658 D.E. (twenty-six years later)

The building behind Aleaneo collapsed as she ripped her blade from the charging vargr’s gushing throat. Around her, the small village burned. Black blood oozed over her fingers as turned on the next creature in her path–four yellow eyes, six legs, and a twisted tail that ended in a crushing mace. Aleaneo slid her fingers into the hilt of her sword and split it apart, two separate blades flashing in the clouded light of the burning sun. As the vargr lunged, she dropped to her knees and dragged her blades across its matted underbelly, dumping steaming bile to the dry grass below. Aleaneo dragged her filthy sleeve across her face, vargr blood smeared along her neck, and turned to her soldiers.

“Push them back!” she shouted. Beside her, a tiny house crumbled under a vargr’s massive paws as the villagers inside screamed. A cluster of arrows pelted the creature’s face, piercing two of its four black eyes, and it turned its needle-filled mouth on Aleaneo’s soldiers. “Again!” Aleaneo cried out. “Draw it out!”

Another volley of arrows showered the vargr, half bouncing off its hardened hide, and it lunged at the archers. The muscles in Aleaneo’s chest stretched as she filled her lungs with the dusty clouds swirling around her. When she could take in no more, she drew back her arms and threw them forward. A massive gust flung the vargr into the hillside with a loud crack.

“It’s coming down!” a soldier howled, and Aleaneo watched in horror as the roof of the home began to collapse. She pushed past the soldiers at the door and dove into the chaos inside. As sunlight poured through the shaking rafters, Aleaneo threw a massive swell against the wobbling fireplace. The careening stones bashed against her gust and she reached a hand toward the open door behind her.

“Go!” she shouted, and threw whatever air she had left at the villagers, pushing them out the door as the wall teetered forward. Aleaneo scrambled aside as the chimney slammed to the ground and stumbled as the splintered rafters clattered around her. Debris and dust filled her throat as she raced for the door and, as the building heaved around her, a hand wrapped around Aleaneo’s arm and yanked her out.

Aleaneo’s head rang as the eruption of sound and light overwhelmed her. All around, the Arigelian soldiers pushed back the vargr pack as the villagers scrambled to escape. She stumbled forward as the building behind her crumpled to the ground.

“Al!” her brother’s voice pierced the chaos. Lereth looked down at her with livid eyes. “What did I tell you about diving in alone?” Aleaneo frantically pulled her arm from Lereth’s grasp as thick, black vargr blood dripped toward his exposed hand.

“Where are the evacuees?” she barked. “You’re supposed to be on evacuation!”

Behind them, a soldier screamed. With its needle teeth sunk into the soldier’s leg, the vargr dragged the soldier back and flung them into a crumbled wall like a ragdoll before it turned its teeth on Lereth. Aleaneo’s hand tightened around the hilt of her blade as tiny sparks jumped down the glimmering steel. It started in her spine–always her spine–crawled up her back and down her arms until Aleaneo’s entire body hummed. Sparks cracked at her fingertips as she swung her blade through the powdery clouds and cleaved the vargr’s head from its shoulders. Bolts of lightning snapped along her sword as Aleaneo turned on her brother, chest heaving.

“I’m with defense,” she snarled. “You’re with evacuation. Now go!”

Lereth scowled, mouth half parted in unspoken rage, as he regrouped his unit and fell back, following the trail of desperate villagers as they fled toward the city.

“The rest of you, with me!” Aleaneo shouted to her soldiers. Beyond the destruction of crushed houses and bleeding bodies, the last of the vargr pack howled. Aleaneo’s breath howled in her ears. “Time to send them back to their master.”

The vargr pack loomed forward, cloaked behind thick clouds of ash and dust. Aleaneo drew back her arm like an arrow and fired a howling swell that split the pack in two, half cornered against the hillside as her soldiers cut them down. Aleaneo’s blades dripped black as she thrust her sword through a vargr’s temple, bursting its yellow eye like a grape. The next lost its tail like a head of wheat, all the while the air around Aleaneo swelled and gusted, drawn in with her breath and thrust out with her blade. By the time the winds settled, only the retreating tails of a handful of straggling vargr could be seen scrambling beyond the hills.

“Captain,” a soldier nudged her arm with a scrap of tattered tarp. Aleaneo wiped the vargr blood from her face and arms before tossing the scrap to the ground. It sizzled against the grass as the black sludge oozed into the dirt, leaving the rag a tangle of rotted threads. Beside her, the soldier carefully peeled off their tainted glove and tossed it to the dirt. Already the vargr blood ate through the thick leather.

“Did my brother get the evacuees to the wall?” Aleaneo asked. Before the soldier could respond, Lereth appeared in the clearing.

“Don’t,” he dismissed Aleaneo’s scowl. “My lieutenant got them inside the wall.”

Aleaneo fumed, slammed her blades into their sheath, and wrapped her arm around her brother’s shoulders. After three deep breaths, her heart finally stopped pounding. “That was more than I’d ever seen,” she muttered, “in a long time.” Lereth nodded as he pulled away.

“They’re getting bolder,” he said. “Their nest can’t be more than a league away.” In the distance, the vargr pack’s black plume rose into the morning sky like a stain. It would only grow thicker as the retreating vargr returned. Aleaneo held up a hand to block the rising sun. It had been hours since the pack attacked, in the quiet hours of early dawn when the cry of the watch bell had rattled Aleaneo from her sleep. She could see the village from her window, nestled just outside the great wall of the capital. When she looked out her window tomorrow, she would see its remains. Aleaneo tightened the strap on her blades.

“I’ll track them,” she told her brother, “and bring back a location on the nest. We can clear it today.” Before Aleaneo could take a step, Lereth grabbed her shoulder.

“Only track,” Lereth scowled. Aleaneo glowered up at him. She yanked her arm free.

“I’m not an idiot,” she shouted over her shoulder as she walked past the mounted soldiers and toward the outskirts of the village. Lereth’s laugh barely pierced the rushing winds as Aleaneo stood at the village’s edge.

The dirt scattered beneath her feet as she raced toward the western sky, the dry grass crumbling to powder beneath her as the hill’s precipice came into view. As her foot met the ground for the last time, she inhaled until the muscles across her chest pulled tight, filling her lungs as the air around her surged and launched her into the sky. It took only a moment for her feathers to return, and they pressed through her skin as she took her next breath and settled atop the air currents, talons tucked beneath her.

Lereth and her soldiers quickly shrank to unidentifiable specks as Aleaneo flew away, and from high in the clouds she finally saw the extent of the carnage. No building, scarce tree, or tuft of grass had been spared, and scattered throughout the smoking chaos lay small, motionless figures. Aleaneo turned her feathered head to the south and the vargr nest, but a sudden updraft tossed her back and she scrambled to adjust. She angled sharply against the rushing current, steadied, and found herself facing the western horizon. As it had since the first moment she’d been old enough to understand, her heart raced in her chest. Not fear—or not only. She’d heard every gruesome detail of the Unraveling, when the skies bled red and Old Vysarus crumbled, but it wasn’t fear Aleaneo felt when she looked west. It was anticipation.

