Please note: These chapters have not yet benefited from final edits. There may be typos or other minor inconsistencies.

Prologue

Shards of glass sparkled red around the king’s shattered body. Nerenoth Irothé’s torch sputtered and hissed in the deluge of rain. Horror speared him in place for one eternal second, then he moved before his mind could give the command. He knelt before King Adelair.

Blood pooled around Nerenoth’s knees and boots.

Night’s shadows painted gruesome lines across the corpse’s pale face.

“My liege?” Nerenoth’s voice hung low and faint.

The king didn’t stir.

It was far too late. Nerenoth knew that already. King Adelair’s rich raiment clung to his broken frame, golden threads glistening under the torrent. Lifeblood puddled around him, too much of it. His lips were tinted blue.

Nerenoth lifted his eyes against the pelting rain and sought the height from which the king had fallen. Two tiers up. The king’s study, judging by the broken window.

Bowing his head, Nerenoth raised his hand to trace the arc of the rising sun in a silent prayer to the Sun Gods. He stood, gripped his sword hilt, and strode toward the courtyard’s inner doorway. His boots left watery tracks, while his long, midnight blue hair clung to his sopping white cape.

Grief. Vengeance. These must wait. Prince Adenye needed him.

He strode along darkened corridors, steps muted under the storm’s protection and the ornate tapestries lining the walls. Thunder growled overhead. It was late; too late for servants and slaves. But where were the guards? Fearing Prince Netye’s growing madness, Nerenoth had left strict instructions before he’d ridden to his ailing father’s bedside at the Irothé plantation: Keep the man in sight at all times.

Surely the king’s brother wouldn’t harm little Adenye.

You’re jumping to conclusions. Netye might not be involved in this.

Fear pressed Nerenoth onward. He didn’t feel the marble beneath his feet.

The way was familiar. In broad and happier days, this same route had brought Nerenoth pleasure to tread. Adelair had been like a brother to him. Now, he moved among the shadows, keeping a quiet, steady gait. He mustn’t draw notice to himself, in case the assassin lurked nearby.

A faint scuff in the darkness ahead halted Nerenoth’s steps. His ears hummed with the strain to hear beyond the wrathful rain outside.

A distant rumble, but not thunder. Nerenoth lifted his hand to the wall. It throbbed beneath his fingers. He frowned.

Was someone escaping through the hidden passageway? Friend or foe?

Nerenoth’s eyes lingered on the corridor. Prince Adenye’s chambers lay ahead. Did the little heir lie beneath the coverlets, bleeding out lifeblood, too late to be rescued?

A tiny cry drew Nerenoth’s gaze back to the wall and the hidden passage.

“Ank! Dark.”

“Hush, my boy.” Netye’s cooing tones wafted through the air. “This is a great new adventure for you. Hold my hand and I will keep you safe.”

Fire teemed inside Nerenoth. His grip on his sword tightened and he started forward—but paused. Why hadn’t Netye murdered his nephew yet? Where did he intend to take the child?

You’re making assumptions again. He might be protecting the boy.

A hiss and a whispering snip sounded as the passage panel slid shut. Nerenoth held still for a long moment. They must have gone far enough down the steps by now. He could enter the passage undetected. 

Best to watch and wait. If Netye was innocent, Nerenoth couldn’t risk accusing him. If Netye was guilty of murder, he might’ve paid off the guards or they’d been disloyal from the start. 

He covered the distance to the panel in a few bounding steps, pressed the space just beneath the single, smooth black plate set into the glittering white stones of the wall. The panel slid aside. Shoving his torch into the nearest bracket, Nerenoth stepped into darkness and took care as he descended, one step at a time.

The stairs plunged deep beneath the palace before the ground gave way to a level floor of rock. Nerenoth paced himself, knowing Prince Netye’s progress would be slow with the three-year-old in tow. The child’s soft murmurs drifted across the shadows ahead.

Would Netye murder the boy?

He might have murdered his brother, but King Adelair and Netye had never been close. After Netye’s wife recently died in childbirth, his mind had cracked. Only little Adenye had broken through his uncle’s grief over the past fortnight, and then he’d kept vigil as much as a three-year-old could.

