Chapter One
The world was engulfed in flame and filled with the sound of shrieking terror.
Her head turned every which way, her midnight dark hair fanning out behind her like ravens’ wings every time she spun. And everywhere she looked, she saw only death and darkness and flickering light.
And the dead. She was surrounded by them too.
They covered every inch of the ground around her, blood shining in the firelight and soaking into the dirt in the spaces between their broken forms.
All of their eyes were open, frozen in final expressions of shock, exhaustion, and terror. Unable to see any part of the world any longer.
All of their eyes were green.
Green like her mother’s.
Her dead mother’s.
Her gaze drifted down, down until she was staring at her slippers, but she found them gone, found her feet bare and mother’s body lying before her instead. Her mother’s blood covered the soles of her feet, her toes, and when she looked at her hands, she found them coated in dripping red too.
Dripping red that stuck to her, clung to every part of her.
And then suddenly the blood was crawling up and down her body like a horrible kind of creeping ivy, turning every inch of her pale white skin into the color of the dripping red of candy apples at Mabon.
She tried to brushed it off with her hands, tried to use her clothes to wipe it off, but nothing she did mattered. It continued to creep up her body, up her chest now, inching toward the very edge of the underside of her collarbone.
When it reached her neck, a high pitched screaming started somewhere off to her left and she spun again, searching for the source of the noise.
It took her nearly a full minute of looking to discover it was coming from her.
Ayia Ellaster’s eyes flew open with a gasp, her chest heaving with panic as she gripped the sheets beneath her, damp with her sweat. Her hand flew to where her heart pounded within, clutching at her thin white nightgown.
The beat was heavy against her fist.
It took her a moment to stop seeing the visions from her nightmares and start seeing the ceiling rafters instead. Once the images had faded, she closed her eyes and lifted her hands to her face, covering it and pressing hard as she dragged them down it, releasing a shuddering breath.
This was not the first time she’d had this dream.
She very much doubted it would be the last.
It had been recurring since she’d been brought to the Citadel four years ago at barely eight years old. After the destruction of her village, Lament, by a small garrison of the queen’s army. She’d still never discovered why it was done.
Now she was twelve.
Much had changed since then.
Her heart still pounded like a war drum deep inside her chest and a pit of sorrow yawned open, massive and bottomless, next to it. So close she knew she would tumble down into it were she not careful.
It had happened before. It could happen again.
But she didn’t know how to close it. And it was only getting bigger.
Ayia removed her hands from her face and pushed herself up onto her elbows, surveying the still-dark room that been her shelter for the past four years.
It wasn’t a large room, only enough space for her bed, her desk, and her bookshelf, and made entirely of wood and stone. Her furniture, pressed up against the walls opposite from each other, were the wood. Her ceiling, walls, and floor were the stone.
It wasn’t her home. It never would be.
Not ever.
Her home had been reduced to ash while she watched.
While she did nothing.
A quiet voice inside her whispered, You could not have prevented it. You could not have saved them.
But whether what it told her was true or not was irrelevant.
It didn’t change her feelings about it.
She blinked and again saw the face of her childhood friend, Arielle, her once flaming red hair now truly on fire thanks to the burning log that had been dropped on her by a careless windrunner. The heat melted her skin away like cheap candle wax to reveal the bones and blood beneath.
She saw her home burning, transformed from a warm shelter of ornate, hand-carved wood into little more than kindling for enemy flames.
She saw her mother and Arielle and everyone she’d ever known dead, dead, dead.
She squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced, digging her nails into her palms, willing the images, hovering in front of her like corporeal phantoms, to dissipate. By the time they finally did, her nails had dug deep enough into her flesh that her hands were bleeding. She uncurled her fists to examine the damage.
New crescent moons the color of carmine were now etched into her palms alongside faded, matching old ones and other slashes of silver scar tissue. Remnants of her training and consequences of her disobedience here at the Citadel.
She frowned at the new marks.
Verkerus wouldn’t approve, but then, the swordmaster didn’t approve of very much. Every compliment she received, every ounce of approval, had to be wrung from him like information from the mouth of a traitor: ruthlessly with no mercy.
She still didn’t know how she felt about receiving it. Even if his name and face hadn’t been amongst those she’d memorized during the seven days it took to get from the smoldering embers of her home to the careless extravagance of the capital, he was still loyal to the queen who had ordered the raid. His family was pledged to hers.
He remained by choice.
