Chapter 1
“You expect to kill an Ethereum lord with swordsmanship like that?” Queen Liliana roared. “Grip the hilt tighter!”
I grasped it as she instructed but was sure to growl at her in response.
“Good. Get mad. We only have two weeks to prepare you for the portal opening on fall equinox, and anger is better than weakness.”
“I’m not weak!” I snapped, facing her and the half-dozen tutors she’d forced me to work with every day.
Queen Liliana was very passionate about training me to take over from Dawn. She didn’t speak much about the loss of her daughter, but I knew what it meant when the Summer champion had not returned in time. She was gone, to her final resting place among the stars.
We’d never not had a Summer champion return before and it was now my task to bring back the heart of an Ethereum lord. Lest my own lands be ravaged by the curse that currently befell Summer Court.
“Prove it.” Queen Liliana snatched a blade from the instructor and lunged for me.
I gasped, leaping out of the way but she pivoted and charged. She came down with a blow that was so hard, the block I made with my own sword barely held.
“You’re crazy!” I spat.
She had a wild gleam in her eye. “Yes. I’m crazy about saving our people. If you don’t come back with that heart, we will all be filtering into Winter and asking for refuge.”
Her words shook me and she came down with another blow that I blocked.
“I won’t let that happen!” I told her as we lunged, dodged, and slashed at each other.
Clack,clack,clack, the metal of my blade clinked with hers and I was ashamed to admit that I knew she was going easy on me. My parents never let me take more than two weeks of fencing as a child. The second my … condition appeared, they made me stop all physical sports and training. My gifts lay elsewhere, they said.
Queen Liliana cried out, slashing down on my sword so hard that it was ripped from my hand and fell to the ground. Her beautiful golden hair had been torn free of its bun and now lay in messy curls around her shoulders.
“What will you do now, Aribella?” She cocked her head to the side and stalked toward me. My heartbeat increased, thumping against my chest as I walked backward. “I know of your little secret,” she taunted and the color drained from my face.
She knew? Dizziness washed over me and I began my breathing exercises to calm the frantic racing in my chest.
“Show me how you can manipulate my mood and take my sword,” she said, and relief rushed through me.
Oh,thatsecret. It wasn’t a heavily guarded one but my gift was quite unique and it made people uncomfortable, so I didn’t share with many that I had it.
“Your highness, I could never use it on you in that way,” I told her and then my back hit the wall.
She pressed the tip of the blade right to my throat, causing my eyes to fly wide.
She was truly insane.
Even the tutors that were present gasped.
“Rip this sword from my hands or I’m shoving it in your throat,” she declared.
My mouth popped open in shock.
“Three … two …” she counted and then I pushed the emotion of frantic desperation into her.
Suddenly Queen Liliana fell into tears, screaming and crying. She looked around the room in anguish, distracted, as if she’d lost something. I took that chance to slip away from her blade and pluck it from her hands.
Seeing her weep openly, grasping her chest as if her very heart hurt, it killed me. So did the fearful looks that the tutors were giving me. Once people learned of my gift, they never treated me the same again.
I pulled the emotion back, like peeling a blanket off her, and the Queen’s face went from destitute sobbing into a full-fledged grin. “Oh, my darling, you’ve been hiding that all this time?”
I felt badly for Dawn then, how her childhood must have been being raised by this woman who only seemed proud when you showed her how well you would kill or disarm someone.
