PART 1
WARRIORS OF WING
BEFORE THE BEGINNING …
Memories were a tricky thing. They could elude you—or refuse to leave you alone. For so long, I only had the memory of Inara’s birth to cling to from before. But as suddenly as my father came back into my life, so, too, did another memory return to me, a gift from before that fateful night.
The sun was warm on my back; I recalled the feel of it, and the way my dress swirled around my legs when I spun. The moment was only a glimpse, a hazy, sunshine-washed dream more than anything. It was my mother, fingers intertwined, turning with me. It was putting my palm on her swollen belly and feeling the baby within squirm, a foot or a hand pressing through her skin to meet my hesitant, wondering touch.
It was brilliant green blades of grass beneath my toes, and the brush of a gentle breeze on my sweaty cheek. It was blue skies overhead and birdsong nearby, a high harmony to the rush of the waterfall that I’d heard but never seen. Mere flashes of color and movement, wrapped up in feeling—in security and love and happiness that was warmer than any sunshine. But I didn’t know to recognize and cherish the warmth until it was taken away—until he was taken away, leaving our world dark and cold, the sun banished to dreams.
During all the years of his absence, the memory grew fuzzier and harder to summon, until it was little more than a deep-rooted yearning that would surface when I stood beside Inara in her gardens, when her eyes flashed a particular shade of blue-fire that somehow reminded me of a different day standing on those grounds, a different life … when we’d been a family. When I’d only known the sun.
He was there that day, but his face had been taken from my mind as surely as he’d been taken from my life, so I only recalled the sensation of his presence, but not him, actually standing beside us as we spun and spun and spun, Mother’s skirt billowing out like a flower blooming around us.
Until now.
He’d come back, and with his return, my father’s face had also reentered my memories. So that a flicker surfaced, and I finally remembered him, too. How he’d watched us, his eyes flashing that same blue in the sunlight as Inara’s; how he’d laughed, how he’d pulled us both into his arms and held us close.
A circle of sunshine, of love, of family.
But everyone knew that with any sunrise, there was also a sunset. Day must give way to night. We’d lived in the shadow of night for most of my life, and now, even though a glimmer of sunlight had been returned to us, I was still afraid.
Darkness still dominated, and with it, a fear that this time, the sun might never rise again.
ONE
ZUHRA
Shadows crept across the floor, crawling up my walls and slinking across my bed. Silent, stealthy harbingers of the rapidly falling night. I sat halfway between the door and the window, on the same dingy sheets on the same sagging mattress where I’d sat countless times before, staring at the sun-faded walls and the worn dresser—all as familiar as my own reflection. This was the space where I had lived for eighteen years. I’d come there seeking solace, hoping the familiarity would help me shut out the horrific reality of the past few hours. And yet my room had never felt so foreign. Nothing had changed within the four walls … except for me.
But outside my door, nothing was the same.
Paladin once again walked the halls of the citadel that had been empty for so long. The magical beings who’d abandoned their home had returned, breathing life back into the stifling emptiness that had suffocated me. The citadel had come alive with their presence. Sounds of voices replaced the eerie groans and creaks that had always sent chills of foreboding over my skin. Hallways that once pulsed with menace, now vibrated with expectancy.
I’d dreamt of this moment; I’d yearned for it.
But not like this. Not with blood and terror and death in their wake. Yes, Paladin walked the halls again—and against all odds, my family was reunited—but at what cost?
So much of the death and destruction was my fault. My stomach churned with the guilt of it, compounded by the fact that despite it all, I couldn’t deny being glad the Paladin had come. Or, rather, that one Paladin in particular had come.
Raidyn was somewhere within the walls that had been my prison for the vast majority of my life. I could open my door and possibly see him striding toward me, his long legs carrying him across the worn rugs I’d tread countless times, his blue-fire eyes glowing in the dark of nightfall.
But if I did open my door and saw him, would he be alone—or would Sharmaine be at his side?
The image of Raidyn rushing out to embrace her in the courtyard earlier that afternoon flared in my mind, the way he’d gathered her into his arms, how her fingers had tightened around his shirt, holding him so very close. But she and Sachiel, another Paladin general like my father, had just returned from trying to track down Barloc.
I still couldn’t believe Halvor’s uncle, the man we’d all believed to be a harmless scholar, had become a jakla—a Paladin word that meant “cursed”—after ripping my sister’s power from her body, leaving her to die. I, too, was grateful Sachiel and Sharmaine were both alive and unharmed … especially after what Barloc had done to my grandfather.
His body had been taken to a room and covered with a sheet, prepared for burial tomorrow at dusk. I’d barely had a chance to get to know him before Barloc had taken him from me, using his unnatural power to kill my grandfather and then blasting his way through the hedge that had been impenetrable up until then.
I lurched to my feet, a fist pressed to my stomach, trying to keep the bile from rising at the memory of the hole in my grandfather’s chest … of the blood … his glassy eyes staring up at a sky he would never again see, the fire gone out of them, along with his spirit.
I was afraid to open my door, to face what lay ahead, but I could no longer hide in my room—not without more memories assailing me, and the accompanying panic boiling hot in my veins, spewing acid to burn my stomach.
Inara. I should go check on Inara. She’d said she was fine when I tried to speak with her after leaving Loukas’s room, claiming to be so grateful she was alive, she wasn’t upset her power was gone. But the sanaulus from healing her—the bond created between the healer and the one healed—gave me a direct connection to her emotions. Even without the extra insight into her tumultuous feelings, I knew my sister.
She was lying.
I hurried across my room, but just as I stretched out to grab the handle, a loud knock at the door made me jump back, gulping down a yelp. A tiny bud of hope bloomed—then withered when I pulled the door open.
Shadows swelled behind Halvor, standing a few feet away, his hands shoved into his pockets, narrow shoulders sloped. “Your father has called a meeting,” he said without looking up. He’d been taller in my memory, but now, after my time in Visimperum with Raidyn and Loukas, he didn’t seem as big as he once had. “He wanted me to come get you. They need everyone there.” His eyes flickered up to mine, then away again, a flush touching his jaw.
Was he remembering the last time we’d been alone together—when I’d made it painfully clear I’d hoped he wanted me? I grimaced at the memory, at how wrong I’d been.