There are three realms between the uninhabitable lands and the ocean. Summers – where magic is outlawed and mages are executed if they’re not under employment or merely passing through. Aquila – where all things fair and noble reside. And Trand – where the key to our continuing peace lays hidden in a war room far below the coming Traders’ Ball.
North of those three realms are Desayer, with its cursed enchanted forest and even more cursed isolated commoners – completely unaware of their impending doom and the magic that fills the world around them. Then at the northernmost point of the world is Kenslay Realm, who are just barely holding back the fae. Not that any of the peasants down in the lower kingdoms would know it. And it’s highly doubtful that the Silvari have ever spared a thought for the fae or the fae for anyone else. They’re all worlds divided.
All the Kings and their men, mages and their magic, warriors and their swords, might dominate the mortal landscape, but none hold the needle or guide the thread.
The mortals have held power over most of the known realms for so long that they have forgotten other beings exist. The people along the Silvari border still look at the Forbidden Forest and see nothing but a scary green mist – only a few know what’s inside – least of all the soot servant Shade, who is today planting winter vegetables in Cook’s garden. She gently nestles a seed into the soil, ready to grow once the frost settles in, and pretends not to notice the small boy, Alfie, stealing the very first lemon off the tree. She figures he’ll learn his own lesson.
As for Summers Realm, it’s never been well known for anything good. At the top of their reputation is impressive statistics for the second-highest prisoner head count, the longest justice wall with displays of the broken bodies of the executed, and the strictest laws prohibiting possession of magic.
The realm’s one redeeming feature is a mountain range so steep and dangerous only the crazy venture within. The crazy and the desperate.
All the known and unknown realms may be a few short seasons away from collapsing into the hands of a madman bent on ruling the world, but today two lives are about to cross and irreversibly put pieces into motion that people in a hundred years will still be whispering about.
Broken pieces of a much, much bigger puzzle.
I’m going to hell, in every religion.
fact
Zak’s men spread out in the trees, red-sashed slave trader hilts on every one of them. Shane and Kaitn on his flanks, Cooper in his shadow, and Lark barely managing to follow the order to stay behind the cart. Their minds are slimy, like grease under my magic’s touch as I brush up against their thoughts just enough to know that their plan is to capture, not kill, the three youths by the stream. A boy and two girls. The girls are unmistakably twins. It’s impossible to miss their matching fiery red dreadlocks and the fine black tattoos over their noses. The boy is older, and if he’s related, it’s by marriage and not blood.
I pull back from their minds and watch on through my magic – like I’m hovering overhead. Watching, but not participating.
Zak dives into the open and shouts wildly, sending the mountain rats scampering and kicking my heart rate up a notch. Not because I want the kids – no, my instinct is to stand between them and these traders, but I squash the urge down hard. Slave traders need slaves; that is my current point and purpose in life.
The kids are too slow. Zak has his hands on the first one, Kaitn is quick to grab the second, and Shane the third. They struggle, but three ambushed raggedy rats are nothing but sport to these four men. The capture is all over in minutes. Clean, just how I like them.
I click my tongue and urge the cart lazily around the bend and along the bank. The space is just wide enough for travel, made possible by a rush of melting ice and snow in the spring. Not that I’ve spent time in the mountains, but it’s an interesting – magical – place to study. Anywhere dragons hide usually is. I stop just outside the gathered traders, young Lark riding straight past me and into the excitement. I resist the urge to shake my head at him; he’s enjoying this job far too much.
The surrounding area only needs a cursory glance as I slip down from the driver’s seat, letting my magic do the work. Trees, trees, trees, nothing but trees.
This is what I’m hired to do, keep guard, seek, see, alert – all that mundane stuff. The kind of thing any basic witch with the sight could do. And a SightWitch is what they think I am. Here to keep watch, smell out trouble, and raise the alert. That’s the current-known extent of my abilities.
Leaning back against a tree, I fold my arms over my chest and could damn near go to sleep while the men make a show of getting the youths to submit, tying their wrists in ropes, and dragging them to join the other kids already in the cart.
Could go to sleep – if I wasn’t being watched.
I search around me again, brushing my power over the scrub and trees. I push a little farther across the stream and stumble on another kid. She’s right there. How could I have missed her? I lift my gaze and meet the keen eyes of another mountain rat just barely visible in the brush. Not a kid, but a young woman.
Black hair, strong jaw, freckles, sun-kissed skin, and absolute determination in her brown eyes.
Her thoughts are nothing but shadows, and her mind is as light as a feather, too light because clearly she’s managed to get close without triggering my magic.
I suppress a smile. This is interesting.
Far more interesting than more slaves or the thought of more days riding and camping with these vile men.
Now that I know she’s there, it’s impossible not to hear her thoughts.
I have to save them, have to get them out of here. Then I’m going to throw Brenda and Renee off a damn cliff, no threat about it. A hundred percent fact. Dammit! Like an open book, only some of it is in another language – which is not how my magic works. People are closed books unless I consciously open them. My magic is like lockpicks into a mind, not a key, and I have never before found a door to be already open. And I never thought I would because someone like her isn’t supposed to exist.
She doesn’t falter, silent and still, watching the scene unfold. Determined to intervene because the kids are in her charge. I understand all of this immediately.
Most people think in words. Unless they’re deaf from birth, then in pictures. Either one is easy enough to decipher.
But this girl, she thinks in impulses. Move, stay, get, protect. All primal. All strangely entrancing.
We have to move now, she announces, retreating and throwing herself onto her horse’s back without rustling a single leaf.
They’re communicating?
More impossibilities. Curiosity overcomes me. Her use of magic, the way she pulls and manipulates power, I’ve never seen anything like it.
And I want to see more.
I shake my head, one hard instruction. She hesitates, and a wicked sense of delight fills me.
Selfishly, I push my magic into Zak’s mind, finding his train of thought and piggybacking onto it, bending it ever so slightly to my advantage. Success! We must camp. Rest. Hunt for more mountain rats. May our bellies be full and our purses fuller. The men should split off into the forest to hunt for food. The afternoon is young, and there’s more stock to be found.
He doesn’t take much to convince, twisting the idea so he thinks it is his own. A second later, he announces, “We camp here!”