Category: chapters

Winter 973 Winter was always my favorite time to visit Naal. I loved to sit on a high tower balcony, or on the covered porch of a friend’s estate, and watch the mighty storms roll in from the south. It was the only place in the mortal world where I ever saw lightning as fierce… Read more

Summer 971 VC I had not known, until I found it written in his will, that Maris Pello had named me heir to his House and estate. It should have been little surprise, then, that I had not known what that inheritance entailed. I had known that there was an estate, where Maris had left… Read more

Somehow, I kept my composure until we made it back to the palace and sequestered ourselves in Elana’s private office. Then, and only then, did I collapse into what had become my chair and cry. Again. Ten days had passed since we had snuck into the palace. So much had happened in those ten days,… Read more

I awoke on a small but comfortable cot. Somewhat to my surprise, I was neither naked nor in shackles. As a point of fact, I was more than a little surprised to have woken up at all. I had more than half expected to be executed for seizing the Throne, however briefly, to say nothing… Read more

Betrayal after betrayal after betrayal. I would have fallen to my knees from shock even had the tolling of the Rorgoth Throne not already toppled me with its force. The Usurper’s … Aemillian’s death had been quick, but brutal. Thick black blood – was it still blood, or had it become ichor, like Derrek’s? –… Read more

Wizards are used to bleeding. We are inured and jaded to certain amounts and certain kinds of pain. A knife in the kidney is more blood and more pain than any but the most hardened warrior or criminal can endure and still think, and even she would be hard pressed to think usefully, let alone… Read more

Elana and Rennin gave no warning battle cry as they charged the guards who stood outside the great doors to the throne room. Rennin hit the first Heart’s Guard full force with the Blade of Xadaer, cutting him in two with a single stroke. Elana was only a step behind, running the Solirium soldier next… Read more

There was a symmetry to it, a self-conscious poetry. Even when we had first planned it, I hadn’t been sure that we weren’t being unnecessarily cruel. The worst of it, bringing the prince and her consort back into the palace through the very passages by which they had escaped, wasn’t even Aemillian’s idea; he’d no… Read more

We met over breakfast, which we ate in stony silence without tasting any of it. A long and complex look passed between us. One by one we nodded. We were all still tired from the weeks we’d spent on horseback since crossing back into Vencar. We were still tired from the strange and unfamiliar journey… Read more

Ten years and a few weeks ago, Aemillian and I and a small army had stormed the imperial palace and slaughtered the royal family and their guards and courtiers and retainers. I had not participated in the slaughter, but I had helped to plan it; my hands would never again be clean. Sometimes, in the… Read more