She’s young, like me. She’s frightened, like me.
The woman cowers back as I lift my sword.
Chapter Two
Ten years earlier, I stood at the gates of Castle Pyka, watching as my family rode off for war.
My father, tall as a mountain on his destrier, his golden hair flowing behind him. My uncle, his general, younger and darker, but no less deadly. My brother and my sister, seventeen and eighteen, each the spitting image of my father, each as powerful with their fire magic, each as devastating with the blade. Our blue and green banners blowing in the cool sea air.
My mother had left weeks earlier. She was shadow-born like me and from a lower house, but my father loved her anyway. Her mission was different. Secret. There was no parade for her parting. No banners, no trumpets. She left without a word in the dead of night.
In the castle courtyard, only Larus remained with me. The Guardian of our house, a man with dark skin and long locks of coiled hair who would never be mistaken for our kin. And yet he was as loyal to our house as any of them. More loyal, even.
I cried silently, my tears burning hot tracks down my freckled cheeks. I didn’t scream or yell or beg for them to come back. I knew at eleven that they wouldn’t, no matter how much I wantedthem to. I knew by then that there were things that mattered to them more than me.
Larus pulled me to him, wrapping his arm around my narrow shoulders. “You’ll see them all again soon,” he said. “You’ll see.”
Larus was the best person I knew. He ran my father’s house, one of the Great Houses of Nithyria. He managed the castle and the port. He trained the children in the art of combat, in magic, in manners. He would have served as a general in his army if my father had let him. When my father asked him to stay behind to care for me, to care for his house and his legacy, he didn’t complain.
I trusted Larus more than anyone in the world. When he told me I’d see my family again soon, I took him at his word. I dried my eyes and went back into the castle, practicing all day and night, preparing to join the fight as soon as my magic settled. As soon as I could, I would see them again. At home, if the war ended quickly, or on the battlefield if it didn’t.
Larus said I would see them all again.
Larus was wrong.
“What are you waiting for?” asks Adria.
The woman is frozen against the carriage, her teeth chattering from fear despite the harsh desert heat. My sword is inches from her chest. She should be running, hiding, doing anything but just standing there.
This is a test. I know what Adria thinks of me. I know that she still sees me as her baby sister, the girl who stayed behind while she led my father’s armies after he fell. She doesn’t believe I can do it. Not just that I can’t kill this woman. She believes I won’t kill Ronan.
There’s a part of me that wants to do what she asks simply because she’s the one asking. A part of me that longs for her approval, that wants to show her that she’s wrong about me.
But killing this woman isn’t the same as killing Ronan. To kill Ronan is vengeance. It’s the vengeance that I’ve dreamt of every night for the last six years. Every night since the night the letter arrived. The black mark on the page. My father’s death, a stain on the paper and my memory.
This isn’t vengeance.
This is murder.
Maybe this womanwashired by Ronan to kill us. Maybe he invited us to the festival just to lure us out onto this road, to take us out before we could do the same to him.
Or maybe, as she said, she didn’t intend to hurt us at all. Maybe she was hired by a merchant to take out a rival. Maybe she was starving and did only what she had to do to survive.
I understand why Adria wants her dead. She sees everything as a battle and everyone who isn’t us as an enemy. It’s the safest choice. It’s what has kept her alive.
But I’m not like her. We have only one enemy, and his name is Ronan.
I lower my weapon and turn to face Adria, to plead with her to spare this woman’s life.
But before I can do so, there’s a deep, guttural yell from behind the carriage, and the sound of a man slumping to the ground. Then Larus sheathes his blade.
“Is everyone alright?” he asks as he rounds the carriage. Larus has been the Guardian of House Verran since before I was born, but he barely looks different now than he did when I was a child. There’s more white in his beard and eyebrows, and his locks are so long now they nearly reach his waist, but his skin is still smooth, and his eyes are still bright.
And he’s every bit the fighter he always was. He’s breathing heavily, and there’s a burn mark on one of his leather pauldrons, but he looks otherwise unharmed.
He stops next to the cowering woman, glancing at my outstretched blade. “Who’s this?”
“One of our attackers. My sister seems to think we should let her live.” Adria’s voice is mocking as she walks over to me and places a finger to the small cut on my throat. She doesn’t cauterize it, thankfully. Gods, it hurts when she does that, although it does stop the bleeding quickly. Instead, she holds her bloodied finger in front of my face for emphasis. “She nearly thought herself to death, by the looks of it.”
