Prologue
Destiny.
I’d grown to hate that word.
Destiny meant there was no choice. Destiny meant it was decided for you, before you were born, before you were conceived, before your parents were conceived, and so on and so forth.
Destiny removed free will.
Even so, if you were told you were destined to be the savior of the world, what would you do? You’d fight, right? Especially if you were told the universe would reward you with everything you longed for?
But what if the indescribable joy came paired with inescapable pain? What if choosing your destiny meant choosing someone else’s destruction? Would your feet still tread the path, or would you run away from fate?
Would destiny even let you?
Or would you still fight? Still be whoever the universe told you to be?
These were the questions that haunted me.
Chapter
One
They tell us every person is born with the possibility of accessing any of the seven channels. Most people have one or two, to varying strengths. More than three is exceedingly rare. And access to all seven? An impossibility. Guess I’m an impossibility then.
—From the journal of Violet Andrever
Stubborn piece of shit.
I aimed a sturdy kick at the stuck water pump, not that it did anything but make me feel better. Hauling on the pump with all my strength also did absolutely nothing. The damn thing wouldn’t budge.
“Lexa Andrever, what are you doing?” My grandmother stood in the doorway of our small cottage, shielding her eyes from the sun.
Although we shared the same black hair and pale skin that turned rosy with the sun’s rays, that was where the similarities ended. I wasn’t short by any means, but my build was slim, whereas Nana was tall for a woman, and held herself with a regal bearing that age hadn’t weathered. Her chocolate-brown eyes, so different from my turquoise ones, were warm as she watched my antics with amusement.
Assessing the situation, Nana walked over and pulled up on the pump effortlessly. Water immediately began flowing.
I shoved my long black braid, hair already escaping and sticking to my neck, over my shoulder. “How did you do that?”
I had been struggling with the damn water pump for the better part of a quarter of an hour and hadn’t been able to make it so much as wiggle.
She winked at me but didn’t answer, just grabbed the bucket at my feet and began filling it. She never answered how she accomplished seemingly impossible tasks with ease.
She never answered a lot of questions.
Nana was a healer, the only one in our small farming village of Fairhaven, and she grew everything she needed, from the herbs for healing tonics to moss for packing wounds. She even kept bees, for the antibacterial properties in honey. And, of course, to sweeten our morning tea.
She patted my arm as she waited for the bucket to fill with water. “Best hurry on now. Cormac will be waiting.”
Leaving the water pump to Nana, I started down the path that connected our little cottage to the main road, heading to my daily sword practice with the blacksmith.
“Stay in the village!” Nana’s call floated down the lane to me.
I rolled my eyes even as I waved over my shoulder. She had been telling me to stay inside the boundaries of our village for as long as I could remember. We’d moved here after my parents’ death when I was a baby, and here I’d stayed, for the last twenty-two years. In all that time, she had never explained why we’d come or what laid beyond the small onyx stones that marked the edge of our village. And despite my own obstinance, Nana could out-stubborn me every time, so no amount of questioning would make her budge.
Every time I left the confines of our small plot of land, her final words to me were the same—Stay in the village.
I had yet to find out what was so godsdamn important about staying in the village.
