Chapter 1 – The King is Dead
It was a bad day for the squirrel. Maybe even its worst day, barring the possibility it had seen its parents fall from a tree or some other squirrel tragedy. Still, its misfortune was my benefit.
Crouching down, I unwound the snare from the bushes before working it from the squirrel’s fur. Two days it had taken me, to come up with this one measly prize. Orion and Ishmael would have been ashamed. Then again, given my ineptitude for snares during our lessons, they wouldn’t have been surprised.
They’d intended the devices to be used for ambush attacks, fending off my objections that someone else would be able to set them for me. I still wasn’t sure I saw their worth. I could have caught a squirrel with my bare hands quicker. But the experiment had given me an excuse to linger. It took time to set up a snare, even longer to wait to see if it would be sprung. I hadn’t moved any closer to home for three days.
Looking from the limp squirrel in my hands to the sky overhead, I knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere today either. By the time I cleaned the animal, lit a fire, and cooked it, it would be almost dark. Another day of freedom. But how many more could I steal? How long would my excuses last?
I jerked my hand, which had been creeping up towards my right shoulder, back down, flexing my creeping fingers to appease them.
Returning to my camp, which was nothing more than a natural hollow between two trees where I’d cleared space for a fire, I gutted the squirrel, burying the entrails then wiping my hands on its fur, scrubbing as much blood as possible from below my fingernails. Giving up, I scoured the forest floor for a suitable stick to continue the job when I heard it. The choked, fluttering alarm call of a disturbed pheasant as it took to the wing, somewhere west of me.
Frozen, I listened as my eyes darted between the trees. It might have been nothing. Just a bird, startled by another animal.
For over a month I’d haunted this patch of the woods and seen nothing more worrying than the claw marks of a bear gouged into a tree over my head. No hint of the threat Hamma had suspected lurked here.
The trees were now silent. No birds sang. Nothing rustled in the undergrowth. The quiet pressed on my bones.
A warbling song. The alarm call of another bird. Then the breaking of a branch, the snap and rustle of leaves.
Something was coming.
My hands leapt to the twin blades strapped to my legs, drawing them free with a rasp of metal. Closer now. The sound of breathing, fast with exertion, reached my ears. My head turned from side to side, trying to catch a glimpse of the newcomer through the army of tree trunks.
There! A flash of movement. Thorns, they were moving fast!
I crouched, shifting sideways to stay behind a tree as they approached, drawing hard upon the power held under my skin. Warm tendrils flowed down my left arm and across one side of my back. My breaths came faster, matching theirs, my muscles clenching.
When the foreign footsteps were too close to bear, I leapt, my tension escaping me in a shriek. The sound was echoed in a clash of metal as my blades were deflected. A foot connected with my thigh. I cried out as my leg went numb, turning my fall into a clumsy roll, and came up to a lopsided crouch with a snarl on my face, finally getting a look at my opponent.
A leather vest covered his torso, leaving his arms bare, and dark woollen leggings reached down to his mid-calf. A year older than me, with short hair that fell over his forehead and deep, close-set eyes above a wide nose and stoic mouth, he was as familiar to me as my reflection.
“Nate!” I gasped, my focus slipping, and there was a sudden chill over my skin as the dark warmth receded. The air seemed to press closer to my bare arms in its absence.
“Tamara!” His face wore an expression of shock mirroring my own. He lowered his sword, twice the length of my blades, to his side.
“What are you doing here?” I stood, massaging my tingling leg.
“Looking for you,” he replied sourly.
I frowned. “Here?” After leaving the Hollowed Tree, I’d followed the eastern branch of the Baerston Mountains south before descending into the forest to their east. Even the hunters who would spend seasons roaming the high peaks would rarely venture into this territory. I was so far east I’d been worried about avoiding demons, yet he had found me. “How did you know I’d be here?”
“I didn’t,” he said, sliding his sword away and running a hand through his hair, the colour of wet sand. “But you’ve been gone a long time. You clearly weren’t on the traditional route.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Call it luck then.”
