Chapter 1
They say vengeance is a blade best kept sharp, andmy dagger has been honed with every betrayal.
Shadows flicker in the torchlight as I count the silhouettes guarding the building where my hopes rest, my pulse skittering higher and higher.
There are no priestesses inside the temple tonight. No devotees of Etta giving the Great Goddess their libations and wealth as they breathe in the heavy incense and beg her forgiveness for all their sins. Instead, twenty-six knights and their twenty-six dire wolves prowl the silent ring of the citadel, waiting for the brave, the dumb, and the desperate – those foolish enough to risk life and limb for the chance to win the gifting.
This is the third night of my watch and the last chance I’ve got. I left it to the last moment to make my offering. The denizens from the other cities have already made theirs, and tomorrow they’ll announce the few chosen by the Goddess. There won’t be another Retterheld in my lifetime as there’s never more than one in a century.
It’s now or never.
I’ve spent the previous two evenings tracking their movements, their patterns. Watching, calculating, learning. The first night, I watched from the very edge of the wall, noting how long each loop of the temple took, where the knighted guards paused, and how often. And just as I expected, there is a rhythm and a pattern to it. Openings where, if I’m fast – which I am – I’ll be able to get into the temple unseen.
Last night I crept closer, finding a small back window left ajar. That’s going to be my way in. Sure, there’s the slight issue in that the window is at least twelve feet off the ground, but climbs like that don’t bother me. When the only way you can get fresh eggs is by clambering up spruce trees and raiding siskin nests, you quickly become a skilled climber. Starvation encourages many nefarious skills. I regret none of my lessons though, only the circumstances that led me to them.
Over the past three nights I’ve seen five people successfully make it into the temple to give their offerings to Etta in the hope that she’ll accept them into the Retterheld. Men and women who have succeeded in scaling the walls or crawling through the gutters, only to walk – or strut – out the main door soon after, their fingertips dyed black as a sign of their success. I’ve seen many more fail. Heard their screams, heard their rattling final breaths. They won’t haunt me, not when I’ve already become inured to death; living in the slums is one long – or short – death sentence.
Not that every applicant to the Retterheld dies. The richest would have already passed on coins to guarantee that healers happen to be nearby. But even if you make it into the temple, the Goddess still has tochooseyou. To deem you worthy. Only then can you actually call yourself a Rettling. A name I will get or die trying.
Another howl, another scream. I wince in sympathy. Mother was one of those healers once, standing ready with spells and potions. There was a time when it felt like she could heal all but death itself, but when it came to it, even she couldn’t defy Mortidem. And now, here I am, in rags and desperation, risking everything for my sister.
‘You can’t stay here all night, Rose,’ I mutter to myself as I catch a shadow creeping along the outer wall of the third ring. If I’ve spotted the other supplicant, chances are good that one of the guards has seen them too. I wait for a cry to ring out, but there’s none. I’m unsure whether I feel relieved or disappointed.
Six of the Morathkian Gods have temples within the third ring of Wrohelm, but none are as grand as Etta’s. It’s also usually the most frequented, but for the last week this section of the third ring has been under curfew, the streets emptied of everyone except the knights and their wolves. Cleared out entirely for this purpose – so that people can make their offerings and volunteer for the Retterheld. People like the man I’ve spotted in the shadows, dressed in furs and leather and crouching low, trying to stay hidden. I watch, breath held for him, as he glances back and forth, then bolts straight towards the temple.
Whoever he is, he’s fast. Maybe even fast enough. He’s moving at such a speed that it’s almost as if he’s forgotten about the icy moat surrounding the temple.
My chest clenches as I realise that’s exactly what he’s done. He’s running at a full sprint towards thin ice. He needs to stop, to pull up fast, or?—
His hands flail, wild and desperate, and for a breath I’m certain he will crash into the icy depths of the moat … until a sudden flash of green light bursts from his frame, catching him, suspending him, and pulling him back to solid ground, instantly saving and dooming him.
‘Fuck!’ The sympathetic curse slips from my lips, and I wince at the sound of my own voice. The man used his magic to save himself, but in doing so he guaranteed his rejection by Etta. All applicants must come to her free of magic. It’s why being stripped of my magic is an advantage. There’s no risk of power slipping free when I have none.
I shrink back into the shadows, my heart knocking out my nerves against my ribs as I wonder if the inadvertent swear will fuck me as well. But there’s no outcry from a knight. No howls from the dire wolves. Tension eases from me. Despite myself, I feel bad for the man. Whatever desperate wish lured him towards the Retterheld now lies forever beyond his grasp.
The howls and growls burst through the silence as the wolves and their bonded knights rush to where the man stands. I brace myself for an attack, for the screams of pain as the wolves plunge their teeth into his thighs, only to watch on in disgust as coins clink as they pass hands. A bribe for a painless exit. I shouldn’t be surprised.
Sickness spreads through the slums like fire from our bastard king’s fingertips, and that kind of money, cast aside so casually, could save dozens of lives. Instead, lords and ladies hoard more coin than they could spend in ten lifetimes, and the poor of the citadel are left with nothing more than the thoughts and prayers of the priestesses.
Turns out thoughts and prayers do fuck all when what you actually need is food and medicine.
I won’t let my sister spend a lifetime struggling in the slums, just for illness to prematurely end her days. Not when she was meant for so much more. I’m doing this for Acacia – Kay.
I draw in a breath and return my attention to the task at hand. Dealing with the fur-covered man will keep the guards distracted for a moment or two longer. Not a single guard, nor their wolves, have even glanced in mydirection since I arrived tonight. But why would they? Only a knighted guard or someone of noble birth can enter the Retterheld, and what kind of noble or knight would be coming from the direction of the slums?
One unfairly cast out. That’s who. One ready to rectify that through any means necessary.
I could live out the rest of my life starving hungry, scraping a living from tonics brewed from the recipes in my mother’s precious notebook, but I can’t put Kay through it any longer. She doesn’t deserve the miserable life the king and his pathetic narcissist of a son condemned us to. The gifting will change everything.
I will enter, and I will win. I have to.
My eyes track one guard and his wolf at the back of the temple. On the count of three, they are going to turn the corner and give me my best opening.
‘This is it, Rose,’ I murmur, dousing my body in a putrid liquid concoction of my mother’s creation, designed to hide my human scent from the wolves. ‘You can do this. You just need to fuckingmove.’
Three, two, one!
I climb down hastily, scraping my knuckles on the rough-hewn marble but barely noticing the sting as adrenaline roars in my ears. I daren’t look over my shoulder. Instead, I keep moving until I’m a few feet away from the ground, then leap, landing gracelessly on all fours. I remain crouched for less than a heartbeat before I’m upright again and, with my heart hammering, racing in the direction of that high back window.
