3
DAYN
We stand—twoprinces of a fallen kingdom, now fugitives in a world that has forgotten our power—in the midst of nothing.
The Bonneville Salt Flats stretch to the horizon, a cracked white canvas under a pitiless sun. The air is thin and sharp, tasting of salt and ancient, dormant magic. This is where Brynn and her traitorous companion entered Draethys. This is where I half-hoped to still intercept Esme.
There is no one.
Byzu circles the area, his imposing human form a dark disruption against the glaring white. He kicks at a patch of salt. “The entrance is sealed tight. Anees was thorough.”
I ignore him, closing my eyes and extending my senses. The faint thrum of the portal magic is still here, buried deep beneath the earth, but it’s dormant. As good as dead.
There’s something else, too. Faint, but undeniable. The coppery ghost of blood on the wind. Not enough to stain the salt, but enough for my senses to catch.
“What is it?”
My gaze drifts to my brother as he approaches, and the sight of him momentarily interrupts my analysis.
We stand shoulder to shoulder—united by grief yet separated by a chasm of broken trust. I see our father’s face in his, the same proud set of his jaw, and the sight is a fresh wound.
How could Anees have done it?
He was the scholar, the peacekeeper, the one who tempered my fire and Byzu’s brute force with reason. He was thegoodson. The memory of his calm, measured voice as he declared me a murderer—of myown father—coils in my gut like a serpent. After that, how can I look at Byzu, my own blood, and feel complete trust? His story of playing the double agent is plausible, but plausibility is a flimsy shield against the poison Anees has injected into our family. Something I will resent him for, forever.
“There was a fight here,” I say, my voice flat.
“That’s what you scented?” Byzu asks.
I kneel, pressing my fingertips to the salt-crusted earth. I draw on the power within me, the draconic fire now laced with Esme’s shadow, and whisper a single word. I cut my fingertip with a sharp stone and a droplet of my own blood spills, turning pitch-black as it touches the ground. It sizzles, spreading into a complex, spiderweb pattern of dark energy that drinks in the lingering traces in the soil.
The pattern glows with a faint, sickly light. “Clearblood,” I confirm, feeling the familiar edges of their signature magic.
But it’s my nose that tells me the rest of the story. The air still holds the lingering, personal signatures of those who were here. One is cold, sterile, a scent of ambition so pure it’s like antiseptic—Rothmere. I would know that stench anywhere.
The other is more complex. Brimstone and shadow, darkblood and something older, fouler. Chad Valgrave.
“The spy,” Byzu growls, coming to the same conclusion. Heinformed me that he briefly encountered Chad, down in the city, while following Esme, and I summarized his background.
So the half-demon is topside. And Rothmere was here to meet him. This was not a random skirmish. There was a rendezvous here. A debriefing. The tendrils of Heathborne’s conspiracy run deeper than I knew.
A cold certainty settles in my chest. Esme isn’t here. If she were, I’d sense her. She and her sister found another way out. I destroyed the darkblood wards myself; their magic would be potent once more, a connection to their ancestors restored. They wouldn’t be trapped. The thought sends a flicker of pride through the cold dread. She is a survivor.
So we cannot wait for them. Not here. And especially not with what I now know. Anees is swiftly preparing his invasion from below. Rothmere is scheming from above. And Chad, the traitor who hurt Brynn and spied on my wife, is a loose thread in a tapestry of war that could strangle us all.
Time is a luxury we no longer possess.
“We’re not waiting,” I say, rising to my feet and dusting the salt from my hands. My course is clear. One betrayal leads to another, a chain reaction of deceit.
Byzu looks from the sealed earth to me, his golden eyes questioning. “Where to?”
“Where the traitor would run,” I say, my gaze turning north. “To the only sanctuary he knows.”
Darkbirch.
4
DAYN