No one approached Netye without the toddler prince’s sanction, nor would Adenye leave Netye alone except to sleep.

Netye loved the boy. But did he remember that now, in the dark of night and the madness of his soul?

Reaching level ground, Nerenoth heard the two ahead of him, steps scuffing against stone and dust. Shuffles echoed off walls, and soon, a torch flickered into life. Adenye laughed and clapped his hands. His uncle didn’t quiet him. Netye thought himself safe from discovery.

Their noise would cover Nerenoth’s soft steps and the faint clink of his armor.

This morning, Nerenoth had received word that Netye struck Prince Adenye across the face in a fitful rage. Only the toddler’s calm intercession had prevented the king from imprisoning his brother.

Now King Adelair is dead.

Searing fury flooded Nerenoth’s veins, but he held himself back with gritted teeth, keeping outside the torchlight. Patience had always been his ally. He would wait until he knew Netye’s purpose. Knew his guilt beyond all doubt. Wait, and then rescue the little crown prince before harm came to him. 

The tunnel led outside the city walls. It was the king’s private escape route in the event he must flee from danger.

King Adelair would never need it now.

The walk through the dark barraged Nerenoth’s nerves. Every sound stretched them tighter. Sweat slickened his sword grip.

At last. A familiar bend appeared in the tunnel ahead. One Nerenoth had known since early childhood when he and the king had played in the hidden passageways, shadowed now by storm and true night.

He peered around the bend.

Netye’s lean frame blazed against a flash of lightning. Seconds later, the sky rumbled beyond the tunnel’s round maw. There stood the toddler prince, wrapped in a golden night robe: staring bravely up at his uncle, unaware of danger, oblivious to treachery.

Nerenoth’s heart pitched. He started forward, caught himself, set his jaw. 

Stay a moment longer.

Netye crouched before his nephew, adorned in scarlet sleeping robes, a fond smile on his lips. “My dear boy, are you tired?”

Adenye nodded, pale blue hair bobbing against his shoulders. “Much farther, Ank?”

“Only a little. Take my hand.” Netye rose, his blue hair falling away from his gaunt face. He guided little Adenye through the doorway, out into the storm.

Nerenoth swept after them but allowed Netye to close the passage before he reached the exit. He waited in the darkness as long as he dared, then slipped out the door.

Though thunder still rumbled in the distance, the rain had tamed into a drizzle. Against the gray promise of approaching dawn, Nerenoth searched the grasslands before him. There, near a stand of boulders, Netye knelt before the toddler prince again.

Nerenoth bent low in the tall grass and raced across the muddy earth, sword hand throbbing for action. He drew up and crouched before a large rock, just near enough to hear, and sank to his knees.

“It is very important, do you understand, Nye?”

“Yes, Ank. Wait.”

“That’s right, dear boy. Wait until I come for you. Trust me as you always have. Wait for your Ank.”

Adenye pressed his small hand to Netye’s face. “Ank, I’ll wait.”

“Brave, clever boy.” Netye seized those tiny fingers and kissed them. “Say uncle just once for me. Uncle.”

Adenye laughed. “Ank!”

Netye’s shoulders fell. He released the prince’s hand. “I shall miss you, but it’s too late, my boy. Too late for retreat. Life is cruel. I must be crueler. You understand, don’t you, Adenye? You understand better than anyone. You always understood me. Dear boy. You’re too good for this world.” He rose. “Stay among the rocks, little Nye. Wait for me.”

“I’ll wait, Ank,” said the toddler. “Bye, bye.”

Netye strode toward Nerenoth, toward the passage. Nerenoth crouched lower behind the rock, letting Netye pass him by. 

He’s leaving him here to die?

So, the man was too much the coward to slay his nephew. Instead, he would leave him to starve in the grasslands, if the emockye didn’t devour him first. Nerenoth waited, eyes riveted on Prince Adenye, until the passage rumbled shut. Prince Netye would return to Inpizal, return to the palace, and declare King Adelair and his successor killed by assassins or slaves. He would rule as king—so he thought. But Nerenoth would not stand by and allow the rightful heir to die; nor would he let Netye inherit the throne.

