“Not like in your sacred texts,” Rhys gently explains. “An Ealaiontora is a prophet not through words, but through their art and their very life. They are a reflection of the Soul of The People.”
“If my sister had been born without wings,” Cael says, “she would be revered by all of Elfkin. We have not seen the likes of her...the talent she possesses...for generations. Her art should decorate the halls of the Alfsigr monarchs and the steps of the Ardeaglais.”
“I am not an Ealaiontora,” Wynter says from where she’s slumped against the wall, her voice dulled. “I am one of the Foul Ones. Leave me and return to our people. I accept my fate.”
Ariel bolts to her feet, her black wings unfurling, a small ring of fire erupting around Wynter and herself as she glares at us. “Get out,” she seethes at us. “Get out. All of you. You are poisoning her mind.”
“Ariel, they’re trying to help her,” I insist.
“Get out!” Ariel snarls at me, at Cael and Rhys. “Leave. Her. Alone.” She kneels back down in front of Wynter. “We don’t need them,” she tells Wynter as she strokes her hair clumsily, silent tears streaming down her livid face. “We don’t need any of them. They only want to hurt us. They’re the Foul Ones. You can’t let them break you.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask Cael, twisted up with anguish.
“We will seek an audience with my aunt, the queen. We will beg her not to send out the Marfoir. And to rescind this decree against the Icarals.”
“And if she denies you?”
Cael nods gravely, as if already braced for this possibility. “We will break with my people. Somehow, we will get my sister through the Eastern Pass. We will journey to Noi lands, where Rhys and I will join the Wyvernguard.” Cael’s cultivated face grows hard as flint. “And then we will take up arms against the Gardnerians and the Alfsigr Elves.”
PART FIVE
MAGE COUNCIL
RULING
#340
The peaceful annexation of the territories formerly and illegally occupied by the Northern and Southern Lupines will commence immediately, bringing the northern territory under the protection of Alfsigroth and the southern territory under the protection of the Holy Magedom of Gardneria.
Verpacian Council
Ruling
#73
By unanimous decision, the Verpacian Council has voted to bring Verpacia under the protection of Gardneria. The peaceful transition of power will commence immediately, beginning with the merging of the Gardnerian military with the armed forces of Verpacia. The Verpacian Council will hereby operate under the jurisdiction of the Mage Council of Gardneria.
MAGE COUNCIL
RULING
#341
The peaceful annexation of Verpacian lands will commence immediately, bringing the formerly independent country of Verpacia under the protection of the Holy Magedom of Gardneria.
MAGE COUNCIL
RULING
#342
All diplomatic relations with the Noi people are hereby severed in response to the egregious and unprovoked actions against both the Gardnerian and Verpacian militaries. The Vu Trin forces are hereby barred from the newly annexed Verpacian province of Gardneria, and the Holy Magedom has appropriated the Vu Trin military bases in eastern and western Verpacia.
Further Vu Trin aggression or trespass onto the sovereign territory of Gardneria will be considered an act of war.
PROLOGUE
Damion and Fallon Bane peer through the windows of the glass-enclosed balcony, out over the sea of black-clad Gardnerians in the plaza below, the crowd captivated by the commotion at the apex of the cathedral’s grand, sweeping staircase.
A male Icaral is being hauled up for execution, two soldiers grasping its arms, the creature’s wing-stumps flapping in panic.
Damion savors the panoramic view of the scene from the fourth story of the Banes’ most palatial estate. His gaze sweeps over the crowd toward the mammoth statue of Carnissa Gardner that dominates the plaza’s center—the larger-than-life Black Witch leveling her wand at the evil Icaral demon that lays prostrate at her feet.
Movement draws Damion’s focus back toward the scene unfolding in front of the cathedral’s enormous front doors. Marcus Vogel, Vyvian Damon and the rest of the Mage Council stand in a semicircle around the bound, kneeling Icaral as three Level Five Mage soldiers stride forward.
