1: An Unexpected Encounter
“His heart is racing again.”
Tharios Westaria glances at his sister as they make their way through the Wildthorne Woods back to Windhaven House, the southern residence of the royal family of the elven kingdom of Lostariel.
Their home.
“Prince Rominy?” Tharios asks, and Elowyn nods.
“He must lead an exhilarating life for his heart to race so often.” She rubs her chest as Tharios steps in front of her.
“Or he engages in regular physical exertion. Take a deep breath like we practiced.” He models the breathing pattern for her, and she copies him. “Better?” he asks after a few minutes.
She nods and smiles up at him. “What will I do without you when I’m gone?”
“I hope you’ll make wise choices and not find yourself in desperate need of a healer as frequently as you do here.” He matches her smile before stepping forward again with his life magic attuned to any sign of life nearby.
They came without guards this time, which Father would probably frown on. Tharios just needed to collect some ilvenor root, though. Bothering someone to guard him on such a simple excursion felt unnecessary. Besides, his magic is stronger than any of Father’s elite warriors’ magic.
As they walk, he keeps his magic at the ready. He’s always on alert when Elowyn joins him in the woods. Crown Prince Rominy of the human kingdom of Nunia depends on her heart to keep beating for both of them.
Only a few years remain until Elowyn and Prince Rominy bind their hearts together fully in the heartbinding. Then Elowyn will officially become the future Queen of Nunia as agreed in a treaty between their kingdoms before she was born.
“Your fire magic grows stronger by the year,” Tharios says as he pushes his life magic to sense the woods beyond Elowyn’s magic stores. It’s not as overwhelming as Father’s air magic is—thank the fates—or Tharios would struggle to sense anything beyond her magic at all.
Without warning, Elowyn gasps beside him, and the essences of a dozen beings suddenly surround them.
Tharios spins, marshaling his air and plant magic, but one of the newcomers—a man—holds Elowyn around the shoulders from behind.
“Harness your magic, elf prince,” the man says in accented Elvish. He’s not an elf. That much is clear from his rounded ears. But how could a human get through the barrier between their kingdoms? And how did Tharios miss their presence in the surrounding woods?
“Let her go,” Tharios says. “I don’t wish to hurt anyone.”
Elowyn wisely keeps her own magic at bay. They could easily take this many humans together, but that would do little to foster peace between their people.
“You may be powerful, elf prince, but you’re not powerful enough to do whatever it is you’re planning,” the golden-haired man says.
“You might be surprised,” Tharios mutters.
“Peravyn, stop. He doesn’t know who we are.”
Tharios follows the voice to a young woman half-hidden behind the man holding Elowyn. She’s the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen, with her flawless skin and long, golden hair loosely plaited in a tail over her shoulder. Her eyes are a brilliant shade of the deepest blue, and he struggles not to stare.
“Viala, I told you to stay back,” Peravyn says. “Why Father allowed you to come is beyond my understanding.”
Viala. Her name is Viala. Are they siblings?
“Because I asked him. Now stop being brutish. We didn’t travel all the way from New Valderi to start a war.”
New Valderi? Whistling wind. These aren’t humans. They’re mountain fae. Or Lothlesi, as they prefer to be called. They must have been cloaked. That’s why he didn’t sense them.
Sudden fear for Elowyn’s life flares within his chest. The magic of the Lothlesi is legendary. He could never win against a dozen of them in a battle of magic. Not alone. Not even with Elowyn at his side.
“What do you want?” Tharios asks. “Whatever it is, you can get it from me. Let my sister go.”
“Your sister is the one my father is interested in,” the Lothlesi man says. “And your brother. But one will do.”
Tharios’s stomach lurches. Are they planning to take Elowyn to their kingdom under the mountains? That would strain the bond Mother holds in place between Elowyn’s and Prince Rominy’s hearts. It might even kill Mother, and without her magic, the human prince would die.
“We aren’t enemies,” Tharios calls out.
“Says the descendant of the Shadow King. Elves may quickly forget, but the Lothlesi do not.”
“It’s been centuries since the Shadow King sat on the throne of Lostariel. My father wishes for peace between our kingdoms, but his offers to meet have all gone unanswered.”
“Consider this our answer, elf prince. You ally with the humans, and that makes you a threat to the Lothlesi. This magic bond between your people and theirs leaves my father uneasy, and he wishes for me to send you a message. Joining yourselves to the humans is a grave mistake, one we cannot allow to happen. Your sister will be safe with us, and if the bond between your brother and the human princess is not severed, we’ll come for him, too.”
Elowyn’s eyes grow large, and she pulls against the man restraining her as panic sears through Tharios.
“No. You can’t take her. I—”
“You can’t stop us, elf prince. Tell your father that if he wishes to parley, he may find us under the mountains. He won’t be denied entry this time.”
“Wait! Take me instead!”
“We have no need of you, though your offer does you credit. Move out.”
Elowyn thrashes against the fae prince’s hold as Tharios’s mind races through everything he knows of the Lothlesi and their ancient magic. Can his life and air affinities access the Lothlesi magic written on the wind? He won’t win a battle against all of them any other way.
There’s nothing for it. Fates save him if this doesn’t work.