Nerenoth stood up and started toward Prince Adenye, who had seated himself on a rock beneath the shelter of a leaning boulder. The toddler buried his face in his knees to shield against the windy drizzle, golden robe darkening as droplets penetrated the heavy brocade.

“Hold fast, Lord Captain.”

Nerenoth spun, sword half-drawn, before he found the source of the stranger’s voice. His breath caught. He sheathed his sword and dropped to one knee. “O Holy One, what is thy will?”

He knew he should lower his eyes, but the wondrous figure before him held him frozen. It was but a child in appearance; a boy, perhaps eight or nine years of age, with hair of golden-yellow and eyes of sky blue. Ears, long and narrowing into a point, framed his fair face, and rain dripped down his rosy cheeks. He wore opulent gold and white raiment, as well as a smile of kindly wisdom far beyond his outward years. 

Lifting a hand, the Sun God spoke. “Leave the child.”

Nerenoth started. “Holy One—”

“I shall care for him. You must return to Inpizal and continue to serve as Lord Captain under the new king.”

Nerenoth stared, a lump growing in his throat. “But Holy One, Netye is a traitor and a murderer—” Was he arguing with a Sun God? Was he seeing one, or had grief and anger fractured his mind?

The childlike Sun God’s smile shone as radiant as the Zen-hour sun itself. “This boy cannot be raised among your people. Let Netye rule for now and hold your peace in these matters. Have patience, knowing that a greater will is at work here.”

Warmth spread across Nerenoth’s cheeks, and he pulled his eyes to the ground. “As thou wilt, O Holy God.”

“There’s a good lad. Return to your father’s plantation. Make haste, for he will not last the night, I fear. He has grown worse in your absence.”

As the pinprick pain of alarm stabbed his lungs, Nerenoth rose. “At once, Holy One.” He offered a sweeping bow, his cape rustling in the tall grass. Droplets rolled off his silver breastplate. He started for the passageway, but halted after several feet, and glanced back.

The divine being approached the tiny crown prince while the toddler stared up at the Sun God with wide eyes and a glowing smile. The ache in Nerenoth’s heart deepened. He loved Adenye. Would he ever see those earnest, knowing eyes again in this life?

Trust in the Sun Gods.

It was all he could do.

Once inside the passage, he would take another underground route to the Royal Garrison, and from there he would ride to Irothé Plantation and pay his last respects to his dying father.

By then, word of King Adelair’s death would already have spread; and soon afterward, Nerenoth Irothé, Lord Captain of the Royal Army of Erokel, would be obliged to bend the knee to a mad usurper.

Chapter One

Eighteen Years Later

The sun pennants rode the wind in a jaunty dance, crisp and proud above the gleaming armor of the Kel procession. Princess Talanee Getaal peeked through the velvet curtains of her carriage window, hoping for a glimpse of Lord Captain Nerenoth in the column ahead. So far, she’d had no luck. Hopefully, that wasn’t an ill omen. 

Today must be perfect.

The Lighting would signify the beginning of the Fire Month and the first of three pivotal ceremonies in concurrence with the Sun Festival. Not that she felt especially honored to signal the start of the festivities, for this wasn’t her first time. In fact, the event had become tedious after performing the rite these past four years.

But the Lord Captain had joined the holy procession this year, rather than send the Lord Lieutenant alone. Unrest in the westlands had set the court’s nerves against a blade’s edge, and Talanee’s father, King Netye, had insisted Lord Captain Nerenoth oversee the Lighting.

Talanee allowed herself a smile, pleased by the turn of events despite the rumors of a brewing war with the heathen Tawloomez tribes on the northwest coastline. How dangerous could the savages be in their leather armor, anyway?

A cloud of dust swelled ahead of the line and Talanee dropped the curtain with a sigh. Another twenty or more minutes must pass before she would reach the ancient tower amid the Ruins of Halathe to perform her duty to the Sun Gods. Couldn’t the procession march a little faster?

“My lady?”

Talanee lanced her willowy lady-in-waiting with a scowl. “What is it, Keerva?”