I rolled my eyes, putting my blades away. His black eyes tracked the movement. Even after ten years of seeing them, the darkness of his eyes still caught me unawares, like a drop of cold water striking the back of my neck.
“Where have you been?”
“I… ah… nowhere.” I turned away from him, striding back to my camp and crouching down beside the piece of scorched earth. My hands shook as I raked together a new pile of leaves.
“Nowhere?” The word was as flat and cold as the ground beneath my feet. “Four months, you’ve been gone.”
I wanted to be angry, to snap that I didn’t answer to him. But I couldn’t summon the emotion. “Is that why you’re here then? Father sent you?”
Of course he had. He had no idea what had happened, either at the Hollowed Tree or six years ago when my future had been destroyed in one single moment. He wouldn’t understand why I’d stayed away. No one would. I hadn’t even intended to, but days had passed into weeks into months, and it had been so easy to delay over and over again. To steal another hour, another day, of freedom.
I’d taken too long. Father had given me these four months. But now my time was up. And even as King, with the forces of an entire city at his disposal, Father had only sent one person to bring me home. The one who would never have given up.
“No.”
There was something in Nate’s voice, beyond just the meaning of the word, that made me look up. He avoided my gaze.
“You left?” I knew Nate’s loyalty to my father was far from absolute, but this was a step too far. He’d sworn an oath.
“No… it’s…” He took a breath but seemed unable to speak.
Something dark and insidious stirred within me as I stood up. “Nate. Why are you here?”
He looked at me at last. “The king is dead.”
I breathed.
In.
Out.
No. It wasn’t possible. Surely some mistake. Or a misunderstanding. A cruel joke even. But there was no humour in Nate’s expression, no sign of the little smirk that would sometimes appear when he was laughing silently at me. And he would never joke about something like this.
“Dead?”
He nodded. “I’m sorry.”
I turned away. My breath lodged in my throat, choking me. I kept my eyes clenched shut against the tears.
The king is dead.
Four little words, shattering worlds.
Nathaniel was a silent presence behind me, reassuring rather than intrusive as thoughts ran through my mind.
Blue eyes like the summer sky, crinkled with amusement or hard with displeasure. Memories, advice given long ago, promises made and kept and broken.
Eventually, I opened my eyes again, shaking my head as I turned back to face him.
Like a fool, I’d searched for some kind of escape by staying away. But there was nothing to be found out here. Not now, not ever. Instead, all I’d done was lost the chance to say goodbye.
“What happened?” My voice was hoarse and rough.
He didn’t answer me straight away, and part of me didn’t want him to. I would rather remember my father as he had always been—proud and strong, rather than ravaged by some terrible sickness he’d been unable to defeat.
“There was an attack,” Nate said.
“What?”
He was silent for a moment, and I gritted my teeth at the delay, my body trembling as I waited.
“It was quiet,” he said. “We’d been along the valley, visiting the herders on the slopes. Then there were farmers on the way back. It was getting dark, but you know what he’s like.”
I did; my father wouldn’t have wanted to rush a conversation or bypassed someone who wanted to talk with him. Not for such a mundane reason as time.
“We were almost back, just coming to the edges of the city. We could even see the gates, but…” Nate’s face tightened. “They came out of nowhere. We were all there—the whole Guard—but it was like they were shadows. There could have been twenty extra soldiers for all the difference it would have made. I killed one of them; Hamma took down another. But Ishmael fell, Osanna went down. Rian died right beside me.
“Mara, I swear, I did everything I could. But I turned around, and I… I saw your father fall, and standing over him…” He broke off, looking away.
“You saw who it was?” The words shook. Of course, I knew what they were, but I had to know, had to find the one who had…
Nate nodded. “He looked right at me,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper, “and his eyes… his eyes were like mine.” He turned back, looking at me with eyes dark as charcoal, framed in white. Eyes that could not cry. Demon eyes.
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