Chapter 1
“For Epha’s sake, Mayra, we’re going to be late.”
Ryga’s voice carried through the door. Mayra stood before the mirror with one hand pressed against the skirt of her mother’s dress. It still smelled faintly of roses, or perhaps she only imagined that.
“I’m coming,” she called.
She wiped beneath her eyes before Ryga could come looking for her.
He stood in the corridor with his arms crossed, but whatever complaint he had prepared disappeared when he saw her.
“Have you been crying?”
Mayra looked away. “No.”
Ryga let the lie pass and opened the front door.
“Let’s go, then. I don’t want to miss any part of it.”
The twin rituals happened so rarely that half the village had been counting down the days. Ryga included.
Mayra stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind them.
The streets were already flooding with people, some draped in silk and others dressed in stained linen. Banners hung from every column, each bearing the crest of Ephamor, a sea serpent coiled around a crown of thorns.
One of King Hydris’s sons would be dead by sunset, and the whole city intended to watch it happen.
Mayra had never understood the excitement. Perhaps it was easier when the people dying belonged to the royal family. Highbloods did not starve through winters or lose children because medicine cost more than a month of wages. Their deaths happened in arenas with music and banners while ordinary people were buried without ceremony and quickly forgotten.
Still, death was death.
The current of people carried them toward the square until someone called her name. Their elderly neighbor, Merel, shuffled toward them with an empty basket hooked over one arm. She had dressed in her best shawl, though the hem was patched and most of its original color had faded.
“Off to the square?” she asked, like there was anywhere else to be.
“Like everyone else,” Mayra tried to sound more eager than she felt.
Merel’s eyes lingered on her dress and she reached for Mayra’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. It had been her mother’s wedding dress and was the only dress she owned that was fine enough for a day like this.
She had been eight when she lost both of her parents, and Ryga had been fourteen. Old enough, apparently, for everyone to decide he could become a parent himself. He found work at the stables behind the village inn, where his days were spent cleaning stalls, carrying hay, and loading wagons for travelers. When Mayra got older, she started baking bread and small cakes to sell in the village square. It wasn’t much, but together they earned enough to get by.
Merel had lived beside them all their lives. After their parents died, she began leaving bread, onions, or whatever little food she could spare at their door and sitting with Mayra whenever Ryga worked late at the stables. Ryga returned the favor by carrying firewood, fixing things around her house, and taking care of anything that had become too heavy for her to manage alone. She never tried to replace their mother, because no one could, but over the years she had become the closest thing Mayra had to one.
“You stay close to your brother,” Merel said.
Mayra gave a small nod. “I will.”
By the time they reached the amphitheater, almost every seat had been taken. They climbed the rough stone steps to the commoner stands, where the people below blurred into a sea of faces.
“We’re too far,” Ryga said with a frown.
“What difference does it make?”
“I didn’t come all this way to stare at the backs of people’s heads.”
He began making his way down the steps, and Mayra followed with a quiet sigh. After weaving through the crowd, they found two empty seats several rows lower. Mayra settled onto the cold stone beside her brother while Ryga turned his attention to the arena.
Across from them, the Royal Highbloods reclined in velvet-lined chairs beneath silk canopies while the common folk sat shoulder to shoulder on bare stone. The kingdom had been built that way so no one would ever forget their place, and something sour twisted in Mayra’s chest whenever she looked at the royal stands.
Drums began somewhere beneath the stone arches, and dancers emerged wearing crimson and ash-gray silk. They spun with burning torches in their hands, tracing bright circles through the air while the drums quickened and the scent of smoke and oil filled the arena.
One dancer tilted her head back and exhaled a plume of fire, drawing gasps from the crowd.
“I feel like I could do that,” Ryga said.
Mayra snorted. “Didn’t you burn your eyebrows off lighting the stove last winter?”
Ryga hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her against his side until she shoved him away.
Before he could retaliate, the drums changed. The dancers lowered their torches and disappeared beneath the arches as the music slowed. A hush spread through the amphitheater and Prince Risus entered the arena wearing nothing but a strip of pale linen around his waist.
He raised one hand toward the stands, and cheers erupted from every corner of the amphitheater. Neither prince was a stranger to Mayra, at least not by sight. Risus attended festivals, rode through the city during celebrations, and seemed to enjoy being looked at almost as much as people enjoyed looking.