The young woman blushed until her complexion matched the bloodred color of her irises. “Forgive me, but…” She drew aside the curtain on her half of the rolling carriage even as the conveyance slowed. “A messenger has arrived from one of the western cities. Erokes, I think. At least his insignia suggests…” She trailed off, lines appearing between her brows. She caught a strand of light blue hair and twisted it. “What do you think it means, my lady?”

Talanee scooted across her seat with a whisper of silk to peer outside. Her heart stuttered.

It was him.

The Lord Captain met the messenger on the edge of the procession, and the two men conversed in muted tones, expressions grim. A few clipped words: that was all. Then the messenger saluted, wheeled his reptilian pythe around, and took off at a quick lope.

The equine creature’s deep green scales flashed in the sunlight, its black mane like a streamer in the air as its long, scaled tail kept the creature’s balance. It beat its useless stubs where wings had been in another age, before the Sun Gods punished the pythes’ ancestors for betraying them for the Star Gods.

Nerenoth Irothé brought his pythe around and cantered to the carriage. The conveyance came to a full stop. His long, midnight blue hair settled across his white cape, highlighting the strands of lavender that declared his noble lineage.

Talanee stuck her head out the window, locks of long blue hair sliding over her shoulder to stir in the faint breeze. “What did the messenger say, Lord Captain?”

Nerenoth Irothé was a man impossible to read. If he looked grim now, it was no different from his usual gravity. Yet as she met his red eyes, a biting fear chilled her arms despite the heat of the midzen hour.

“Erokes is under attack, Your Highness,” he said in measured tones. “I must gather a force to march there at once. I shall leave you with my lieutenant, though I don’t wish to abandon you so far from Inpizal.”

Talanee lifted her chin to hide the horror ripping through her frame. “Don’t waste another thought on me, Lord Captain. See to our people. Out here, who can harm me? Lord Lieutenant Rez is a capable man besides. We’ll be fine. Go show those spiteful heathens the wrath of the Sun Gods.”

The Lord Captain lingered a heartbeat longer, searching her face. He offered a grim nod, then flicked the reins of his stallion pythe and nudged it into motion. The pythe’s long, powerful legs loped to the front of the column, green scales rippling, talons digging into dirt.

“Rez!” Nerenoth’s voice straightened the spines of every soldier along his path. A brief conversation between the Lord Captain and his right-hand man ensued, then Nerenoth wheeled south as he barked a last command. “Carrack, Dilhar, with me!” 

Two mounted officers split from the column to race after their commanding lord. Talanee watched their departure with a plummeting heart.

Soon, the carriage lurched and rolled on. Not a word parted any soldier’s lips, nor any priest’s riding with them to witness the upcoming holy rite.

Talanee’s mind strayed far from the Ruins of Halathe. She bowed her head. “O Sun Gods above, by thy glorious light, protect the Lord Captain and preserve the people of Erokes against our vile enemy.”

“Amen,” murmured Keerva in her timid voice.

The next twenty minutes gnawed at Talanee’s nerves. Every jolt in the road fortified her anger. Why carry on this silly rite, rather than return to Inpizal to organize relief efforts for the citizens of Erokes?

“We’ve arrived, my lady,” said Keerva in soft tones. Perhaps she could read Talanee’s growing agitation. It wasn’t as though she’d tried to hide it.

Talanee pulled the curtain aside to find the familiar tower stretching toward the sun at its zenith. That glistening white stone structure stabbed the cloudless blue sky. Talanee’s chest constricted.

Of course. I must do this. This rite is exactly the best way to aid Erokes and Lord Captain Nerenoth.

The princess stepped down from the carriage with Keerva’s aid. She smoothed her heavy skirts, drew the white hood over her blue hair, and turned to her handmaids, who had journeyed in a second carriage behind her own. “Prepare the holy instruments.”

Two priests removed a large, gilt trunk from its place between the back wheels of the royal carriage, stirring puffs of cloud that clung to their white and gold vestments. Talanee’s handmaids opened the trunk and extracted a long wooden rod soaked in oil and pitch. A sprig of golden leaves adorned the torch’s tip. The handmaids sprinkled phials of holy water along the base of the torch as the priests chanted ancient prayers to the Holy Sun Throne.