Damion watches impassively as the soldiers pull wands and point them at the Icaral demon’s head. The creature’s wing-stumps continue their agitated flapping, its head hung low. Thunder rumbles in the distance, the dark clouds bundled tight and low as lightning streaks across the sky.
“Did you know Mother was attacked by an Icaral?” Fallon asks, her chair set close to the glass, her eyes pinned on the Icaral. “During the Realm War. The night the Kelts rounded up her entire family.” Fallon’s eyes flash with outrage.
Damion Bane eyes his sister with careful consideration. She sits in a high-backed, velvet-cushioned chair, her head resting on a silken pillow, tree limbs embroidered along the black pillow’s edging in a deeper matte black. Her torso is still wrapped in broad bandages, and an emerald quilt with a tree design has been carefully placed over her lap by her skittish Downriver Gardnerian handmaid.
She’s still recuperating, but she’s a marvel. Her powerful affinity lines have saved her.
And her magic is growing.
“Mother told me of the Icaral attack,” he says. Their eyes meet and hold, a fierce look of solidarity passing between them. Their mother, Genna Bane, rarely speaks about what happened that night, over twenty years ago. When the heathens had power and were slaughtering entire villages of Gardnerian men, women and children.
When the Kelts and Urisk and Icaral-demons came for their mother and her entire family.
Damion looks back at the broken Icaral with renewed hatred and blazing satisfaction. The Reaping Times have only just begun. The scourge of Evil Ones is about to be wiped clean from the Western Realm—and then the Eastern Realm, as well.
The work of the Black Witch taken up and finished, once and for all, by his powerful sister.
Fallon’s mouth twists with abhorrence as she watches the scene. “The Icaral threw fireballs at Mother’s family as they were being herded into a barn for slaughter. And it laughed. It actually laughed as it burned the children’s feet and set the little girls’ skirts alight.”
Rage flashes in Fallon’s eyes, her fingers curling tight around the Ironwood wand in her lap. The entire room chills, and Damion feels the cold seeping into his bones as frost forms on the windows.
“I know, my sister,” Damion says, his voice low.
“Leave just one of the Evil Ones on the face of Erthia, and what happened before will happen again,” Fallon warns. “The word Mage will once again become a slur. Our people, our children will be mocked as ‘Crows’ and ‘Roaches.’ Enslaved...beaten down. And then gathered up and murdered.” She sets her formidable gaze on her brother. “That’s where it will end if we do not bring the full might of the Reaping Times down on their heads.”
Damion holds his sister’s gaze, ignoring the alarming cold. He knows better than to react to her with fear.
“The Icaral demons need to be Reaped, to be sure,” he agrees coolly, gesturing toward the Icaral below as Marcus Vogel addresses the crowd. “But this frenzy of executions is just a political move on Vyvian’s part.”
Some of the chill withdraws.
“Of course it is,” Fallon says, seeming placated by their easy agreement. “To secure her seat on the Mage Council.” She glances at her brother. “I do believe Vyvian Damon is truly with the Magedom. Regardless of how much she and Mother hate each other.” Her beautiful face hardens. “But Vyvian harms the Magedom by not moving aside and accepting where the Black Witch power now lies. With our line.”
“The Black Witch bloodline rests with Elloren Gardner,” Damion gently reminds his sister. “Now that the Gardner brothers are Banished.”
The cold rises and bites into him, the frost creeping out over the windows.
“Elloren Gardner is no different from her brothers.” Fallon throws her brother an incensed glare. “She’s staen’en. She consorts with every type of Evil One.”
“Fallon,” he says with cool reason, “it is widely thought that the Evil Ones are coming after Carnissa Gardner’s line because they are still the true bloodline. You will have a hard time convincing the Mage Council to mark the Black Witch’s own granddaughter as staen’en.”
“Which is why Elloren Gardner needs to be disciplined. By us.”
Damion is well aware of one of the reasons why Fallon hates the Gardner girl.
Lukas Grey.
“Discipline her, then,” he idly comments. “You grow stronger every day. Soon, no one will doubt that you are the Black Witch of Prophecy.”