A shadow far below drew her eye. Horses. The wild herds had been picked off early in the war, the last few relocated east of the Ilas River for safety, but these weren’t plains horses. These tore through the grasses like a gale, their fervent path aimed straight at her capital. And they bore crimson-cloaked riders. Aleaneo grimaced. So, they had come. Not even Highan’s Red Suns could refuse the Council’s call, early or not. Below, the outer fields sat empty and abandoned. Long drained of nutrients, they hadn’t been farmed in six summers. Aleaneo turned her gold eyes on the Highalian caravan and felt the snap of lightning jump through her outstretched wings.

The last of the updraft passed through Aleaneo’s feathers and, as it vanished, she let her head fall back with a gentle tip and plummeted toward the earth. The wind whizzed past as the golden grass hurtled closer and Aleaneo pushed the air further away, feeling the thrill as she fell, untethered, toward the looming hills below. When she could count the individual shoots, she thrust out her wings and the wind swelled beneath her, gathering in the shadow of her wingspan to slow her descent. Ahead, the Highalian convoy raced through the plains, ripping a trail of billowing dirt behind it. Aleaneo pulled the air around her and shot forward, riding the current until she sped alongside the rattling carriages. The mounted soldier beside her glanced once, then twice, before he turned his attention back to the road. His horse, though, held Aleaneo’s gaze. Animals always knew.

The feathers on the back of her neck prickled and Aleaneo’s head snapped to the southern hills. The thick black plume billowed to the sky and, as the winds curled up from the south, its rotten stench made Aleaneo grimace. The vargr had reached their nest. Even with a falcon’s eyes, Aleaneo couldn’t see the creatures, only the black stain smeared across the morning sky, but she could always smell them. Whether ten leagues from Arigelsi’s wall or two, a single snarling beast or a pack of twenty, Aleaneo could always smell them. Aleaneo pulled back and swooped over the caravan as the soldiers began to shout. The ones on the bench shifted as a young man pulled himself from the carriage.

They were children the first time they’d met—which was also the last. Aleaneo angled down for a better view, but the wind threw his dark hair across his face and his soldiers blocked her view. It didn’t matter. Aleaneo knew what he looked like. What mattered more was that he’d come. Aleaneo scowled—to the extent that a falcon could—and began her ascent. High in the clouds, she saw the plume more clearly. A league from Arigelsi, at most, and a pack of that size couldn’t be ignored, no matter how few were left. At least it was vargr. A vargr pack could rip through a village in a night, but a roga could slither its way over Arigelsi’s thick walls and set a neighborhood ablaze in an instant. She needed to alert the scouting division.

It was easier to use the air currents as they were; all birds knew that. Coast and conserve your energy. Ride high up and far from danger. When Aleaneo needed to, she could gather the air and shoot herself like an arrow, a snap of energy that launched her when the currents couldn’t. But there was no time for coasting now. No waiting. She stretched her wings to their furthest tip, breathed the hot, dry air of the plains, let out a piercing cry, and barreled toward the capital.

#

Kade’s sleeves were far too tight, but he had always insisted on wearing the same kind as his brothers, never mind how the fabric itched as they raced through the open corridors, the sun blazing overhead to cast bright patches of color through the fluttering silks. Up ahead, Kade’s brothers led the charge and wove through the sun-drenched palace halls with their play swords, but in the flash of the sun, his brothers’ swords gleamed red. Kade struggled to keep up with them as he scrambled with his own wooden sword.

He stumbled, distracted by a voice in his ear; a whisper, the same as Kade had heard before, and he slowed in front of a side hall as his brothers vanished around the corner. The sun shrank behind him as he passed into the shadows and listened for the voice again. This was his father’s hall. Kade knew it well, but his father had never allowed them here. Kade’s small foot slid further than he had ever gone. No, he thought. This is wrong. I’ve never been here.

“Arigelsi in sight!”

Kade bolted from his sleep and smashed his head against the inside of the carriage.

“Leh alehas,” his mother chided from the other bench as he rubbed the back of his throbbing head. “Are you alright?” The coach had become an oven, and with each breath, Kade felt like he inhaled more of his own sweat than air.

“I’m fine,” he muttered as he sank into the cushions. He was amazed he’d fallen asleep at all. Usually, not even the frenzied rattle of carriage wheels was enough to lull him to a fitful half-sleep on the best occasions, but he had never slept well.

“You were talking in your sleep again.” His mother appraised him with worried eyes. “Was it another nightmare?”

Kade took a deep breath. He’d had plenty of nightmares—filled with blood and screams and vargr teeth wrapped around his soldiers’ throats—but this had unnerved him in a different way. No brutal warfront slaughter, only a creeping chill of unease that left him holding his breath when he woke, and the sense that he should have noticed something he didn’t. And he had more of these dreams than he dared admit. Kade steadied his breath and opened his eyes.

“Just practicing for the Council,” he smiled.

His mother gave him the knowing look she’d perfected since he was a boy. With five sons, the dowager nahiras had more than enough practice. Kade being her youngest, she’d come to temper the glance somewhat, as his older brothers had made abundantly clear.

“Try not to embarrass the entirety of Highan,” his third brother Rekyn had quipped with signature smugness, and Kade scowled. Kade had been summoned to the nahiral’s chamber every day in the weeks leading up to his departure, and his eldest brother, Khalan—heir to their father’s throne—always sat at the desk with a stack of reports.

“None of us will be there to support you,” Khalan warned, raising his eyes from the reports for a moment to stare Kade down. “You alone will represent Highan. Do not rely on mother or the Majis to speak for you.” Their second brother, Aahran, stood just behind Khalan’s shoulder, as always, and offered Kade a reassuring look.

“The Majis will be there to advise you,” Aahran clarified. “Listen to what they have to say, but trust your own judgement.”

“What judgement does he need?” Rekyn sneered, repeatedly tossing his favorite dagger into the air and catching it with ease. “It’s all laid out. He just has to not screw it up.”

Kade swallowed the heat crawling up his throat, his jaw clenched so tight he heard his teeth scrape.

“Show your brother respect,” Khalan rumbled, and Rekyn sank meekly into his chair. “He is the Asyeri of Highan. If not for your luck of being born before him, he would outrank you twice over.”

Luck. Yes. How lucky his brothers were. Lucky to not be a spare four times over, while Kade bore the honor of ka-nahiral. Lucky to not have fire in their lungs, while every breath Kade took risked catastrophe. His father’s Majis would have scolded him. You are consecrated by Dalran itself, they would say. Blessed with fire for a purpose greater than all, yet still you sulk. Kade was glad his father’s advisors had been relegated to the second carriage. He couldn’t have endured their lecturing for the dragging journey. In the darkness of the carriage, Kade took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then released it slowly, draining his lungs until the fire in his chest dwindled to embers. Not even a spark escaped his teeth, yet he could still see the ripples in the air where the residual heat dissipated.

