1
THE PRINCE WITH NO NAME
The Eastern Territories
City of Quezira
Min-Thuret Temple, Rite Hall
* * *
Thamaos’s ancient ritual room is deathly quiet, save for the crackling of flames and the sizzle of my blood burning in the offering bowl.
“Hear me, my lord. I beg you.”
My slit palm throbs as I squeeze crimson drops from my body for the third time today. This time, I let the blood flow. No gentle pricks. No careful measure. Instead, warm, scarlet rivers seep through my fisted fingers and pour into the fire.
I’ve knelt here long enough that the morning sunlight shining through the stained-glass windows upon my arrival has changed to the silvery glow of a coming winter’s starlight. My back has grown stiff and my knees ache, having been pressed against the unforgiving stone floor for so many hours.
A servant enters the room to deliver fresh water. He sets the decanter near the altar along with cloths soaked in yarrow tincture for my ritual wounds. “Are you sure you’re all right, my prince?” he asks for the second time within the hour. “You look so unwell.”
“Because I haven’t consumed a soul in over a week,” I reply, my voice tight and hard.
When I sifted to this very room from the Shadow World, collapsing in the ritual circle with Colden Moeshka in my arms, I could barely move. Parts of my body were burned from Raina Bloodgood’s fire, and my insides felt like they might crumble any second. Already, I starved.
But after feeling Garujo die, his Summerlander powers with him, and after so much death in the North, I couldn’t stomach the thought of feeding. Since then, my skin has taken on a waxen sheen, and my veins stand out in relief. I need no looking glass to know my face is gaunt, my body thinner.
“Perhaps you should…eat,” the servant says. He glances over the healing gash across my face before lifting his gaze toward the rafters.
The souls of three prisoners hover in waiting, silken and billowing. One smells like seawater, another like sweet earth, the final like the tall cedars in the East’s Forgotten Forest. Tonight I will feed and begin the task of restoring myself. If I don’t, I will die. And yet, miserable as I am, and much as I need to abandon these prayers and feast, I cannot make myself give up.
Not yet.
“Go.” I force every bit of annoyance I possess into the word. “I want to be left alone, do you understand?”
He nods and hurries from the room, closing the wooden doors quietly.
It’s been weeks since I’ve been inside the temple. Weeks since I last heard Thamaos’s transcendental voice commanding that I go to the Northlands. I fear no matter how long I remain on my knees he might not hear me. Or perhaps he changed his mind about our plan and shunned me. I pray I’m wrong because I’ve brought him quite the gift.
From the moment I laid the God Knife on the sunlit altar, I swore my lord spoke to me from the Shadow World. A hushed murmur crept through the halls of this holy place, then all fell silent and still. I need his instruction. His direction. His assurance.
And so I bleed. And wait.
Once again, I dip my fingers into the blood and draw three runes on the altar. Connection. Faithfulness. Fealty. With a deep breath, I press my forehead to the marble dais, the very place where Thamaos and the Eastern Territories’ kings and queens once rested, watching rituals performed in their names. An arm’s length away stands the gilded throne that will soon be mine, an honor I must earn.
Eternal Emperor of Tiressia.
We no longer desire your world, Thamaos once said. But the Nether Reaches are not our home, and our realm of Eridan is no more. The gods can rise and offer their immortal life forces to Tiressia’s blessed lands. An offering to you, that you might know true power through us. Because you are the one who will unite this empire, my little prince. Perhaps even the world.
A thought flutters through my mind. When I take the sovereign seat, will my lord grant the memory of my true name? The memory of who I was before I became his? A distant part of me longs to know, to be more than a nameless being hidden by shadows, surviving off souls. At times I remember that young man, like right now. Something in the act of worship and ritual is familiar in my marrow, beyond my years as Thamaos’s chosen. Even beyond my years as a vagabond along the eastern coast.
I also remember magick. Potent, wild, and dark. Flowing hot in my veins.
My magick. Controlled by me and me alone.
A cold draft tickles the hair at the nape of my neck. I lift my head as the flames in every bronze brazier throughout the hall flickers but holds, as though a gentle breath has been blown over the fiery light.
“Little prince.” Thamaos’s voice drifts into this room of devotion, ritual, and sacrifice, and any rising memory is swept away. “You failed,” my lord whispers in a sibilant voice. “You didn’t kill them. Not all of them. Thanks to that Witch Walker from Silver Hollow.”