“There is no time.” Fallon’s eyes narrow. “We need to push that entire family firmly under our heel, starting with Elloren Gardner, and we need to do it soon.”
Before she’s fasted to Lukas Grey.
“How would you have me deal with the brothers?” Damion asks, skeptical. “They are likely under the protection of the Vu Trin and well on their way to the Noi lands.”
“I will take care of the brothers myself.”
Damion cocks a black brow. “The younger one is a Level Five Mage.”
Fallon sharpens her glare. Hoarfrost forms on every surface in the room, the frost like bunches of crystalline needles, everything now coated with white, the view across the plaza completely iced over. The temperature takes another alarming dip, and cold worms its way through Damion’s body.
Cold that hurts.
“Do you doubt me, Brother?” Fallon asks, her voice low.
Damion gives a short laugh and flexes his stinging fingers. “No, dear sister,” he says, glancing around appreciatively. “Beautifully done hoarfrost. How did you come to master it?”
“I’ve used my bedridden time well.” Fallon’s lips turn up in the trace of a smile. “And I know how we can crush Elloren Gardner—a way to destroy the little staen’en whore and absorb Carnissa Gardner’s bloodline of power.”
Damion smirks at his sister as he tenses against the painful, full-body chill. “If you freeze me to death, Fallon, I won’t be of much use to you.”
Fallon considers this.
All the cold in the room abruptly withdraws, and the hoarfrost pulls away as the space warms once more. The blood rushes back into Damion’s arms and feet in a painful rush of tingling sparks, the view over the plaza restored.
Damion looks down just in time to see blue light exploding from three wand tips, engulfing the Icaral demon in a torrent of blue fire. The Mages step back as the Icaral collapses into a pile of smoking, charred flesh.
Damion turns back to his sister and matches her look of dark resolve. “So, tell me, Sister. How would you have me destroy Elloren Gardner?”
CHAPTER ONE
WINGS
I peer out the North Tower’s huge circular window, perched like Wynter so often is up here. My eyes scan the night-blackened field and the even darker forest beyond, searching for any sign of Cael and Rhys. The moon rides just above the jagged Northern Spine.
A gloomy silence has fallen heavily over Ariel and Wynter, the wait for Cael and Rhys’s return an agony. Ariel wears a grim mask of endurance that’s new. Her past hostility has shifted into a fierce protectiveness of Wynter, and there’s a growing strength to her. A filling in of her wings, the feathers glossing. Her fire slowly returning.
It’s the only heartening thing in an increasingly heartless Realm.
Unlike Ariel, Wynter seems crushed, listlessly curled up on her bed for hours at a time, as if her spirit has been irretrievably broken. I glance over to where Ariel is futilely trying to cajole her into eating something, but Wynter won’t move. My eyes meet Ariel’s, and I can see the same grave worry there that’s mounting in me.
* * *
Over the past few days, the University has slowly reopened under new Gardnerian leadership. Lucretia and Jules have both fled, their offices taken over by professors loyal to Vogel and the Holy Magedom.
Every evening, Tierney and I visit the newly reopened Gardnerian Archives and pore over the Mage Council Motions & Rulings by guttering lamplight.
“The Council has thrown all Icarals who were once in the Sanitorium into the Valgard prison,” Tierney gruffly whispers, her finger moving along the lines of text. “And it seems your aunt is making good use of the anti-Icaral fervor that Marcus Vogel has whipped up.”
We read, with rising horror, about how my aunt’s taken to pulling Icarals from the cells in Valgard’s prison and marching them through the city streets, the crowds stirred up into a mob-like frenzy. She hauls the Icarals, one by one, to the Mage Council meetings, demanding that the “demons” be cut down.
So far, she’s succeeded in bringing about the public execution of four Icarals on the steps of Valgard Cathedral.
“She’s trying to regain her good name,” I murmur to Tierney with scathing revulsion. “She’s Banished my brothers from the family, and now she’s propping up her hold on her Mage Council seat by doing this.”