Just like most of the warriors in the Citadel.
Closing her eyes, pressing the heels of her hands against them, she inhaled slowly through her nose and out through her mouth, willing the rage, the injustice rising within her, to sink down, to eddy back into nonexistence.
She refused to give them the satisfaction of allowing her outrage to show.
Someday I will come back and tear this place apart, she again promised herself, just as savagely as the first time, her eyes once more on the rafters.
Tossing her blankets aside, Ayia pushed herself up and off the bed, stretching up onto her toes as her feet hit the floor, her too-small, shortsleeved cotton shift hiking up her thighs with the action. She crossed the room to the large window set into the obsidian wall, reaching from the ceiling all the way to the floor. Ringed by large rectangular bricks of deepest black, her overflowing bookshelf was to the right of it and her dishelved desk to the left.
Outside, the sky was turning from deepest navy to shimmering gold. Even from twenty-sixth level of the Citadel, she could see the minute stirrings of the city as it slowly arose from its slumber.
She debated, for a moment, skiving off drills to sit on the garden terraces of the eightith level and watch the sunrise. If she got ready quick enough, she could sneak down to the kitchens and steal a pint of ale too before the cooks even woke up.
But the last time she’d done that, Verkerus had sent Terren to find her, and when he discovered her, lounging on the middle terrace, drinking, he’d beaten her so badly, she’d been little more than a pile of meat, bones, and a puddle of blood when he finished. She’d been unable to move for a full week after that; Haylen Paris had to come to her room and feed her. And help her piss.
Ayia frowned.
No. She didn’t want a repeat of that.
Especially the pissing part. Getting beaten by Terren was painful enough without the embarrassment of that too.
At least he hadn’t sent Ambet.
The queen’s niece.
The one who had taken her from Lament.
Only seventeen, but she was twice as savage as Terren.
The last kid she’d beaten hadn’t come back.
Somewhere in the city far below, bells rang to greet the day.
Pushing off the wall, Ayia went to the small wardrobe, shoved up against the wall across from her desk and flung it open. Within were two more small white shifts, several white and black tunics, several pairs of fitted brown and black slacks, four belts, two pairs of leather boots, three pairs of exquisite dancing slippers, a few leather scabbards and quivvers scattered about on its floor, and several very beautiful dresses that sparkled in the thin predawn light.
She hesitated, seeing another closet, another room.
Ayia swayed on her feet.
Once she’d had more clothes than she knew what to do with.
How ridiculous that had been, Ambet had taunted her once. Why would she need more than this? What would be the point?
She hadn’t had an answer for the older girl.
She didn’t know how to explain it wasn’t so much the fact that she needed those clothes as that they’d been taken from her without her consent.
Just like she’d been taken here without her consent.
She pulled out one of the white tunics with a pair of brown slacks. She grabbed a pair of the boots at random and stuffed her feet into them. She grabbed a scabbard with equal carelessness and rounded on the small rack of weapons by the door.
A bow, four daggers, and two short swords.
Theoretically, if every swordsinger and every trainee banded together to defy the queen and her commanders, there would be no way those in charge could stop them, but many of the swordsingers and their trainees were held under pain of blood pact, and the rest of them had no desire to take up arms against the queen.
And fighting alone would be foolish. They’d subdue her before she managed to leave her own floor. She knew that from experience.
She’d tried to escape many times that first week.
So with an excruciating level of restraint that had not gone down in intensity since her first days here, Ayia took one of the short swords and one of the daggers. She slung the sword across her back and belted the dagger at her waist, then flung open her bedroom door and stalked down to the dining hall, not drawing either one of them even once on the way.
There had been a time where she carried her sword in her hand everywhere, leaving her sheath behind in her wardrobe. She hadn’t planned to do anything with it; she’d just liked the comfort it’d provided. But Ambet had told Verkerus and Verkerus had told Darik, the queen’s twin brother, and that had been the end of that.
She’d been beaten and thrown in the dungeons the next time she did it after that talk. She’d considered herself lucky that’s all it was.
The Citadel dungeons were horrible, but they were nothing compared to the rumors circulating the dungeons of the Sapphire Castle. On Carasen Island.
The queen’s residence.
Those that were sent there never came back.
The dining hall was all the way down on the sixth level. Twenty levels and over fifty steps from her floor.
Once, when she’d been very bored and skipping sparring, she’d tried counting the steps from the main floor all the way up to the roof.