Prince Oren entered behind him, and the cheering dwindled to scattered applause. Unlike his brother, Oren rarely appeared in the city unless duty required it. When he did, he was usually surrounded by guards and gone before anyone had the chance to approach him.
Mayra had never spoken to either of them, but she did not need to know them to understand which brother the kingdom wanted to survive.
King Hydris descended the royal steps and entered the arena without acknowledging the crowd. His robes were the color of sapphire and his iron crown resembled rippling water.
Ryga’s hand curled into a fist. “One day, I’m going to put a blade through his heart.”
“Ryga, not here,” she whispered.
Most commoners cursed Hydris where no guards could hear them, but others worshipped him as a god and praised him for protecting Ephamor. Mayra liked the thought of a blade through his heart as much as Ryga did, but steel could not kill a god. Besides, in a crowd this large, there was no knowing who might be listening. Ryga rolled his eyes, and Mayra turned her attention back to the arena.
The twins knelt on opposite sides of the arena, with several feet of stone between them. Hydris struck the end of his staff against the stone, and the arena floor split open in a jagged line. Water surged from the darkness below and rose in a twisting column above them. At the lift of Hydris’s hand, it separated into dozens of narrow streams that curved through the air before crashing back into the opening. The crowd erupted into applause. Mayra watched them cheer for the man who had taken so much from her and hated every round of applause that made him look beloved.
Six figures dressed in midnight silk cloaks crossed the arena, their faces hidden behind smooth, featureless masks. A chill ran over Mayra’s skin. Soulkeepers rarely appeared unless someone was about to die.
Two stepped forward, drew curved daggers from beneath their robes, and drove the blades into Oren and Risus’s exposed spines. Both princes arched as light burst from the wounds, bright enough that Mayra flinched and raised a hand toward her face. Then their bodies went limp, and they collapsed forward into the opening. Mayra watched them disappear beneath the water before the priests stationed at the edge of the arena began to chant.
Their voices reverberated through the arena as the sky slowly darkened above them. The entire crowd seemed frozen. Not a single sound rose from the stands. The light above the opening slowly faded, leaving the water still.
For several long moments, nothing happened. Hydris stood beside the opening and watched the surface for any sign of movement. When none came, he straightened and turned toward the steps.
The water began to spin behind him. Within seconds, the still surface had become a violent whirlpool, pulling Hydris’s attention back toward the crack.
Oren broke through the center of the water with Risus pulled against him. One arm was locked beneath his brother’s shoulders as he fought his way toward the edge, dragging Risus’s weight through the water. His chest heaved with each breath, and Risus’s head rolled against his shoulder without any sign of life. A gasp swept through the amphitheater.
“Is he dead?” someone whispered behind Mayra.
She leaned forward but from where she sat, she could not tell whether he was unconscious or dead.
“That was it?” Ryga asked, unable to hide his disappointment.
Mayra understood why. They had grown up hearing that Hydris’s sons would fight until only one remained. People had come expecting blood. Instead, Oren had returned carrying a body after a death no one had seen. Mayra was grateful. She did not think she could have endured watching one brother brutally kill the other.
The Soulkeepers lifted Risus onto a wooden stretcher. Before they could carry him away, a woman rushed into the arena and dropped to her knees beside him. Her scream carried through the amphitheater, sharp enough that people throughout the stands clapped their hands over their ears. It cut through every other sound before breaking into a sob.
“That’s Mythia,” Ryga whispered. He lowered his hands from his ears almost immediately, and the tips of them turned pink.
Mayra nearly rolled her eyes. He had spoken to Mythia once when she stopped at the inn and he was sent to take her horse. She had barely looked at him while handing over the reins, but Ryga had somehow carried that moment with him ever since.
“Now that her fiancé is dead, perhaps you finally have a chance.”
Ryga considered it. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Mayra bit back a laugh as the crowd began pushing toward the exits. Ryga joined them in the aisle, but she lingered.
Most of the royal party had already left. Mythia remained behind with Oren, striking his chest with both fists while tears ran down her face. She shouted something Mayra couldn’t hear. Was she blaming him, or was she simply upset because her fiancé was dead? Whatever it was, Oren didn’t stop her or step away.
When Ryga called from the aisle, Mayra followed him, still wondering what Mythia had been saying to Oren. They joined the rest of the villagers pouring into the feast, laughing, drinking, and tearing meat from bone as if the day had not belonged to death.
