The serpent smiled, ready to strike his killing blow. “She is the one.”
“No!” my father bellowed as my mother whimpered at his side. “Run, Rogan! Run!”
But I was frozen in place by their panic, an ice sculpture who watched two soldiers hold my father as he struggled in their arms, and a third pull a dagger from his belt and plunge it into his heart. My father twitched and stiffened in their hold, a horrifying gurgling noise making its way up from his chest to spurt a thick, bloody fluid out of his mouth and down his chin.
My mother’s screams played the soundtrack to this memory before the dagger-wielding soldier strolled toward her crumpled figure, his black-gloved fingers stroking over her hair. They slid like leeches down to her throat and back up to her cheeks. And then he twisted her head between his hands with a jerk that sent an echoing crack around my world.
That’s when I felt the tug on my hand and remembered my brother. With a thousand screams stuck in my throat, I whirled with him and began to run, dragging him with me into the cover of the fields, my father’s last shouts reverberating in my ears. I drowned out the sounds of my shallow, panicked breaths, the hiccupping cries of my brother as I hauled him with me. The hollering and thundering behind us made me race faster.
When the thundering eased, I knew I had lost them in the fields. We were small and knew the land as well as we knew each tiny scar and line upon our palms. I headed east, picking up my brother when he tripped, shushing him when I was no longer sure we were alone. At last we reached the cave my father had punished us for hiding in only a year before. Bears, he had warned. But now I feared the soldiers from the palace more than the bears, the soldiers who wanted me and why, I did not know. They had slaughtered my parents to have me. Would they murder me too? My brother? At the thought, I burrowed him against me in the dank cave and his tears soaked my dress.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
I wanted to tell him he need not apologize for crying, for grieving, but I feared if I spoke, all my screams would burst forth with terrifying consequences.
“I didn’t mean to.”
At that, I pressed him back until a shaft of light filtered over his face. He looked so lost, my heart broke again. He clutched his trousers, turning from me, and it was then the smell hit my nostrils.
I began to cry.
I did not want him to be ashamed of his fear. He was so little.
“It’s okay,” I whispered and made to reach for him, but his shirt slipped through my hands as he was whipped out of sight. I must have yelled, I think, as I stumbled blindly after him into a day that had suddenly turned gray, a day that had once blazed in a beautiful fire of heat and life. Now it was gone.
And as my eyes found my brother, I realized even the last sparks of the embers had been snuffed out, leaving only the fire’s funeral shroud of smoke.
His small body laid at the mouth of the cave. The dagger edged in blood from his throat slipped back into its place on a soldier’s belt.
The serpent stepped over my brother’s body and knelt before me.
“Say goodbye to your family, Rogan. A new one awaits you.”
Chapter 1
I ached. I had never experienced such pain before. But I had never been on a horse for so long. It did not help I was stiff from trying to keep my body as far from the man who held me on that horse in his embrace. It was impossible not to touch him—his long arms encircled me in order to hold the reins.
I didn’t know where we were. It was impossibly dark. The sun had been on our left for much of the day before moving to the right and setting. It had also taken longer to set than it did back home. If my father had taught me correctly, this meant we were moving south. I twisted my neck to look at Kir, who rode trapped between the captain of the Guard and the reins of his horse, Destroyer. Such a fitting name. He had helped the despicable mage behind me, Vikomt Syracen Stovia—one of the Glava—destroy my life, as well as Kir’s.
The kral was dead.
Only Haydyn Dyzvati, Princezna of Phaedra, remained of the evokers. Kir told me Stovia was collecting those left with rare magic to help protect and reinforce the sovereign until Haydyn came of age and produced more children of the Dyzvati.
Kir was one of the Glava, a telekinetic.
“The Dyzvati power has waned,” Kir had whispered to me, his eyes flickering to our guard. That had been only two nights after the murder of my family. Kir had been with the Guard for a week. The other soldiers ate and talked quietly around the campfire. “Stovia has taken advantage of it. The way he talks … as if the violence of his crimes is justified. He’s protecting the sovereign and the peace of Phaedra with blood and cruelty. With a selfish pursuit for the last of the mage.”
“But I’m not a mage,” I whispered in shock. We were sitting together to the side of the fire. Strangers. But the wiry boy, a few years my senior, shared the haunted look in my eyes. They had destroyed his family too.
Kir had shrugged. “You must be.”
But I wasn’t. Was I?
I caught Kir’s gaze as we rode swiftly and quietly into the small village. His face was taut, his eyes narrowed. Something was happening.
The horses drew to a stop with not even a snort, so obedient to their masters’ will. An unpleasant shock moved through me at the feel of Stovia’s hand in my hair.
“Now, little one,” he whispered, “time to see how well that magic of yours works.”
I shifted away from him. “I have no magic.”
He chuckled. “You’re one of the Azyl, child.”
One of the Azyl? No. He was mistaken.
“I’m not.”
With a growl, Stovia dismounted and none too gently ripped me from the saddle. My feet hadn’t even hit the ground before he shook me, my eyes rolling back in my head with the force of it. “Stop pretending!” he hissed, careful not to raise his voice. He released me and I stumbled as he lowered his body so his austere face was level with my own. Those wicked black eyes bore through me. “In this village is one of the Dravilec. I want you to seek out my healer. Now.”
At the command, a wave of energy crashed over me and my whole body hummed with tingling vibrancy. I turned to face the village. And I sensed her. The Dravilec. Six years old. Valena of Daeronia. We were in Daeronia. Thought so. We were growing closer to Sabithia. To Silvera. To the princezna.
Wait.
I am an Azyl.
I swayed at the thought. Every time my father had told me the stories, I’d wished desperately for a little piece of magic in our lives.
I had been a mage all along.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to be with my family.
What would Stovia do to Valena’s family? Would he murder them in cold blood if they refused to hand her over? I knew, even without my help, that he would find Valena. He was a powerful Glava. Could sense magic. But that didn’t mean I had to aid in the destruction of another family.
“No,” I whispered.
“What?” Stovia growled.
I spun around, defiant, hatred blazing out of my eyes. I wished I were Glava with the ability to summon the elements. I’d set him on fire and watch him burn for what he had done to me. To Kir. For what he would do to Valena.
“I said … no.”
His fist connected with my face with such force, I flew to the ground. The breath whooshed out of me at the agonizing blow to my ribs as I hit the hard dirt. My eyes watered at the painful heat across the left side of my face. Blood trickled out of the corner of my mouth and I tasted copper on my tongue.