She’d been caught and dragged back to sparring somewhere around level one-hundred-three, but she’d long since lost count of the steps by then.
The last number she remembered clearly was one-thousand-seventy-eight.
She wondered how many steps it would be if you counted the subterranean levels of the Citadel too.
The closer she got to the dining hall, the more people she passed on the steps that curved around the whole of behemoth building’s cylindrical walls. Like everything within the keep, all of it was carved from the same shimmering black rock.
She kept her eyes on her feet and ignored the eyes that flicked to hers as she passed. The wide-eyed stares and barely concealed whispers that followed in her wake.
Their obsession with her was something she’d never understood, but her own talent was something she couldn’t deny, and she supposed that one could only be so good at something they had never done prior to four years ago before gaining at least something of a reputation.
Ayia smirked.
She would be lying if she said at least some part of her didn’t enjoy it.
The dining hall was nearly as wide as the main atrium, though nowhere near as tall. The ceiling soared up only three stories before ending abruptly in a dark collection of rafters. It was filled with warm flickering light, provided by the two massive hearths set into the walls on either side of five long wooden tables and benches, most parallel to each other and hosting an assortment of warriors, swordsingers, and trainees; elves, half-elves, and humans, all eating from the various plates and bowls set down the tables’ centers. A head table, set near the far wall, was the only one placed perpendicular to the rest.
Only the queen’s family and her best warriors sat here.
Most often it was empty; today it was occupied by Cris Stelforen, Verkerus Espars, Terren Cutan, and Ambet Lingeon.
Very rarely did the queen and her twin brother join them.
Ayia preferred it when they did. Then she at least knew where they were, what they were doing. The rest of the time she was trapped here and had to guess.
The floor was laid with tiles of more of the same obsidain stone, but Ayia wasn’t staring at her feet as she stepped into the dining hall, heading for the table positioned nearest the right wall, away from the hearths, and sat down.
Her eyes were laser-focused on the group inhabiting the high table.
Once, Verkerus had beaten her for staring too long at the queen during Beltane.
She’d grinned and laughed through the blood the whole time he was hitting her.
“Took you long enough to get down here,” said the boy sitting across from her. In his fists were clutched a hunk of bread and a wedge of cheese, torn from a loaf and a block in front of him. “I thought Ambet was going to send Terren after you.”
“Shut up,” Ayia replied in a quiet growl. Her eyes remained on the high table as she reached for a plate and her own wedge of cheese.
The boy huffed, turning his eyes back to his food, mumbling, “At least you didn’t wake up screaming this time.”
“Shut up, Konnyr,” she snapped again, her head whipping around at last.
Konnyr again huffed, but there was laughter and a grin in it this time.
Konnyr Stelforen looked almost nothing like his older brother, Cris. Instead of Cris’s warm cream skin, Konnyr’s was ashen. Instead of Cris’s chestnut brown hair, Konnyr’s was the sickly shade of pale wheat. Instead of Cris’s deep tawny eyes, Konnyr’s were the turquoise of the Meeri Sea.
Konnyr never spoke of his older brother, even refusing to talk about him when someone else brought him up, so everyone else pretended he didn’t exist too.
He’d never told them why he’d been taken from his home and brought to Taral.
Ayia hadn’t either.
“Causing problems already, Konnyr?”
Ayia whipped around, a grin already spreading across her cheeks.
Behind her, resplendent in her own outfit of a tan colored tunic and brown slacks, her golden curls a long, trailing cloud behind and around her pale head, was Haylen Parris. Her eyes, the color of bright ultramarine, were lit up like the trees erected in the main atrium during Yule, a complementing smile stretching her lips, showing teeth.
It was all Ayia could do not to get up and throw her arms around her.
Haylen plopped herself down on the bench next to Ayia and brushed her thick hair out of her face, before grabbing a plate and serving herself just as Ayia had.
Every day of her life, Ayia missed Arielle and the other friends she’d lost at Lament, but the Great Mother had give her Haylen and that almost made up for it.
“Haylen,” acknowledged Konnyr through his teeth, his brown narrowed.
Haylen didn’t even acknowledge him.
Ayia snickered.
Konnyr’s frown deepened. “I was about to send Terren after you also.”
Haylen flashed a mocking grin. “Thanks for your concern.”
He responded in kind before returning moodily to his bread and cheese.
Ayia covered her mouth this time when she laughed.
“He is right though,” Haylen said quietly when Ayia finally stopped.