Blessed. Sometimes he still believed it. When he lit a campfire for his soldiers on a frigid desert night or roasted almonds for his mother in her orchid garden. Or in the peaceful silence of his room when the doors were shut and the curtains drawn and only the light of the flickering candle on his table filled the walls with warmth. In those moments, when Kade was just himself, the fire in his chest felt as much a part of him as his blood and bones. When his mother turned back to her reading, Kade gripped the edge of the bench until his knuckles cracked. Blessed with fire. What good did it do his people, who died by the thousands to defend their home? His home.

Kade turned to the carriage door. Latched securely shut, there were no windows to look out, only thick steel, but this carriage hadn’t been built for leisure. It served a greater purpose: to transport Kade and his mother from the warm sand of their beloved Jarov Hiv to the fifteenth United Dalranian Council. It was the seventh Council his mother would attend, and the fourth without her husband. The continent was at war. Not with each other, but united against an enemy none of them had foreseen. The Council had once had seven kingdoms, but only six remained, and they had witnessed firsthand the horror of the Traitor’s madness.

They said the sky turned red, that blood rained down the mountains and flooded the lowlands. Generations of Highalians knew the western cities only by name. The names were all that was left, or so they assumed. No one had seen them since the Unraveling, and each year more cities fell to the Burn, the buildings and bodies swallowed by the Traitor’s creatures. Though no one knew for certain, some believed the Vysarian had summoned them from Cenem, a legendary plane of darkness and torment. When Kade saw the front for the first time at fifteen, he began to believe it. When he saw the piles of Highalian soldiers eaten away by bloodrot, he didn’t want to believe it. Instead, he had vomited and only looked up from the splattered sand when his brother Aahran handed him his first turso mask. They learned later that Kade was immune to bloodrot, but not the smell, and while roga smoke blinded any other soldier, Kade’s eyes only stung. Still, the turso mask became a comfort, a shield behind which he was any other soldier. The mask left a ring around his face where it pressed against his skin, and Kade wore it like a badge of honor and felt camaraderie with the soldiers who walked beside him.

He journeyed to the front as often as the Majis and his eldest brother would allow, and never alone. One of his brothers always went with him. Step by step, morning and night. They even slept side by side. For protection, the Majis declared, but Kade knew the truth. He could burn a vargr’s head from its body, boil a roga to a pile of sizzling goo. He didn’t need protection. His brothers would guard his back, but they would also take his place in the mouth of a vargr if needed. Kade knew they had sworn as much. Every soldier in the Highalian army had sworn the same because, while there were thousands of soldiers to throw against the Vysarian’s hordes, there were only six Asyeri, and they needed as many as they could to cut the Traitor down.

Fodder. That was all they were to Highan’s allies. And what allies they had. Zealots, deserters, fools, cowards. Twenty years Kade could now count as his own, but he couldn’t say exactly when he had first realized how alone he was. Maybe he had always known and buried it away deep beneath duty and loyalty until it came crawling back up his throat to choke him, the burn at the back of his mouth swallowed only so many times before the nausea became a comfort. It was something to feel, at least, an acidic twinge that distracted him from the anger pounding inside his ribs. That had become a comfort, too, fueled by a lifetime of war and the uselessness of his so-called allies.

Zealots to the east, where the Bermians splattered blood across their golden armor and called it divinity. Deserters to the south, where the Nah’ians hid behind clouded peaks. Fools beyond the coast, where the Spearians drank away their days on sun-soaked beaches. And cowards at his back. The Arigelians could make whatever excuses they wanted, but they didn’t live the war like his people did. After a quarter century of carnage, it was hard to live any day without the stench of bile and bloodrot poisoning your every thought, but of Dalran’s six remaining kingdoms, none had avoided the war quite like the Arigelians.

Kade closed his eyes and tried to remember the air-filled corridors of Jarov-sal, the way the light shone through the canopies to fill the floors with a patchwork of color. He could still smell rosewater and feel the softness of earthen walls between his fingertips. Arigelsi was far from Jarov-sal and, though Kade had visited during a rare political pilgrimage as a child, his memories of Arigelsi were scarce. His only visit had been over a decade ago and he doubted half the population remained after a quarter century of war.

A loud rap tore through the carriage as someone outside banged on the metal plate behind Kade’s head. Kade twisted on the small, padded bench and slid the plate open, releasing a beam of blinding light into the coach’s dark interior.

“What is it?” he shouted over the thundering hooves.

“A plume!” the soldier outside shouted back. “Half a league out!”

The heat in Kade’s chest swelled to life. He reached under the bench and wrapped his fingers around the familiar sheath of his scimitar.

“Khaden?” His mother’s voice rose through the noise as he strapped his scimitar to his hip and crawled onto the bench.

“Stay inside,” he called over his shoulder.

Outside, his soldiers shouted as the driver made room on the bench. Kade reached through the small opening to grab the edge of the rattling seat and crawled into the deafening noise and light outside. Half-emerged, he squirmed through the tiny opening and pulled himself onto the driver’s bench as the metal frame of the window dug into his hips. The sudden vastness of the Eilol Valley overwhelmed him, leagues of endless hills and kaelkyr grass that mimicked the flow of his own desert in a way that was both familiar and alien. One moment dunes, the next hills. He focused instead on the distant southern horizon.

Immediately, Kade’s eyes burned. Not from the dust of the parched plains, but a sensation he knew intimately. He steadied himself against the roof of the coach and stood, legs bouncing with the racing wheels as it rumbled forward. The dry crunch of the kaelkyr grass filled his nose, along with the metallic ping of the boiling metal coach, but something sour threaded the air. Even as he scanned the horizon, the tender skin around Kade’s eyes grew tight and dry, and the metal railing beneath his hand began to glow red.

Vargr. The stench burned into focus, a rotten familiarity that turned Kade’s stomach, and he scanned the surrounding plains as his soldiers adjusted formation, one ring of riders so tight to the carriages that Kade could reach out and touch them, another further out to absorb any sudden attack. Fueled by the black plume on the horizon, the heat deep inside Kade’s chest swelled and the railing beneath his hand glowed brighter still, a fiery orange that spread past his knuckles as the heat in his chest built. His vision sharpened, focused on the dark column far away, and each breath pumped the heat through his throat as the handful of riderless horses thundered alongside the carriages. He startled as his mother’s hand reached through the small window and gently clasped his leg.

“Khaden?” her voice called from inside the carriage. He crouched down and placed his hand over hers.

“It’s far away,” he shouted, but adjusted his scimitar so it was within reach. His mother’s hand tightened around his and he squeezed back. “We’ll be to the city soon!”

