown.
Then the screams.
The sound still echoed in my ears—dozens of voices raised in terror and accusation. Fingers pointed at me, faces twisted with fear and disgust. "Witch!" they'd cried. "Sorceress!" Children cowered behind their mothers' skirts, staring at me as if I'd grown horns.
The bindings.
Hemp rope, thick as my thumb and rough enough to scrape skin raw. The village constable had bound my wrists so tightly that my hands went numb. They'd forced me to my knees in the center of the square, surrounded by the wreckage of what my power had wrought.
The King's Guard.
They'd arrived within minutes—six men in gleaming gold and red armor, their horses snorting and stamping as if they could smell the lingering magic in the air. Their leader, a man with cold gray eyes and Arthur's Pendragon crest—a black dragon—blazoned across his chest, looked at me like I was something he'd scrape off his boot.
The fear had triggered something deeper inside me—a burst of energy that summoned a fog so thick it blinded the entire village.
Panic clawed at me as they prepared the pyre, and with the panic came power I didn't know I possessed. Mist rolled in from nowhere, dense as wool and cold as a winter morning. Within moments, I couldn't see my own hands, couldn't hear anything but the muffled shouts and clashing of armor as the guards stumbled around blindly.
I was suddenly free of my bindings.
The ropes had simply fallen away, as if the fog itself had cut through them. And while the fog blinded the guards, I could see and move through it as if it were clear air. It was almost as though the mist recognized me as its creator and allowed me visibility, unlike the others. Behind me, I could hear the guards cursing and calling for torches, their voices growing more distant with each step I took.
I'd used the fog as my cover, raising a frozen wall of water behind me.
The village well had answered my desperate call, its entire contents rising into the air like a liquid curtain. When the cold touched it—cold that came from somewhere deep inside me—it crystallized instantly into a barrier of ice twenty feet high and perfectly smooth.
The ice wall had cracked solid in an instant, halting the guards' pursuit.
Not understanding what was happening but recognizing my chance for escape, I ran. I ran harder and faster than I ever had before, all the way to my home in the hills of Eldenvale.
By the time I reached the thatched-roof cottage of the home where I was raised, the King's Guard was already there—no doubt having been informed where I lived by the people in the marketplace. Yet, the guards hadn't spotted me where I stood,underneath the treeline of the Eldergreen Forest, frozen in place and uncertain about what to do.
From the edge of the forest, hidden among the dense overgrowth, I watched a dozen or so mounted guards circle our home like wolves around prey, the Iron Hounds barking and growling. Their armor gleamed in the late afternoon sun, the dragon crest seeming to writhe across their chests.
Then came the sound of our door splintering inward and heavy masculine voices, rough and demanding.
"Where is she?" The captain's voice carried across the clearing.
My father stepped outside, hands raised. "We don't know—"
The captain dismounted with deliberate slowness, his boots hitting the packed earth with a hollow thud that seemed to echo in the terrible silence. His sword sang as it cleared its sheath.
The blade caught the light as he raised it, and for one heartbeat—one never-ending moment—I thought he might reconsider. That some shred of mercy or humanity might stay his hand. My father stood there, defenseless, his weathered hands still raised in supplication.
The captain drove the steel through my father's chest in one fluid, practiced motion.
A scream lodged in my throat, and I had to slap my hand against my mouth to keep the sound from escaping.
My father's eyes went wide with shock, his mouth opening and closing like a fish yanked from water. A dark stain bloomed across his rough-spun tunic, spreading outward.