Ayia frowned this time at her friend. “I don’t do it on purpose, you know. I’m asleep. I can’t control what I do when I’m asleep.”
“I know,” Haylen responded gently, taking a bite of both the bread and the cheese at once. “But…if someone complains to Verkerus or Ambet, Darik will find out. You’ll get another violation for disturbing public order –”
Ayia scoffed, rolling her eyes, finding the notion of disturbing public order when in the Citadel high above the rest of the city and oblivious in sleep absurd.
Haylen’s brow narrowed and her voice raised, enough to draw the looks of those nearest them. “–and perhaps be sent to Idabell or the Sapphire Castle as punishment! None of the people who go there ever come back!”
Ayia had snapped her gaze to her food, frowning as deeply as her friend, her hands clenched into fists on either side of her breakfast plate. For a long while, she was silent in the wake of Haylen’s outburst, but, finally, she whispered, “I cannot control it,”
Haylen leaned closer to her. This time when Ayia turned to her, she saw an overwhelming amount of fear in her gaze. “Then you must learn,” she gasped softly.
Suddenly her hand shot out, grasping Ayia’s and pulling it beneath the table, out of sight. “Please, Ayia –” she began, speaking through her teeth. Her hand around Ayia’s was crushing, her eyes were growing wider still, but she was interrupted.
“Another vioation for disturbing public order? Goodness! Not screaming in your sleep again, were you, Ayia?”
Ayia and Haylen turned as one. Ayia’s brow was narrowed and her teeth were barred before she even finished the motion, hissing through them, “Go away, Saraline.”
But Saraline only laughed, crossing her arms over her chest.
Plain, but with enough arrogance and self-absorption to somehow leave her under the impression that she was beautiful, Saraline’s hair was golden like Haylen’s, but it held none of the ethereal shine, the elegance, that Haylen’s did. Her eyes, too, were closer to a faded steel than the bright blue of Haylen’s. She was taller than Ayia by several inches and Haylen by only a few, and older than both of them by two years, having arrived at the Citadel only a year and a half ago, but Ayia didn’t care about her backstory or what her life might have been before. It didn’t seem to prevent Saraline from being cruel.
The only thing the three of them truly had in common were the clothes they wore: a plain tunic and slacks. Saraline’s was the color of deep crimson.
“Where are your friends?” Ayia cooed, smirking. “Ordinarily, you dare not approach us without them.” She cocked her head. “Feeling brave today, are we, Saraline?”
Saraline’s expression soured slightly.
Ayia’s became only mockingly sweeter.
This time it was Haylen that snickered at her side.
“I don’t need them to confront you,” Saraline sneered at last.
Ayia shrugged, showing Saraline her back as she returned to her food. “Fooled me.”
“I’d leave now if I were you,” Haylen suggested in a stage whisper, her hand pressed to one side of her mouth as though to block her words, still facing Saraline.
Ayia grinned as she shoved another chunk of bread and cheese into her mouth.
But Saraline didn’t listen. She began to advance on Haylen, her teeth now barred, her hands curling into tight white-knuckled fists at her sides, one rising as she moved. As though she meant to hit Haylen.
Haylen did nothing, only stared at the threat coming her way.
Ayia saw none of this. She didn’t see Saraline moving, she didn’t see her raising her fist, but she did sense it. And she sensed Haylen not moving out of the way.
Without really knowing or thinking about how she was moving, Ayia pushed away from the table and stood, turning and sidling to the side to place herself between Haylen and Saraline, her own teeth showing, her own fists cleched.
Saraline stopped a breath away from hitting her.
“Don’t you touch her,” Ayia hissed into the silence that fell around them. She hardly noticed her whole body was trembling. She wouldn’t let Saraline ruin Haylen; dear, sweet Haylen who had never done anything in her life to deserve living at the Citadel.
For long moments, they remained frozen, glaring into each other’s face, their muscles tense from holding back the punches they wanted to throw.
Then, finally, Saraline closed her eyes briefly, lowered her fist, and scoffed. “You’re not worth it anyway,” she hissed into Ayia’s face before she turned on her heel and walked away; those friends she usually had with her had arrived at some point and they walked off with her, too.
Ayia waited until they were gone to sit back down again.
“You didn’t have to do that, Ayia,” Haylen said quietly as hey both went back to their food.b
But Ayia only shook her head, images of Arielle’s burning face flashing through her mind, and she whispered, “Yes I did.”
