Chapter 1
Hehadnotcomeall this way to collapse without even knocking on her door.
Varius, very recently Legatus of the Aurelian Empire—so recently he was still bleeding from his sudden departure—reminded himself of that firmly, as breathing grew increasingly difficult, as blood pooled in his armor and dripped down his limbs, as he stumbled through the dark, ominous forest.
He had to believe he’d make it. He had no other choice now, his chances of surviving this reunion—if you could call it that when they’d never been on the same side of the war—merely astronomically bad instead of the definitively catastrophic future promised if he’d remained in the empire.
But he was as sure as he could be this was the direction he’d find her. When she’d first gone rogue, Varius had sifted through the rumors, and given how versed he’d become in searching for signs of her traps he’d sent soldiers to verify—
He sucked in a sharp breath, almost whited out from the pain, physical and emotional.
Don’t think about your soldiers, Varius.
They are not yours anymore.
With effort, he put one foot in front of the other, disassociating himself from the pain of his body, his thoughts, trying to navigate the spindly branches that scratched him without losing his direction.
Almost there. Just a little longer.
He’d been telling himself that for miles now.
In truth, he’d been telling himself that for years.
Just one more battle, and maybe the war would finally be over.
Just one more death, one more tragedy as a family lost a son, as the sorceresses they fought wrought destruction matched only by what the empire could do with their sheer number of bodies, as the treacherous Aurelian patricians sent him into one more unwinnable situation. Just one more, and maybe he could grieve, or rest, or die.
But now it was just one more thicket to stumble through, and one way or another, he’d reach his destination.
It had better be soon. He knew how many wounds he was bleeding from. He hadn’t made it across the border into Korossia uncontested, and he’d fought through his own people, surviving as he always did, even when everyone else died.
That had been hours ago.
The longer he went, the more it felt like the forest itself was trying to stop him. It wasn’t—a sorceress had used that tactic on him years ago, so he knew what that felt like—but Varius caught himself tripping over branches and slipping on leaves more frequently. The daylight had faded, the spindly branches crowded out the moonlight, and he was tiring.
And then abruptly his path brightened. He looked up—he’d been watching the ground to stay on his feet—to find he’d emerged from the forest all at once, like it had been sheared off.
Whatever he’d been expecting from a renegade sorceress’ lair, it wasn’t this.
This wasn’t a castle with intimidating spires, nor a hidden hovel tucked away in a corner.
Across the clearing was a house, with wild vines crawling up the sides. It looked like wood from the outside, and why not? No one was going to be able to burn down a sorceress’ abode.
But Varius’ eyes were drawn to the warm glow inside. Light, and the implication of heat—the thought pulled him forward, and he very deliberately pushed aside the thought that it looked like ahome.
Only now that he was so close did his mind allow him to consider more than “just a little longer” and how badly this could go.
He was rapidly approaching the door of the one they now called the Sorceress Transcendent. The only sorceress who’d ever escaped from under the thumb of Korossia’s impossibly powerful dictator, beating the Sorcerer Ascendant at his own game.
She’d done it with careful planning, and let’s not forget mind-blowing destructive power. Which was what had made her, before she got herself out of the war, his most dangerous enemy.
He’d faced off against her countless times over the years, and whatever relationship he imagined they had—trading sallies and pointed, almost mischievous attacks across a battlefield, avoiding dealing death blows at each other when deniability was possible—it was imagined. Even if he thought they had both just tried to get their jobs done without killing the other, but also without veering into questions of treason while they went all-out against anyone else, they had still always been on opposite sides of the war.
The last time he’d seen her on the battlefield, she’d given him a cryptic warning that he’d apparently interpreted correctly to keep him and his legion clear of the vast destruction she’d wrought in order to go rogue.
But she’d also poisoned him first.
Not fatally, obviously, which was how she’d managed it; Varius knew her tells well enough to escape anything truly life-threatening, but it had still taken him a critical few days to recover any semblance of function.