Soldiers fanned out to create two columns leading to the base of the open-stair tower, armor flashing, sun pennants snapping in the hot wind. The remaining priests looked on to witness and approve the auspicious event.

Despite the encircling grasslands, the ruins held no weeds or brush: An ocean of wild grass surrounded an island of stone and dust. The fragments of buildings jutted up like broken teeth, weathered by time, crumbling and whistling with the wind’s endless music.

Casting her eyes skyward, Talanee smiled, noting the sun at its highest point. They’d arrived just in time. At her nod, her handmaids built up wood for a fire and lit the blessed kindling with flint and a piece of steel. As the flames grew to consume the dry wood, Talanee took up the sacred torch and began her chant. 

“Most Holy Sun Gods above, accept this thy servant as thy handmaid. Behold the fire of the world, captured and delivered unto thee at the foot of thy Sun Throne; a return of what is borrowed from thine everlasting light.” 

She dipped the torch’s tip in the fire, and it caught flame with a brilliant flash of red and blue. The golden leaves glowed and then turned black, curling in the smoke and flame.

She lifted the torch and began the long climb up the cracked granite steps to the tower’s great height.

No procession followed her. She must go the path alone, a willing servant of the Sun Gods. It was a beautiful ceremony, and now that she performed it, her fears vanished. The pull of duty and faith settled upon her like a comfortable weight.

“Lend thy people thy light through the dark days of the coming gray. Let the sun burn beyond the clouds of water sent by the cursed Moon Throne. Bless thy people with great abundance, that the rain of the wicked may be turned to a purpose of good. Let the crops thrive rather than drown. Cultivate the land that in thy glory it shall not shrivel.”

She took careful steps, focused on the chant to forget the strain of carrying the weighty torch. Acrid smoke curled around her face and tears welled in her eyes, but she moved with stubborn determination toward the tower’s open tor, hair bobbing against the small of her back.

“Upon thy faithful, deliver the light of day even in the dark cracks of the night.” She stumbled on the hem of her pearl-seed gown but steadied herself and kept going. “Unto those who serve the Star Gods, bring destruction and forgive them not, for they have chosen the path of the night.”

Someone shouted. Talanee whipped around, heart beating against her ribs. From her place thirty feet above the troops, she spotted a swarm of brown-clad warriors charging the three dozen armored men with blood-curdling screams.

Lord Lieutenant Rez’s sword flashed silver as he pulled it from his scabbard.

Talanee dug her nails into the torch. Tawloomez, here? They’d never dared to step upon the sacred ground of this holy ruin; not since the War of Brothers five hundred years ago.

As the Kel soldiers clashed with the enemy, Talanee found herself mesmerized by the beauty of the soldiers. The Tawloomez fought with savage aggression, spears and scimitars and daggers lashing in an ugly, wild dance. Rez’s men formed themselves into triangles and ovals to take on their adversary with calculated grace, shields and swords winking under the high sun.

A new cry ascended, and a second flood of Tawloomez appeared from the shadows of boulders and broken structures. A hundred or more Tawloomez now battled against three dozen Kel. But the Kel wore steel and the Tawloomez didn’t.

The Sun Gods will favor the Royal Army of Erokel.

With a jolt, Talanee remembered her duty. Her eyes flicked between the sputtering torch and the tower’s top, and she climbed again. Her mind sought her place in the chant. She must do her part to please the Sun Gods. 

“Unto those who serve the Star Gods,” she said, then growled under her breath. She’d already intoned that part. Path of the night…path of the night…what came after that? She tripped on the hem of her white gown again and staggered forward.

As she caught herself, scraping her palms, the torch clattered from her hand. Gasping, she groped around for the holy instrument. The torch remained lit but had rolled down several steps. She scurried after it, smearing blood from her hands on the steps. She snatched up the guttering torch and glanced again at the battle waging below.

