Which is why I knew that the arranged marriage we’d both been bound to wouldn’t make a difference if she truly wanted me out of her life and relegated to a simple name on a contract once I told her the truth about her father’s death.
My throat tightened with every word I had to mutter and every plea I’d have to shout. I could only hope she would listen.
The dagger burned in my coat, the purple pebble in its pommel vibrating so close to its birthplace. The shards of Solkar’s Heart which had broken off on impact had been fused into my warriors’ weapons, to guard and quicken. But they were too small to affect the Heart itself. Even if one of them fell into enemy hands, as mine clearly had, they didn’t have the ability to drain the magic.
The Northern Clans had a feeble pebble they squabbled over. Again, not enough to bleed the Heart, which still had the same menacing crystal edges I’d first seen as a boy, when my mother had revealed it and my duty as its protector.
But the Heart didn’t feel the same–and I felt powerless because of it.
It offered no answer. It either couldn’t or wouldn’t, and I didn’t know which was worse.
My hand lingered on the rock, but nothing changed.
With a sigh, I finally let go. The light retreated from my hand, pulsing back into its lair like I’d never bothered it with my mortal worries it obviously did not care about.
Yet I cared about it–and I had to find its wound and restitch it.
Better than I’d repaired Geryll’s leg.
With all my Blood Brotherhood powers, I’d detected no physical ailment within him, which made it worse. I worried–and all the healers who’d seen him agreed–that the blade which had struck him had been magicked to leave pains no mortal hands could fix.
Rare, but not unheard of.
Once his blasted wedding was over, I’d ask Zandyr to recheck Geryll’s veins. Taking him to the Morgana Clan–or worse, the Shuddering Isles–was more of a punishment than a cure, but I would do it if we weren’t able to mend him.
With war looming, all the Clans and factions had closed their borders, but we’d find a way.
I would.
I fisted my palms as I rushed up the stairs and out of the Memory Hall, feeling the weight of my ancestors’ expectations on my heels. The crater was bleeding under my watch. Not theirs. They’d done their duties, sacrificed, and met their gods as they should have, now turned into memories and statues that watched over us. And I knew they were disappointed in me.
Those thoughts tormented me all the way to the training arena behind the fortress, which rattled with the clash of steel and the grunts of the warriors, rising to the sky like a dark prayer.
The hissing wind and shards of ice and snow it carried did nothing to deter them. Perhaps the Veghearas weren’t the most stubborn lot in Malhaven, after all.
Solkar himself would have been proud of our warriors if he deigned to look down upon us with anything other than spite.
The more experienced formed a circle around the greener ones, protecting even in make-believe battle.
Pride and terror fought within me as I stopped on the ridge overlooking the arena, where Vylkor already awaited. He greeted me with a grunt and a fist to his heart.
My warriors were fierce.
The Blood Brotherhood army was the best in all of Malhaven.
But war was war.
It demanded its sacrifice.
“Our warriors will shake the Capital,” Vylkor said with unearned triumph.
“What matters is that they scare the Serpents away,” I said.
“Yes. But they will also impress our new Clan.” He turned to me. The snowflakes that fell on the patch covering his missing eye melted as soon as they touched the dark leather, as if terrified to linger. “Is everyone coming with you?”
“Only the most experienced at first.” And hopefully last. “The younger ones will stay home to guard the crater.”
Solkar’s Reach had lost too many of its younglings and was still safer than a battlefield.