A sharp cry drew Kade’s attention and he nearly stumbled as he strained to spy a distant bird disappearing and reappearing between the morning sunbeams. A sudden wind blew his hair over his head, his tunic collar flapping wildly as he gripped the carriage railing and squinted against the sun. When he spotted the bird again, it was far ahead, nearly lost from sight as the great wall of Arigelsi loomed into view. Through the pounding of fevered hooves, the towering gate rumbled open and the force of steel on stone shook the ground beneath the coach wheels. The gap allowed only enough width to enter and Kade held his breath as they flew through, the edge of the great gate passing barely a finger’s distance from his shoulder. Kade tightened his grip on the bench as they reeled around a high-walled corner. There were no straight shots, and the driver no longer sat on the bench, instead squatting above it to lean as the carriages teetered through the curved passages. They slipped through another gate, and another, each time admitted by a guard far above who raised a small red flag as the next gate in the path swung open.

At last, the caravan slowed and the thick outer walls of the city vanished as the final gate spat them into a massive courtyard, twenty times the length of his carriage and framed by tall stone buildings and towering trees. The carriage settled to a manageable speed and progressed through the center of the courtyard. Kade considered crawling back inside, but it was too late. Hundreds of curious eyes turned to watch their arrival. After weeks of travel, interrupted only by sparse and tiny villages, the familiarity and safety of a great city should have come as a relief, but all it did was further remind Kade how far he was from home. His soldiers’ vivid tunics and embroidered leather armor beamed with the glow of home, and he breathed the familiarity of their dark hair and rich skin, but just beyond the shoulder of his last mounted rider, the foreign faces of Arigelsi watched. Kade tucked his head to his chest and hoped the filth of the journey still plastered his face—not that an Arigelian would know the face of the Fire Asyeri. And with his sweat-stained, standard-issue tunic, he hoped he looked like just another Highalian soldier. He knew he would have to face the people of Arigelsi—and the people of Dalran—soon enough, but he savored his last moments of anonymity.

The carriages left the square behind and rumbled down the main road into the city. Kade remembered little of his childhood visit, but he could never forget the feeling of the city. Arigelsi was the oldest city in Dalran. Hundreds of years its people had lived there, in the same grasslands, backed against the same ancient forest. They were born there, they lived, and they died there. So did their children and grandchildren and every breathing soul until another family sprang up to take their place, an endless sea of golden grass that blurred from one hill to the next. Even now, as they watched the Highalian caravan roll past, the Arigelians—in their tunics of taupe and sage—seemed to blend into the buildings, grass, and sky.

A loud shriek made Kade scramble for his scimitar, ready for the vargr plume from the plains to loom thick and foul over his head. Instead, he sat bewildered on the driver’s bench as they rolled past a bustling market, packed to the brim with strolling shoppers, produce-filled stalls, and laughing children. Woven baskets overflowed with freshly picked vegetables and stacks of round loaves. Heavy strings of dried meat swayed under bowed awnings as throngs of Arigelians shuffled and shouted and filled their baskets with the very same staples Kade’s soldiers relied on at the front, the same ones packed in thick bags in the carriage beneath him. Even the wrappings were the same, but what surprised Kade most was how the shoppers walked, unbothered, past stall after stall, each as laden as the next with feast enough to feed a family. Had the citizens of Jarov-sal seen such a bounty at the central market, they’d have claimed it was a mirage.

Something sweet flooded Kade’s nose, washing away the stench of the vargr plume with a wave of intoxicating sugar, and his head spun as he ravenously searched the stalls. He latched onto it like a falcon to a hare—baked apple. A vendor pulled a fresh, golden mound from a stone oven and Kade’s mouth watered. Apples rarely made the supply route to the front, few ever delivered to the palace kitchens for an uncommon treat, and they received only what the Arigelians would send. Kade scowled as they left the bustling market and sweet smells behind. It was the least the Arigelians could do. As his soldiers threw themselves into wave after wave of blood-rotten vargr, the Arigelians sat comfortably secure hundreds of leagues away. Arigelian reports were few and far between, and Kade and his brothers had long determined that they held nothing useful; scarce roga numbers from deep in the Eilol Valley were pointless on the frontline where his soldiers were overrun by voracious vargr packs.

The familiar bake of the sun, which had slowly burned away the stench of his four-day-old tunic, flickered overhead, obscured by tall, slender trees. Jarov-sal’s trees were thin, wispy things, which survived only by his mother’s deft hand and springs far below the city, but the trees that speckled the Arigelsi streets loomed like giants. As they ventured up the great central hill, crawling higher into the sky with each turn of the carriage wheels, the Arigelsi palace rose above them and its sharp towers pierced the crisp clouds. Kade’s head tipped back as he trailed the towering spires higher and higher still, his heart pounding.

Much to his relief, the coach stopped at a wide courtyard at the foot of the palace. Kade’s vision swam as the world around him finally stood still for the first time in weeks. His body seemed to think it was still moving, and he gripped the edge of the bench as his soldiers dismounted and began to unstrap the trunks at the back of the coach. His father’s advisors emerged from the second coach, blinking wildly in the sudden brightness, and pulled their tiny fans from their sweat-stained robes to cool their dappled foreheads. Below him, his mother and her maid stepped out from their carriage.

When Kade’s vision finally steadied, he realized the courtyard’s only other exit was a set of stone stairs that rose so far into the sky he turned away before he could see their end at the palace’s entry. Instead, he stood on the driver’s bench and strained to catch a glimpse behind the palace at the treetops looming in the distance. The Taure Raer was greater than he remembered, the shadows of the faraway trees doubling and tripling until they vanished from sight, stretching like a thick blanket across the distant northern horizon. The trees, he knew, reached farther than he would ever see; the Taure Raer that fell within Dalranian borders was already half the size of the Jarov Hiv, and the Arigelians still hadn’t found the northern end.

Perhaps the mythic Olerim knew the full extent. He’d never much cared for Arigelian stories; Kade preferred the tales of his own people, but it was hard to disregard the Olerim when they had foretold the Asyeri all those centuries ago. While the firebirds and seers of his peoples’ tales were make-believe stories for children, the Olerim had been real, touched by magic as shifters and prophets. Though they had vanished from the continent whose fate they had foreseen, their blood and abilities faded by generations until nothing remained, their prophecy had survived. Kade was proof of that.

A cluster of Arigelians emerged from the servants’ doors behind the palace staircase as Kade’s soldiers unloaded the caravan, and the two groups watched each other with feigned indifference. Kade stood on the driver’s bench and unstrapped a small trunk from the roof to pass to a waiting soldier, as the Highalian ambassador’s familiar face appeared within the group of servants.

“Leh nahiras,” Ambassador Tarhan bowed deeply to Kade’s mother. “How relieved I am to see you arrived safely. You will remember the Arigelian ambassador, Lady Naelin.” Kade’s mother extended her hand.

“Of course,” she offered a polite nod. “It is good to see you again, ambassador.”

