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But it wasn’t enough. The Serpent didn’t belong to him. Nor the Guardian with Brialis, or her son.

He turned over his shoulder, imagining the peak of the palace beyond the lights of the city.

And where was the Vulpes Flare? He didn’t look for it or question it while inside, too preoccupied with Brialis, but he hadn’t sensed another Flare…

Damn all that is dark to the moon. The Vulpes’ fucking curiosity was the only thing that could force him from these steps

Draven pried himself from Caine’s tomb, the ice coating his body splintering and raining to the ground. He cleaned the emblem of snow that accumulated overnight, then left before another memory or missed opportunity pulled him back to the ancient marble.

He trudged through the snow of the desolate graveyard, arms crossed, stepping past stones and petrified trees used to mark the graves of the nobility before Valen made it to Eocera.

Despite his fallen mood, Draven’s lips turned up once again thinking of Kyer.

“Your father was Valen Hazevale. You were his first child.”

Was. Were.

Draven slowed in front of a tree that was more rock than timber. Its skinny trunk extended to thinner branches, resting on the far end of the graveyard at the top of a steep hill, overlooking what used to be a wall of trees, now a gaping hole in the earth. By no means the most magnificent marker here.

This was where he asked the Serpent to bring him when he vanished from the throne room. His many visits to his foster mother’s grave flashed through his mind, but what he pictured was long gone. Just in front of the tree, buried deep in the ground and coated in ice, was a large river stone. Carved into the back was the name of her only child lost in the Reapers’ War.

Jarek Atwood

He could never remove the stain that was Valen’s First Incarnation, Imperial Lord Draven Hazevale, nor should he. That mark was his to bear, and if he was damned into avoiding death, he’d suffer under all the consequences of his past actions.

He lowered to his knees to clear away the snow at the base of the narrow headstone. Underneath, he found the glassy sheen from a small circular shape. He took it into his palm, wiping away the stuck snow with a thumb to reveal a crest depicting the trunk, branches, and roots of a tree curving along the edges of a circle. The surface of the pendant was etched with deep cracks and fissures, giving it a weathered, fossil-like quality. Nothing like he remembered when it was carved.

If the Serpent was going to give him a second life by forcing his hand into acting, it wouldn’t be as Valen’s son. It only seemed fitting, since by definition he was no longer an incarnation. But his name didn’t deserve a rewrite when there were so many unnamed stories burning in the coals left behind by the fires his namesake had set.

He reached into his coat pocket for the letter Kyer left behind.

No better place to start than with him…

He turned his back on the cemetery, leaving a part of himself behind and taking a piece of forgotten history until he’d be allowed to give it back.

Chapter Eleven

Lily slammed into a meadow in the blinding light of day. Her vision blurred between wild bouts of dizziness like she was suffering from too much to drink. Fowl launched to flight; small critters chittered in the underbrush…

She emptied her roiling stomach in heaves.

With a groan, she rolled onto her back, watching the clouds twist by, and soon she drifted off to a sleep she couldn’t stave off.

Xavier.

Her eyes popped open, and she was coherent in an instant. The first mistake she made was leaning on her left hand to sit up. Her screech from the shock echoed around the field, disrupting the peace of a flock of birds.

Looking down at her mangled wrist was the second.

The joint was bursting with swelling, a knot from a bone pushing high against the skin. She withdrew her gaze from it, remembering everything that led up to it and right after.

Another scream left her throat, and she flew backward into the grass again.

The gunfire. It was the only reason Neir and his men backed off. Someone was watching out for her. But who? Reina?

Lily’s pulse slowed. Could it have been Xavier?

Reina was with Aarin, and he would’ve taken her to his home in the undercity. There was no way she could have reached Lily, let alone know where she was so quickly. It had to have been Xavier. He managed to escape then risked his life to help her…