Several Tawloomez had freed themselves from the fight and sprinted up the steps toward her. She gritted her teeth, pushed to her feet, and quickened her pace as much as she could in her heavy gown.

I’m dead either way.

But she wouldn’t die without completing the ceremony, even if she broke every bone in her body doing it.

For Erokes. For Father. For Nerenoth.

The shouts and clangs of battle rose like a morbid song. Talanee muttered the chant under her breath, trying not to picture the carnage. “Guard thy people from the grip of darkness and when time ends, bring us unto thee and shelter us beneath thy beaming face.”

How appropriate.

“Let thy light consume thy people in the eternal flames of thy divinity and let not thy people falter in the way to thee.” Her breath rasped, her heart pounded against her ribs, and she stumbled again. She could hear the slap of feet close on her heels.

I won’t make it. I wish I’d been allowed to wear my sword!

But the ceremony was an act of faith; to bring a weapon up the steps signified doubt.

“O ye Gods of the Sun, let thy glory encircle us within thy mighty bosom.”

A hand snatched her arm and jerked her around. She stared into the grinning face of a dark-skinned, brown-haired Tawloomez. Paint in shimmering green patterns, beautiful and hideous at once, adorned his cheeks and forehead. A grotesque snake-bone necklace hung over his brown-leather battle garb. Two more Tawloomez stood behind him.

“Vatakay owi?”

She didn’t know what he said, but his tones dripped with mockery. Talanee clutched the torch with white knuckles and spat in the Tawloomez’s face. “Release me, heathen scum.”

The Tawloomez’s brown eyes flashed. He snatched the torch’s haft and tried to wrench it away. Talanee swung with it, refusing to let go.

“Gods protect me!”

As though in answer to her prayer, the flame of the holy torch leapt into a brilliant, churning arc! Intense heat and a deafening roar scored the air near her face. Flames encircled her without touching her skin, then stretched fiery fingers toward the Tawloomez warrior. 

He cried out, and he and his fellows stumbled backward. They turned tail and dashed down the steps as the flames gave chase.

Talanee stood stunned, enthralled by the unending flame shooting up and out from the torch she held in trembling hands. She turned her eyes upward and found nothing but the brilliant sun in its sky to signify divine intervention. Could her prayer have worked?

A breeze tugged at her hair, and she glanced down at the battlefield. The arc of fire had reached the bottom of the tower, and all the Tawloomez warriors cowered, corralled within it. 

Talanee started down the steps, gripping the torch in her hands as it poured forth the terrible wrath of her beloved Sun Gods. At the bottommost step, she stopped. The Kel soldiers had flinched back, even Lord Lieutenant Rez, though he held his sword before him.

A breeze breathed across Talanee’s neck, but the fire of the torch maintained its vigil over the trapped Tawloomez, despite the rising wind that tossed her hair. She resisted the urge to release the blazing torch with even one hand. Her eyes followed the trail of her hair in the sky—and she spotted a stranger.

The figure was perched on a ruined wall across from the tower. He was slender, barely a man, with the palest, longest blue hair she’d ever beheld, and irises of red like all the Kel race. But these eyes blazed as though they contained the wreathing fire. A tattered black cloak billowed behind him in the growing windstorm. One arm rose before him, hand splayed.

As she watched, he snapped his fingers into a fist. The fire of the torch died. The wreath of flame wisped into smoke and vanished.

The Tawloomez had seen the young man, too. With a cry, one heathen jabbed his finger toward the stranger. “Akuu! Nu jas Akuu-Ry!”

The Tawloomez stumbled backward, their eyes wide, nearly wild, some dropping their weapons. They fled from the young man, racing northwest. One stumbled on grit and struck his knees, then dragged himself upright and sprinted on.

The Kel soldiers, still stunned, didn’t rally to cut off their retreat.

In the ringing silence that followed, Lord Lieutenant Rez dragged long strands of blue hair from his perspiring face before he found his voice. “See to the wounded!”

Talanee released a breath, lowering the cold torch. Her attention returned to the young man upon the ruin. His gaze met hers across the wide space.

He started to smile, but then his brow creased, and he threw out his hand just as the slap of feet sounded behind her. “Look out!” he cried.