“And you as well, your highness,” Naelin bowed.

A soldier tapped Kade’s shoulder, and they hoisted a large trunk and lowered it to the ground. His father’s Majis exchanged their greetings with the ambassador, who smiled. “It is an honor to welcome the House of Cythrahli to Arigelsi, and the greatest of blessings to welcome the Fire Asyeri.”

Kade busied himself unstrapping the next trunk from the roof, but his mother’s voice cut through his anonymity. “May I present my youngest son,” she said, “Ka-Nahiral Khaden Rahin Cythrahli.”

Kade handed a small bundle to the soldier beside him, who took it with an empathetic look, and tried to breathe a spark into the sputtering embers of his gut as he turned.

As soon as he had been old enough to understand—and perhaps even before he truly knew—Kade felt the indignity of his position. In any other life, he would have been considered his mother’s plaything and consigned to a minor military appointment, largely ignored by the Highalian elite until they wanted to marry into the royal house. Kade liked to think he would have enjoyed an unobtrusive life. Instead, he was a minor prince forced to the forefront and he saw, with painful repetition, the hastily masked surprise and disappointment on face after face when he was presented. He faced the small crowd from his position on the bench, letting the sun warm his back, before he leapt from the carriage with a gentle thud to join his mother. Immediately, the Arigelians bowed deeply, bent nearly in half with both hands pressed to their sternums. The Arigelian ambassador bowed to match.

“May Ayeerah bless you, Asyeri of Dalran,” she declared. “Arigel welcomes you to her capital, Fifth Prince.”

The servants would not look at him, though a few exchanged nervous looks with each other. Kade managed a small smile, “Thank you, Ambassador.”

“We have prepared your rooms,” she motioned up the towering steps. “Please.”

A handful of Kade’s soldiers remained to unload the caravan, but the rest stayed close as Kade, his mother, and the ambassadors climbed the great front steps. Behind him, the elderly Majis inquired for an alternate route as the ambassadors continued their pleasantries, but Kade fixed his eyes on each step beneath his feet. He didn’t try to count; there were too many for the habit to prove useful. Instead, he relied on the mindless drone of the ambassadors and the ever-present wind in his ears to drown out the pounding of his heart. Just as the wind began to gust too strongly for Kade’s taste, the palace doors crept into view and he passed through the imposing stone entry, but his relief was short-lived. The hall was more air than stone, and waves of sunlight poured through rows of glimmering windows and an impossible glass dome far above. Kade avoided the windows and the uninterrupted blue skies beyond them. At least there were walls, and a solid stone floor to press his feet into.

“Their majesties extend their apologies for not welcoming you in person,” the Arigelian ambassador explained. “There is still much to be done before the Council convenes. His royal highness Sealyr Lereth will join you—”

For a moment Kade thought the palace had blown from its perch. A sudden surge of wind whipped through the arched windows and rolled across the stone floors. The massive gossamer curtains that hung from the ceiling rippled and snapped like waves, and even the Majis’ thick robes billowed around their weathered ankles as they squinted against the gusts. Kade raised a hand to shield his eyes, the other braced against his mother’s arm, but the winds subsided as quickly as they had arisen. The curtains settled. While the Majis reclaimed their dignity, Kade reached out to take his mother’s windswept scarf from her maid’s quick hand, but he froze as his heart suddenly pounded. The smooth fabric slipped from his motionless fingers as his mother’s maid passed him by, leaving Kade frozen at the center of their party while the others fussed around him. Kade watched the curtains whisper in the fading wind, their movement so heavy it seemed as if time had somehow slowed, and he slowly turned to look down the hall.

He felt her presence before he saw her; first the pounding in his heart that set his blood racing, then a charge in the air that made his skin prickle. There were storms in the desert, far from the front and its flashing red skies, that split the sky apart with cracks of lightning. Some came with a downpour that flooded the dunes and washed away everything, but others came with winds that howled out of the dark silence, hot and strong. When those storms appeared, Kade took comfort in thick earthen walls and a snapping fire to mask the winds until he woke the next morning to clear skies and a bright sun. As he looked down the hall, the heat in his throat threatened to pour past his teeth.

“Your highness!” the ambassador startled as the winds finally faded. The Arigelian princess stood at the center of the atrium. She met Kade’s gaze and, from across the stone floor, her gold-ringed eyes sharpened. The Highalian party hushed to uneasy silence as the two Asyeri faced each other.

The Arigelian princess had been the first Asyeri Kade had ever met. He remembered his excitement as a child when he entered the palace courtyard, surrounded by ambassadors and Majis, and eagerly scanned the crowd. When she first appeared across the cobblestones, something deep in his blood rose to the surface and Kade knew without a doubt that she was like him, but that was where their similarities abruptly ended. She was uncivil, churlish, and rude, avoided him entirely and mocked him for not fighting with two blades. His childhood excitement quickly soured and any sense of kinship died almost as soon as she left Jarov-sal, though he never forgot the heat in his blood when they locked eyes, just like now. The Highalian party shakily bowed and a few stole flitting glances at the Arigelian Asyeri. The Majis may have met the other Asyeri, but Kade’s soldiers had known none but Kade. The Arigelian princess turned to his mother and bowed.

“It’s my honor to welcome you to Arigelsi, jeh nahiras.”

The Highalian that came from her mouth snapped Kade from his trance, though he still dragged as she led them from the atrium. Habit took hold and Kade assumed his place at the head of the procession, side by side with the Arigelian princess. He snuck a glance over his shoulder as they walked down the hall, as if to examine the view out the windows, and unpleasantly realized her head reached half a hand over his.

“Fifth Prince,” she said without turning.

“Princess,” he replied. Behind them, the world listened. “We’re thankful for Arigel’s willingness to host the United Dalranian Council.”

“It is our turn,” she said plainly.

Kade clasped his hands behind his back. “I suppose you did host the first.”

“And Highan the second,” she gestured toward a set of large wooden doors at the end of the hall. A row of ready servants lined each side of the corridor, alongside the remaining Highalian soldiers, who heaved open the doors. Once again, the room inside towered to unnecessarily lofty ceilings that left Kade wishing for the intimacy of colorful canopies, and yet more windows free from bothersome shutters. The servants bustled through with trunks and luggage as the Arigelian princess stood just inside the door. “You’re welcome in the hall this evening if you would like to dine with us, but we understand if you’d prefer to rest until tomorrow.”

Kade answered habitually, “You need not adjust your schedules for us if today is a rationing day.”

The room fell silent as the Arigelian servants exchanged confused looks. At the door, the princess’s face stiffened. “It’s not.”

“Thank you, Princess Aleaneo,” Kade’s mother smiled. “We will rest.”

The princess stared at Kade a moment longer, bowed, and left. As the doors closed, Kade spotted the various bowls placed around the room, each overflowing with currants, plums, and apples.

