PROLOGUE
The night hadlong since turned still, but sleep refused him. Val-Theris stood in the upper observatory, surrounded by the faint rustling of maps catching on the wind, and the cold breath of open air. Beneath the glass dome, Solmiris glittered like a field of gold stretched to the horizon and carved into the cliffside.
It should have comforted him.
Instead, it felt fragile. Too bright. Too temporary.
Tonight, a dull ache clutched the base of his skull, and the lights of the city below began to bleed into one another. He had learned to sense when a vision was coming, but they always seemed to crash into him like a tide when he wanted them least.
He pressed both palms to the marble railing of the balcony, and the world folded inwards. The chamber dissolved into light. The air thickened with the scent of dust and rain and ruin.
He stood before a statue of a woman, serene and sorrowful, with a baby in her arms.
She rose twice his height, carved from marble so white it glowed faintly even in shadow. Every line of her face was grace itself, etched with the quiet strength of a mother and the pain of loss. Her expression seemed carved from mercy, and there was a single tear streaking down her cheek.
Behind her, the Golden City lay in ruin.
The towers cracked. The great dome of the palace had fallen in two. Gold leaf peeled from the walls like burned skin. The air was full of dust and the faint echo of weeping.
Val-Theris reached out to touch the statue’s face, somehow growing more distorted the more he studied it.
“Who are you?” he whispered. “Why do you weep?”
The child in the statue’s arms was faceless, too. He tried to look closer, but the more he strained, the blurrier the features became.
He reached out to caress the infant’s face, but the marble fractured under his touch. Val-Theris stumbled back, clutching his temples as the vision rushed through him: the city collapsing, fire covering the land, men, women, and children sobbing in the streets.
And in the distance, Val-Theris saw a glimpse of himself. His unmistakable feathered wings sat atop his throne, watching it all.
When he came back to himself, he was on his knees in the observatory, his breath ragged, his hands slick with blood from his nose. The city below gleamed and he stared out over it, trembling.
The statue’s face lingered behind his eyelids as he rose slowly and turned his gaze toward the distant horizon where Lunareth and Korvath slept under flickering stars.
When Val-Theris descendedthe upper district to the lower plaza, the wind carried the scent of morning dew. The sun hadnot yet broken the horizon and the stone beneath his boots gleamed pale and colorless.
In the center of the plaza, there was no statue, of course. Only a blank pedestal veined with cracks and moss, standing lonely in the center of the wide court.
But Val-Theris felt it. The echo of it. Every inch of air seemed heavy with the memory of something he had yet to lose. He stood motionless, wings drawn close, eyes fixed on the emptiness before him.
Rohannes lingered a few paces back, silent as his shadow. He had learned not to speak when the visions left their mark on the king like this.
Val-Theris’s hand tightened on the hilt at his side. “It was here,” he murmured.
The Angelicus Prime tilted his head. “My lord?”
“The woman and the child made of stone. She stood right here.”
Rohannes said nothing, for he did not know what to say. The king rarely shared his visions, and never with anyone other than him. He had heard fragments before, of course, sometimes finding his king half-dazed with blood pooling on his upper lip from his nose. But he had never seen his king so still, so stripped of the armor of command and crown.
The silence stretched long enough for the wind to shift and the sun to rise, carrying a distant clamor from the gates. Val-Theris’s feathers flared in reflex. The Angelicus Prime took his leave to address the commotion while the king stood silent. When Rohannes returned, he brought news.
“There are travelers at the gates. Maybe a hundred or so. They bear no banners, and claim to be refugees from Lunareth, begging sanctuary within our walls.”
Val-Theris, for a long moment, said nothing. Then, quietly, “Open the gates.”
The roadto the lower terraces overflowed with movement. The first of the refugees had barely crossed the gates, yet the air already thrummed with noise and dust.
Val-Theris stood above it all in the plaza, unmoved from before, flanked only by Rohannes and two silent sentinels. From here he could see the mass of weary travelers: women carrying what little they could salvage, children too tired even to cry.