She whirled to face a lone, charging Tawloomez, a scissor knife in his hand. Its triple blades glinted under the dazzling sun. Her fingers gripped the torch, prepared to brandish it like her missing sword.

The wind changed direction. The strange young man from the ruin landed on the packed earth beside her, as though he’d taken flight upon the breeze to reach her. He lifted a narrow, curved sword against the Tawloomez. Their weapons struck. Metal sang across the air.

The Tawloomez gritted his teeth and spat out the same foreign phrase, this time like a curse word: “Akuu-Ry!”

The young man took a single step forward, and the Tawloomez’s brown eyes widened, the green paint of his face shimmering as though to reflect his fear.

“Leave, Tauw-Nijar,and I shall not do you harm,” said the young man in lilting tones.

The Tawloomez snarled and threw a long sliver of metal at Talanee. She yelped and tried to dodge even as the young man shoved her aside. The tiny, glinting object caught his arm. A hiss was all the noise he made, but he sank to his knees. The sword clattered from his hand.

The Tawloomez sneered and swiped the scissor knife at the boy’s throat, but an arrow pierced his chest before he met his target. He grunted and fell, his swinging arm catching the young man’s shoulder, biting into the flesh in three distinct stripes. A second arrow sank into the heathen’s chest, and the warrior crashed backward against the white stone stairs. Blood bloomed across his snake-bone necklace and down his front. He offered up a last gurgling breath, then his eyes turned to glass.

Talanee allowed the satisfaction of his passing to shiver across her skin, then she turned to the young man kneeling beside her. He looked up to meet her stare, and for a moment Talanee couldn’t move. His red eyes still wielded that strange light like a fire burned within him. The clarity there made her feel as though he’d stripped her bare to see every thought, every lie, every desire, every fear.

His eyes flicked to the dead Tawloomez. His hand snaked out for his sword near the fallen warrior.

“Don’t touch it. Don’t move.” Rez’s voice rang through the ruins as he raced across the field, red cape flowing behind him, to join Talanee and the strange young man. An archer ran with him, another arrow nocked and aimed at the stranger.

The young man’s fingertips brushed the sword. As Talanee looked on, the weapon vanished. Gone, as though the very air had swallowed it!

The stranger staggered to his feet. His pale hair, long and straight, rippled like water as it settled down his back and against his ankles. He offered a strained smile and raised his arm into the air. The wind howled, drawing his hair into a whirlwind, carrying the scent of wild things. He bounded upward, and the wind lifted him into the sky, above the tower, above the armored soldiers and Sun Priests, above Talanee and the grasslands. 

He leapt impossibly high and moved away in an arc, as though he could fly.

“Halt!” Rez slowed his pace and came to a stop beside Talanee, staring heavenward as the archer’s second arrow missed its mark. “By the Sun Gods, what is it we’ve seen?”

Talanee shook her head. “The very will of the Sun Throne, Lord Lieutenant. What else could it be?”

“Was he real?”

Talanee’s eyes lowered. Blood stained the scissor knife lying beside its dead owner. “I think he was.” She traced a rising sun before her chest. “Sun Gods be praised, I think he was.”

Rez stirred from his watch of the sky. “Should we…try to complete the ceremony again, Your Highness?”

Talanee glanced at the fallen torch. “I don’t think we have to, Lord Lieutenant. The rite was already accepted, or we wouldn’t be alive.” She glanced around for the priests and found several slain, blood staining their white robes, while the rest cowered beneath the carriages. No one protested her assumption. 

Next time, the Holy Hakija had better send his Sun Warriors rather than these cowards.

Rez eyed the priests. “Then we should return to Inpizal, Your Highness. There are wounded to tend, and we must report all that’s happened.”

Talanee stooped to pick up the torch. “I agree, the king needs to know. And we should consult the Hakija.” She picked up her hem and glided toward her carriage, where Keerva and her other handmaids huddled inside, waiting. Talanee glanced back toward the cracked tower. Her gaze drifted north, where the young man had vanished in the air.

Would she ever see him again, or had he traveled down from the very Sun Throne to aid her and her people?