#

The familiar throbs of a freshly sprouted headache rattled Aleaneo’s skull, which only marginally distracted from the sour bubbling in her stomach. She had planned to deliver the Highalians to their rooms and join her family for dinner, but she no longer had an appetite. Instead, it was replaced by a combination of exasperation and nausea. Not even an hour and already the fifth prince was ready to measure commitment. His ministers had seemed far less concerned with such trivialities only a month before when they’d requested a doubling of the monthly supply shipment.

As Aleaneo slogged down the hallway, clusters of servants exhumed the adjoining social rooms from their last layers of dust and disuse. Great white sheets were pulled from elegant tables and stacks of chairs reclaimed from long-shut closets in preparation for the Council’s customary festivities, though this was nothing like past councils. Aleaneo’s parents wrestled over the appropriateness of holding any entertainments during a wartime council and had elected to scale back the traditional offerings in favor of more judicious proceedings, from considerations of both tact and necessity. They couldn’t afford the extravagance of past councils, not with crates of grain and produce shipped west before they were barely out of the ground.

The noise of the preparations faded away as Aleaneo turned the corner, hit with a sudden rush of cool air and gentle rustling as the leaves of the sanctuary swayed in the early evening. As a child, Aleaneo had gone there on days when the war was too heavy, when she couldn’t shake the stench of bloodrot and convinced herself it was her fault for not being older, stronger, for not yet defeating the Vysarian. She would sit beneath the silver-green leaves of the Yara tree and let herself forget, for a moment, that the war could only end with her. Aleaneo hadn’t stepped foot in the sanctuary for years; even now, the toe of her boot stayed firmly in the corridor.

The Yara tree at the center of the sanctuary was said to have been planted by the ancient Olerim queen Yara herself, and the entire palace built around it. Aleaneo supposed that was why she’d been drawn to it as a child. The Olerim were as much a part of her as the kaelkyr grass of the plains—the feathers hidden at the nape of her neck were more than enough proof—but centuries after the Olerim had vanished from Dalran, their blood ran thin in Arigel. Somehow, by fate or chance, Aleaneo had inherited their greatest form and sometimes, when she took to the sky, she thought she felt another presence and even imagined a great shadow racing alongside hers.

Aleaneo’s head stung its disapproval as she looked down the corridor toward the dim light of the private dining hall. She grimaced, rubbed her burning eyes, and turned toward her rooms. Despite their dwindling numbers, there would still be enough visiting family members to keep her parents company. Doubtless her brother had made the same decision, since he had considered his presence at the Highalian arrival to have been unnecessary. Aleaneo stewed, but pushed it from her mind as she passed the two guards at her door. Inside, she fell face first into the bed with a groan.

“Change,” nagged a voice from the chaise, “or you’ll stink up your sheets.” Aleaneo groaned louder. Something soft, but not soft enough, pelted the back of her head and she turned to glare at Melithe.

It was the custom in Arigel to raise royal children alongside their citizens. They were educated in the same schools, taught to swim in the same lakes, instructed together on how to till the fields, sheer a sheep, and saddle a horse. It reminded the young royals that they, more than anything else, were Arigelians, and so were their people. When the other children began to shy away from the young Asyeri, Melithe reminded them that all Arigelian princesses learned to ride in the city stables and shouted for Aleaneo to bring a clean brush. Now, Melithe glared at Aleaneo over the top of her book.

“I can smell the stench through the door to my room.” Melithe turned to the young maid seated next to her, “Draw a bath for the saelra, please, Theil.”

The girl tossed aside her basket of mending, “Y-yes, my lady.”

“How can you even see the page?” Aleaneo mumbled as the young girl answered a knock at the door and quietly slipped outside. Melithe angled her book toward the small candle on the table.

“I’m an excellent reader,” she replied, and turned the page. “And there’s been an alert. Reports of vargr have come in from the outer scouts. All large lights in the city are to be extinguished.”

“I know,” Aleaneo flipped herself over to stare at the canopy. “I reported it.”

Melithe shifted on the chaise to face her. “How were the Highalians?”

Aleaneo tugged the leather cord from her hair and tossed it to the bed, feeling the immediate relief as her scalp eased. “Their queen is courteous.”

“And the Asyeri?” Melithe prodded.

Aleaneo fell silent. She did smell. She kicked her legs to the edge of the bed and let their weight pull her toward the edge until she sank to the floor like a limp rag and dragged herself to her wardrobe.

“As long as he doesn’t slow us down,” Aleaneo mumbled, “I don’t care what he’s like.” She riffled through a stack of notices on her desk—harvest counts, food store levels, and an additional scout report of a roga sighting two leagues out. The vargr rot she had seen, but roga were solitary and hard to spot, even harder to immobilize. She grimaced at the thick metal slabs on her windows. Damn burning snakes.

Melithe looked impatiently to the front door and set aside her book with a huff.

“You do realize you won’t be able to fly there on your own?” she called through the washroom door as she began to draw a bath. “As quick as that would be, you can’t face the Traitor alone.”

Aleaneo waved a disgruntled hand toward the washroom as Melithe reemerged. “We’ve waited long enough,” she said. “I won’t be slowed down because they’re dragging their feet.” Behind her, the door creaked open and Theil reappeared, head lowered, as Melithe turned to scold her.

“Then for my sake, wait until the others arrive before you knock down the Vysarian’s front door,” Melithe called over her shoulder as she took a small slip from Theil’s shaking hand.

“No promises…” Aleaneo chuckled. The room fell silent as Aleaneo pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She needed to sleep.

“Aleaneo.”

“Yes, yes,” Aleaneo shook her hands and turned to pacify Melithe, “I won’t knock on the front door—”

Melithe stood silent at the center of the room, little Theil tucked behind her shoulder with her head bowed, though Aleaneo could see her eyes dart nervously back and forth. The slip of paper Melithe had taken from Theil sat loose in her hand, and she held it out to Aleaneo with a grim look. Aleaneo’s blood ran cold. Even in the dim light of the lone candle, the black seal was unmistakable. Her hand shook as she unrolled the bloody parchment.

Three lines. That was all it took, but it was more than enough. Aleaneo’s mouth gaped in a silent gasp as she quickly slapped a shaking hand over her mouth. She felt it climbing to the surface; she wouldn’t let it out. She crushed the parchment in her hand and slammed her fist into her desk, sending books and trinkets tumbling to the ground as candelabras shattered against the stone floor and massive swells of wind gusted through the room.

No, no… Tears streamed down her face as she crumpled the parchment, catching glimpses of the notice through her shaking fingers. Not Kasa. The Taure Raer was untouched. None of the Vysarian’s creatures had ventured that far. Her mother’s family was safe. Aleaneo’s cousins were safe. Melithe’s arms wrapped firmly around Aleaneo’s shoulders as they shook. She wanted to bash her head against the floor, break the desk in half, shatter the walls, rip the fields with lightning, anything to distract herself from the nauseating burn crawling up her throat. But she knew that if she pulled her hand from her mouth there would be no stopping it.