“My life for hers. I invoke the magic of the oathbinding and demand my right to take the place of one I’m sworn to protect. My oath of allegiance passes to—”
He scans their group, and his eyes connect with the stunned gaze of the one the man called Viala.
“Her. Your sister. Viala of the Lothlesi. And you will let my sister go.”
A thread of golden light shoots from his wrist, flying toward the woman as its blue twin erupts from her own arm. The cords of light meet between them, spiraling around each other, and Tharios watches in wonder as her blue magic wraps around his wrist. Then the cords vanish, the light flashing out as darkness replaces it while heat from the magic remains.
Whistling wind. It worked. A manifestation of the fae magic flowing through the veins of the elven House Thariosi, perhaps? His mother’s kin? Is that possible?
The Lothlesi surrounding him look equally shocked.
“What have you done?” Prince Peravyn demands. His arms jerk away from Elowyn as if by force, and when he tries to hold her with his blue magic, it fizzles out before it can wrap around her.
“Peravyn!” Fear coats Princess Viala’s voice as she pulls at her arm.
And Tharios feels it. Every yank tugs at his own arm, and he almost loses his balance.
Elowyn scrambles away from her captor, keeping her back to Tharios as she lifts her hands to call on her fire magic, but Tharios stops her.
“No, don’t. They can’t hurt you now. The magic of the oathbinding will protect you.”
“Only a fool bargains with Lothlesi magic he doesn’t understand,” Prince Peravyn cries as he runs some sort of magic over his sister’s arm, but the bond holds fast. Tharios can feel its heat. Every pass of the fae prince’s magic makes it warmer.
“Peravyn, you will hurt them both if you try to use brute magic to undo it,” a woman beside the fae prince warns.
Prince Peravyn turns back to Tharios, his eyes burning with anger. Did they just flash with blue light? “Be glad we don’t kill you both where you stand, elf prince. Or descend upon your precious Windhaven House and raze it and every creature inside to the ground.”
“Peravyn, we are Lothlesi!” the woman hisses in Lothlesian.
They probably have no idea Tharios understands their words. He certainly has no plans to enlighten them.
“We are not barbarians,” she continues. “What is wrong with you? I will cut you down if you harm so much as a hair on either of their heads, as I promised your father before we left New Valderi.”
Who is she to speak to him like that?
Muffled laughter rises from the other fae.
“The price we pay for our magic,” one man jokes.
Prince Peravyn glares at them all in turn before gazing at the woman. “I’m not actually planning to hurt them. I’d like to think you know me better than that after a century of binding.”
Binding? This woman is his binding partner?
“What are they saying?” Elowyn whispers in his ear, but he snatches her words with his air magic before anyone discovers he speaks Lothlesian.
“Peravyn, what did he do to me?” Viala whimpers. “I feel the heat on my arm.”
“He invoked the oathbinding. It’s ancient magic. Forbidden magic. He binds himself as your protector in exchange for his sister’s life and freedom. It’s magic far beyond my skills to undo. How the elf prince knew of it is a question I can’t answer. How he accessed the magic on the wind is even more troubling.”
It was in a book Tharios found buried in the library at Starhaven House in the elven capital of Celesta. Not that he plans to tell anyone that.
And he can only speculate on his ability to access the fae magic.
“What now?” a Lothlesi man asks. “Do we go after the brother?”
“No,” Prince Peravyn’s binding partner says. “The king only granted safe passage into New Valderi for one of the elf king’s offspring, and we must return Viala to her father while there’s still a chance the magic of the oathbinding can be undone.”
Prince Peravyn rubs his eyes and sighs. “This went terribly wrong.”
“You’re the brute who decided to kidnap her!” Princess Viala cries. “I thought we were here to extend an invitation. Father said—”
“You are little more than a youngling, Viala. Lecture me when you have a few centuries behind you. You assume Father told you everything. He did not.”
She looks like she wants to argue, but in the end, she purses her lips and looks away.
“You will come with us.” Prince Peravyn points to Tharios before turning to Elowyn. “And thanks to your brother’s impulsivity, I can’t touch you. Run to your father and tell him his son has forfeited his freedom to serve a Lothlesi princess. And if you go through with this heartbinding with your human prince, the humans will be the least of your concerns.”
Elowyn looks from Prince Peravyn to Tharios and back again.
“Go,” Tharios says quietly to her. “Tell Father I’m sorry. There was no other way.”
She shakes her head as her eyes grow damp. “No. Tharios, no. You can’t—”
“You are more important to Lostariel and Nunia than I am. I will be all right.”
“But—”
“Go. Please.”
Her chest heaves as she gazes back at him. “Father will never abandon you,” she whispers in the human tongue.
He won’t. Tharios knows it as well as she does.
But Father can’t leave Mother’s side. And Mother can’t venture far from the border with the human kingdom.
For now, Tharios will have to face the Lothlesi on his own.
“Go.” He pushes Elowyn toward Windhaven, and with one last glance, she hurries into the woods as he watches her disappear from view.
Then something pulls at his arm, and he looks up into the glaring eyes of the Lothlesi princess he’s now oathbound to serve.
“It seems I’m with you, Princess,” he mutters.
She curses at him in her own tongue before turning and yanking on the magic thread that binds them, and he stumbles.
“On your feet, elf prince,” her brother tells him. “It’s a long walk to New Valderi.”