“Ariel and Wynter have to get out of here,” Tierney says in a low, tense whisper. “Someone will come to the North Tower at some point.”
“I know. But Cael and Rhys should be back any day now.” I don’t like how unsure my own voice sounds when I say this.
Tierney’s expression becomes oddly hesitant. “Elloren,” she whispers haltingly, as if having difficulty forming her thought.
Anxiety rises in me. “What is it?”
She swallows and struggles to meet my eyes. “Valasca sent word...” She scans the broad room, moving closer and lowering her whisper until it’s faint as a feather’s brush. “The Amaz have figured out how to remove Asrai glamours. They’re going to—” she gestures toward her body “—pull this thing off of me.”
My eyes widen. “Tierney...that’s incredible.”
“They’ve figured out how to draw off even layered glamours and trap them in rune-stones. That way they can use them to glamour someone else, if needed.”
I stare at her in amazement. “That’s a powerful skill.”
Tierney’s gaze turns somber, her eyes flicking around cautiously. “Yeah, well, the Amaz will need every advantage they can secure in this new Realm.”
“So, they’ll pull your glamour off...permanently?”
Tierney nods, and the ramifications of this wash over me. What will she look like when she’s been stripped of the glamour that’s imprisoned her for almost her whole life? What powers will she finally be able to access?
“Elloren,” she whispers falteringly, “Valasca and Alder are pulling the glamour off me in six days’ time. Once it’s removed, I’ll be able to morph with water in my true form. So...I’ll be leaving for the Eastern Realm.”
It stuns me, how hard her news strikes me. I’ve known for a while now that Tierney would eventually leave—that she must leave. But I never realized how catastrophic the imminent loss of my irascible, intellectually fierce friend would actually feel.
I blink hard, suddenly fighting back the tears and abruptly choked up. I roughly wipe a stray tear away. “I’m sorry, but... I’ll miss you.”
Tierney attempts a sardonic look, but her lip trembles at the edges. “Even though I snarl at you all the time?”
A laugh bursts from me, and I smile waveringly at her through a sheen of tears. “I’m glad you’re leaving,” I whisper emphatically. I’ll miss you desperately. I’ll be so alone. “I want you to go. I’ll be so happy just knowing you’re safe.”
It’s
going to shatter my heart to have you all gone.
* * *
The next night, I’m back in the North Tower, my forehead pressed against the cool glass of the window, the night clear, the field before me silvered by moonlight.
I wonder where Yvan is right now, and if he’s looking at the same moon. A forlorn sadness washes over me as I let my eyes slide down the night-grayed peaks of the Spine toward the wilds below.
A shadow bursts from the trees, and I flinch back. At first, I assume it must be Cael, and I squint to make out exactly what I’m seeing—a dark figure on horseback, racing toward the North Tower. But then I notice that the horse has an odd, flowing quality to its gait, its inky body reflecting the moonlight in undulating silver lines.
My pulse leaps.
What in the Ancient One’s name is Tierney doing? She’s risking everything, riding a Kelpie out in the open.
Her name bursts from my lips. “Tierney!”
I jump down from the sill, meeting Ariel’s and Wynter’s looks of surprise, my outburst seeming to have galvanized Wynter to sudden attention.
“She’s on a Kelpie,” I hastily tell them as I rush to the door. “Something’s wrong.”
I sprint out of the room, race through the hall and down the spiraling stairs, Ariel’s and Wynter’s steps thudding close on my heels, Ariel’s raven winging in behind us.
I throw open the North Tower door as Tierney rides up to us, positively wild-eyed. I draw back, resisting the urge to shut the door against the dangerous creature, but as Tierney jumps off the Kelpie’s back, it swiftly dissolves to the ground in a blackened puddle of water.
“They’re here,” Tierney rasps out, terror stark on her face. “The Marfoir. In the woods. Es’tryl’lyan and I saw them just north of here. Two Elves, like none I’ve ever seen before. They’ve got...curling weapons. Wynter, they’re coming for you. You have to leave. Now!”
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