Not sweet Kasa, who’d taught Aleaneo to braid her hair. She threw her fist into the desk again as the wood splintered. Break my hand, she pounded, the skin of her fingers growing rough and dry; break my arm, she pounded again, my neck, my legs, anything! Anything to stop what was coming. Melithe sent Theil from the room as Aleaneo doubled over the desk. She imagined roga fire climbing the curtains of Kasa’s room, the flowered wallpaper shriveled to dust, and she felt the heat of its twisted body sear her eyelids no matter how hard she closed them. Every vein in Aleaneo’s body throbbed as snaps of lightning rushed her blood, and she lifted her fist above her head and drove it into the desk.

Lighting flashed through the cracks of the shuttered window and drew bright white lines across the tender flesh near her eyes, but the torrent in the room settled. The letter sat crumpled in her fist, its edges singed black as the wax seal dripped wet down her thumb. It burned, too, and for a moment Aleaneo stood numb, stuck where her fist had landed. Cracks ran through the stone floor around her, forming webbed networks, to singe the curtains Kasa had picked for her. Melithe knelt with Aleaneo as she crumbled to the floor, the thin fabric of her tunic like paper between her and the stone as she pressed her head against the desk.

It rose from the darkest corner where she’d buried it, writhing and tearing and burning. Lightning flashed across the night sky and lit the room through even the steel slabs as they rattled in the wind. The muscles in her jaw tightened and she clenched her teeth so hard she could almost hear them crack, but Aleaneo couldn’t keep it down. Water crept through the washroom door as she screamed.

#

Kade raced through the darkness, his breath heavy and dry. Everywhere voices pulled at him. Mothers, fathers, uncles, sisters, screaming voices, crying voices. His eardrums thrummed and rang. He couldn’t take it. He never could, and his ears dripped with blood as he clawed at them with mad fever.

There. Like a bell it broke through the crowds, one voice that brought him back to Highan and the orchid gardens. A man stood just beyond, in riding clothes. He smiled at Kade, but began to ripple like a mirage. Kade sprinted forward, but gained no ground as his father’s face evaporated, burned away by a raging fire at his back. The flames engulfed Kade and singed his skin and tore his clothes, but no matter how hard he pulled, the flames pulled harder. He scrambled and fought, clawed and kicked, but the flames would not answer him.

Kade jolted forward, hand clasped tight around something heavy and smooth. Shadows blanketed the guest quarters of the Arigelian palace as he raised a shaking hand to his slick face and the sheen of his dagger flashed in his grip. The once ivory cotton of his pillow smoked brown under his head and the canopy curtain to his right hung in two where he’d lashed out in his sleep. Kade slid his knife back into the sheath and collapsed back onto the bed. Eyes closed, he gripped his hands tightly and took a deep, slow breath, releasing it as his fingers uncurled. Eight breaths later his hands stopped shaking, but he kept his eyes shut and listened to the rhythmic sound of his steadying breath as the sweat on his forehead cooled. The shadowed light of the evening sun glinted on the polished handle of a pitcher and two glasses on a table across the room. Kade dragged his fingers across the leathery palms of his hands, then hoisted himself up, sat for a moment as his head throbbed, and stood. He filled one glass, drained it, and then filled it again, draining it three times before the steam dissipating from his nose vanished, though his chest still burned.

Drevna breath, a voice laughed through his memories.

Kade placed the cup on the table and sank into the cushions, hand pressed to his eyes. Two years and Kade still remembered the Nah’ian prince’s voice. With four brothers, Kade had more brotherhood than he could manage, but the Nah’ian prince had been a friend. Kade had always hoped they would have the chance to meet again, but the notice of the prince’s disappearance two years ago had crushed Kade. It didn’t matter. The prophecy didn’t say all six Asyeri would be needed to defeat the Vysarian, just that they were the only ones who could.

A dreary sheet of white and gray washed the afternoon sky, clouds spread so thick Kade couldn’t tell one from the other, let alone spot the pale white halo of the sun. He smelled the coming rain, shivered, and closed the window with a thud. A handful of candlesticks lay scattered throughout the room, cold and untouched next to yesterday’s roga sighting scrawled in hurried hand. He reached to pull the curtains shut, but stopped at the sight of thick, metal shutters. Gossamer curtains gracefully hid the slabs mounted to the wall, bolted in with massive spikes, and long metal beams ran the length of the top and bottom. As Kade heaved on the handle, the slabs rolled to cover the window. With a push, he dropped the latch into position and did the same to the other windows, pulling the curtains to hide them before he returned to his bed and the single candlestick on the table. A moment wouldn’t hurt. Already his neck tingled, the warped skin of his hand stretched and red from a thousand fires.

It had been a child’s mistake. He’d thought himself strong, invincible, and in the end had tumbled screaming to his mother’s floor, the fine rugs aflame as the tiny scorpion scurried away. Kade’s father found it after, curled and crisp in death, charred black by Kade’s fire, and made Kade bury it in the garden with his own burnt hands. Now each time he lit his hand, the pain of the scar lessened until it was a comfort.

A deep heat rumbled in his chest, crawled through his lungs, wove through his ribs, and inched down his arm to his outstretched hand. With a crack, a tiny flame burst from his finger and danced its way from tip to tip as it swelled to life. He curled his fingers to meet it, poked and prodded it to grow, fed it bit by bit, and watched as the little tails snapped and sang. Carefully, Kade brought his hand to the candlestick and pressed a warped finger to the wick, where it sizzled and spat before finally taking hold, settled happily on its new perch.

Warm light covered the walls, the thick green curtains edged with orange and the table painted in shades of red and gold. For a moment Kade was warm again and he inched closer to the tiny candle in his corner of the room, resting his head on his hand to smell the smoke from his fingers. The sun would soon vanish, hidden behind leagues of clouds and barren fields. Even if his windows were open, he wouldn’t be able to soak in the warm beams or race over the great stretches to chase its fiery light. Instead, Kade reached to the tiny pouch that hung from his neck and squeezed the handful of sand inside. He’d taken it from the eastern dunes near the Pillar of Kadiran, his great-grandfather’s tomb, and every so often, if it swung just right, he smelled the desert sun.

A trail of smoke curled from his hand to the ceiling as Kade’s eyes fluttered open. He took two deep breaths and smelled the fresh, bright burn of the candle dancing happily on the table, the faint dusty sand of the eastern dunes, and a foul rot. He snatched his knife from the table and his scimitar from his trunk and threw open the doors. Nose in the air, Kade took a deep breath and bolted down the corridor, following the faint trail of burnt smoke around corners and through servants. He braced against a column and collided with a mass of wild curls.

