Chapter 1
Water rushesfrom my lungs and sears up my throat like liquid fire. I retch onto the banks of the loch, ragged breaths following each bout of heaving as I fight to replace the water with air. Around me is an inferno, massive flames scorching the grass, the land, the bushes all around. Thick smoke fills the air, stinging my eyes and doing nothing to calm my respirations.
I’m on my hands and knees, my nails digging into the cracked soil beneath me as flames ripple through my hands. The heat in my body is unbearable, overwhelming my senses, scorching me from the inside out. Screams tear from my throat, and as much as I want to silence my cries, they come with the force of a tempest.
These flames are going to consume me.
“Please …” I sob into the solemn night. My chest heaves with each intake of breath, forceful coughs following as my turbulent body fights to expel the smoke. Tremors rack my frame as I sit back on my heels and wrap my arms around my naked torso. My clothes … Burned off, I suppose, somewhere between crawling out of the freezing cold depths of the loch and somehow setting the area on fire.
I stumble to my feet, intending to make my way back to the water. To hopefully sink like a rock and quell these ceaseless flames forever. As I turn, a voice calls to me.
“Princess?”
I whirl on my heel and a new wave of flames billows from my hands. A wiry man in flowing midnight blue robes stands before me. He lifts his hands, and a large onyx stone glints on one of his fingers. “I’ve been sent by Priestess Briony. Let me help you.”
I step backward. He’s out of his mind if he thinks I’ll trust anyone. Not after Angharad, the guard who was supposedly helping me escape, shoved me off the fucking cliff in the first place.
“Princess, we don’t have much time. The Zenith will be looking for you.”
Images flash before my eyes. My advisor, Iywan, forcing me to translate the prophecy from the Ancient Tongue, the Skinchanger slicing into my flesh. Pain. So much pain.
So much bloody fear.
Ellynne, dead. Callum, dead.
Sobs overtake me, and in another blink, the wiry man stands before me. “There are limits to this magic,” he says, holding up his hand with the ring. “We can only vanish away so much and so far. I swear on my own life and all the gods that I will get you to safety.” He removes one layer of his robes and extends it to me. I take in his pale skin, fine lines at the corners of his thin lips, his eyes, and across his forehead. His somber brown eyes regard me with a certain patience. “Please,” he says. “A lot of people are depending on your survival.”
Who could possibly need me? What can I offer but destruction with this curse I bear?
But I take the robe in tremulous hands and slip my arms into the silken material. My legs buckle as the last of my strength begins to wane, the adrenaline abandoning me. I stare at myhands, turning my palms over. My usually pale skin is flushed bright red.
“Princess, we must go.” The man’s voice is laced with panic. He holds out his bony hand, and after brief hesitation, I slip mine into it.
The world around me disappears with an unsettling tug of my body. I’m in what feels like a freefall, weightless, my stomach left behind. When everything settles again, my head is spinning. My stomach has nothing left to give, but I hunch over and heave. It’s as though my body is determined to expel my very soul.
The man gives me a few seconds, then wraps an arm around my shoulders and practically drags me toward a horse and carriage, the driver with the reins already in their hands. “In you go,” he says.
My legs refuse to cooperate, yet somehow the fragile-looking man manages to haul me into the wagon where I slump down on the hard bench. I consider asking questions, but my head grows lighter, and I’m dragged into the merciful arms of oblivion.
There’s nothing but darkness. Darkness, pain, despair, confusion … So much confusion. I cannot wrap my mind around anything that’s happening. My body feels wrapped in the heaviest of iron chains—my skin too tight, my bones too heavy.
Gods, everything feels so wrong. Like my head has been separated from my body. Nothing wants to function.
I force my eyes open and my vision swirls around me. No matter how forcibly I blink, my surroundings remain cloudy, like peering out from beneath water. My skin feels like it’s on fire. I groan loudly.
“Briony, she’s awake!” Angharad. “Your Highness?”
I squeeze my eyes shut and everything beneath me rocks again. I try to ask what’s happening, but my lips don’t part, and no words come out. My body doesn’t obey me when I try to lift my hand, to wiggle my toes. Panic seizes my lungs.
“Why isn’t she moving?” Angharad asks.
“Burnout. It’s a wonder she’s even alive,” Briony says.
I wish I wasn’t.
“Even an experienced Wielder would barely be able to handle such energy expenditure. Imagine an inexperienced Wielder who’s had her powers dampened for over a decade.” Briony’s hand rests on my forehead, and a cool sensation trickles from my head, down to my chest, my legs, my toes. A comfortable warmth follows, flooding my body until blissful sleep submerges me again.
“Carys, can you hear me?”
