Page 3

Slowly, the Hunter named Briar stalked forward.

He whipped toward the fields, where the dullroot vapor was still swirling into the atmosphere. Gritting his teeth, he raced on.

Only a yard into the eye-stinging fog, he tripped and crashed to the ground. A finely woven rope had somehow looped around his ankle. And Briar prowled into the field, holding one end like a leash.

Zeke tried to scramble upright, but as the dullroot brushed his bare skin, the power within him writhed, seeming to tear through his insides.

He cried out, and Briar paused. She blinked, seeming to realize for the first time that he was a Wielder. Then her eyes crinkled as though from a deep smile, and she approached again.

A glare from the storeroom window caught Zeke’s eye. Panting in desperation, he withdrew his slingshot and a marble. Then he aimed for the glass and fired.

The window shattered. The lantern tipped beneath the windowsill. After several jagged breaths, a glow flared.

And with a boom, the walls of the storeroom blasted outward in a blaze of fire.

The shockwave knocked Briar to the ground. The heat washed over Zeke, singeing the dullroot vapor. He pocketed the slingshot and freed his ankle. Then he ran—away from the crackle of the storehouse, away from the Hunter who hadn’t even known what he was.

Away from the uncle who had given his last breath for a coward.

1

The king of Daradon was already making me suffer.

My fingers trembled as I peeled the bandage off the tender flesh of my upper arm, the pull of the sweat-plastered fabric making me wince.

It had started with the chills, on the first evening of my voyage. Shivering, I’d burrowed under three ship-issued blankets and forgone my ration of dried beef stew. Then came the splitting headaches, the trembling hands, the lethargy that had made me feel too vulnerable on a ship full of strangers.

I’d initially believed I’d caught an illness during my brief stopover in Avanford. Or perhaps it was the fried fish I’d bought from a back-alley vendor, now spoiling in my belly. When the area around my arrow wound had grown as hot and throbbing as this overfilled cabin, I’d panicked, convinced it was blood poisoning.

Then I’d learned that it took around three days for a Wielder’s body to completely eliminate the residue of dullroot.

After which point, the withdrawal symptoms would kick in.

For several days, I slept fitfully, the sea roaring around me. I lined my stomach with aniseed biscuits, then returned to fatigue-induced dreams of pale blue eyes and dungeon floors and arrows zipping past my ears.

Slowly, my body regained function. I started walking around the cabin and ate richer foods—peanuts and boiled halibut.

But still, the withdrawal tremors had yet to subside.

Of all the ways Erik had ever hurt me, this one felt particularly obscene: making my body grow so accustomed to the poison he’d pumped into me that even now, a week later, I was literally trembling from its absence.

“Ouch,” someone said, their distinctive brown boots shifting into my eyeline. I automatically slid my saddlebag behind my leg, then glanced up, stone-faced, toward the young man clinking a handful of speckled clay marbles in his palm—a sound I’d come to associate with Zeke’s approach.

Behind him, the cabin bustled with card games and conversation, everyone wanting to escape the skin-blistering heat of high afternoon. The Ansoran sun is as unforgiving as its empress, the overseer, Ed, had told us.

It was thanks to the empress’s secret naval routes that we’d made it through the western waters, which were rife with conflict.

And it was because of Princess Carmen, Erik’s first cousin and heir apparent to the throne of Daradon, that this ship of refugees would reach the Wielder-ruled empire tomorrow.

It was part of the deal Carmen had made with Ansora’s empress: She would help the Ansorans relocate vulnerable Daradonian Wielders in return for the political support that would enable her to one day take Erik’s crown. Boarding this ship hadn’t been my intention when Lady Perla had freed me from Erik’s cell. But it had been my only option after I’d returned to the palace for the Hunters’ compass—a coveted Spellmade object which could apparently win Erik an empire—and had missed my intended coach.

Now I was the compass’s keeper. And as soon as Erik recovered from the stab wound I’d dealt him, he would begin hunting for it. Hunting for me.

Which meant I had to be someone else, even once we arrived in Ansora. Even once I was within touching distance of the Ansoran ambassador—the prince and would-be heir to the empire—who had risked his life for mine back at court.

My heart twinged at the thought of Keil. But I knew that my best chance of keeping hidden was to forge this new path alone.

“That does not look pleasant,” Zeke said now, nodding toward my arm.