Suddenly, Kade stood at the edge of the sea. It clung to her dark curls like drops of foam and splashed in her eyes with each sapphire fleck. There may even have been drops of ocean still clinging to her, she was so much the same. Kade hadn’t seen her face in years, but there were the same thick brows over deep-set eyes and the same shimmering white teeth, though she’d since grown into them. He swore she even wore the same ragged boots, held tight by braided cords beneath her trousers.

“Dalia?”

Her teeth flashed like pearls against her sun-drenched skin as she smiled, “Khaden Cythralhi, as I live and die.”

For a moment Kade stood silent, caught between the sour stench in his nose and his summer on the Spearian coast all those years ago. He should have expected to see her, but somehow Kade was not prepared to meet Dalia Dorian again, Asyeri or not. Dalia’s mouth pinched into a comical half-smile, her brow arched in amusement.

“Loquacious as always, I see,” she teased, and Kade’s shoulders relaxed. She clapped him on the shoulder and pulled him down, his face buried in her curls as she laughed. Saltwater.

“When did you get here?” he asked as the scent of ocean drenched his tunic.

“An hour or so,” Dalia replied, hand on the hilt of her curved blade. There was a matched spear in her room, he was sure. She’d never leave it behind. “Who do you think brought the rain? Heard you arrived yesterday. Figured you would need the help.”

“I wouldn’t turn it down.”

Her laughter echoed off the walls like jewels. “You always were timid,” Dalia shook her head. “Fiery temper with embers for guts.”

Kade’s smile faded as the rims of his eyes itched. He closed his eyes against the burn and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Rotten.

“Kade,” Dalia’s voice steadied. “What is it?”

It burned his eyes, though he couldn’t see it, and stank of wood and rotten fruit.

Dalia’s voice paled, “Where is it?”

Kade shook his head of Dalia’s salty skin, the dark earthy pull of the walls, and the sweat from his own brow. Dalia grabbed him by the arm and pushed him into the hall.

“Find it,” she commanded.

His throat burned with each sharp breath as the heat in his chest dried his mouth, but Kade caught it again, a trail of smoke that curled down the hall, and they chased it deep into the palace. Slowly, the smoke collected above their heads and filled the lofty ceilings with thin clouds that oozed and crept from hall to hall, but it wasn’t until they turned down a small corridor that the stench hit Kade like a wall. Screams and shattered dishes echoed into the hallway and, when Kade and Dalia threw open the doors, a plume of smoke billowed out.

Inside, flames consumed a small wooden cart and spread to the tables and walls of the kitchen as a handful of servants cowered in the corner. A foul stench oozed from the cart; Kade made straight for it. He dragged his hand through the flames that devoured the table and soaked them into his skin, leaving the table a charred three-legged mess. A shimmering rope of water stretched from the pump near the door to float through the air as Dalia doused the walls and floor.

The flames consuming the cart spat green and rank, and Kade plunged his hand into the fire, through the wooden planks, into the basket inside. As soon as his hand invaded, the flames sizzled and hissed, and Kade snarled as his fingers sank into the squirming, slimy nest below. The servants shrieked as he pulled out a cluster of roga larva, slick with bile and squealing like pigs, their razor-sharp mouths taking up the majority of their heads even at this size. They tried to light him up, spewing rancid bile that spurted angry flames, but Kade engulfed them in burning fire, illuminating the room from corner to corner until the larva were a pile of decomposing goo on the kitchen floor, their remnants dripping from his blackened fingers.

A servant screamed as a larva scurried across the floor, desperate to escape Kade’s reach, but a shimmering thread sliced the worm in two, then in two again, and again, before returning to Dalia’s sparkling grasp. The stench of rotten flesh filled Kade’s nose and his chest slowly settled, though the fire inside rumbled on. He made sure his hands were cool and the black flesh faded away before he approached the frightened kitchen staff.

“Any hurt?” he asked.

They shook their heads in stunned silence as they emerged from the corner. A woman took his hand in hers and kissed it, undeterred by the scales of ash and soot that flaked from his knuckles.

“We owe you our lives, Asyeri,” she said as she bowed deeply to him and Dalia, and motioned for a small boy and young woman to come forward, “and I the lives of my children.”

Dalia watched intently as the young boy cradled his hand. “What have you got there?” She tilted her head to catch his gaze. The boy huddled behind his mother. “Come on, then.”

His mother urged him forward and the boy took two hesitant steps and stopped, his wide eyes flitting back and forth across the stone floor, each time jumping for a moment in Dalia’s direction. Dalia knelt on the kitchen floor in front of him. The boy startled and looked up, locking petrified eyes with Dalia. She smiled a glittering, crooked smile.

“Hello there,” she offered, and motioned to his hidden hand. “Would you show me?” Eyes wide with awe, he revealed an angry welt slashed across his palm. Dalia raised her hand. The pump near the door bubbled to life and the boy’s eyes grew wide as a thread of water wove through the air.

“Last time I saw a wound like this,” she explained to the boy as water floated from the faucet to curl around her fingers like a glove, “it was on a twenty-stone man. Twice as tall as me, he was, and built like a bear.” She took the boy’s hand and pressed hers against it, his face pinched with pain, and smiled. “He squealed like a piglet as soon as the worm touched him, and fainted like a goat when I did.”

The boy lit up through blotchy red eyes and looked proudly to his mother and sister as Dalia pulled a towel from the cupboard, ripped a strip with her teeth, and wrapped it snuggly around his washed hand. “There,” she held up her own wrapped hand. “We match.”

Dalia dismissed their thanks as Kade wandered to the broken, smoking remnants of the cart. He crouched beside the shredded latticework to examine the rotted fruit inside. Acres of premiere farmland surrounded Arigelsi, all protected by rings of thick walls. A smart roga might have deposited a clutch of eggs into a neglected harvest crate, but inspections should have found them long before they’d had the chance to hatch. Ideal as it was for a roga nest, dark and dry with plenty of food to decompose, even the woman’s small son should have been enough to frighten the creatures away. Kade lifted the broken cart and hauled it through the back door to the kitchen courtyard, where he dumped it on the cobblestone and set it ablaze, the roga remnants burning black and green. The flames popped and spat, and he watched as they twirled in the cold, gray sunlight.

“Lovely bonfire you’ve got here,” Dalia’s voice danced in his ear. Arms crossed in front of her, the shimmering lacework of water vanished from her hands, soaked into her skin and the air.

“They were in a kitchen, Dalia,” Kade whispered. “A palace kitchen.”

“Ruined all the blackberries, too.”

“We need to call the Asyeri Council. Now,” he said. “This can’t go on any longer.”

“Why do you think I’m here, Fifth Prince?” Dalia replied. “It’s been called. I ran my horse for two days straight to make it in time. My council won’t be here until tomorrow. Besides, do you think they trusted you to find your way there on your own, or the summons they placed on your table? Brilliant with a sword, horrible with directions.”

Dalia laced her arm through his and led Kade from the smoldering wreckage. Steam twirled to the sky where their skin touched.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two