Bo took a deep breath. “There’s a difference between having faith in something you’ve never seen or experienced and knowing firsthand that it’s true.”
“You’re saying you met Kresimir?”
“No, I didn’t meet…” Bo sighed. “Just shut up and listen. They show you things in the royal cabal that have been passed on through the minds of sorcerers for millennia.”
Taniel snorted. “Kresimir. All right. Assuming he is real, that was thousands of years ago.”
“Oh, Kresimir was real. Whether you call him a god or a mighty sorcerer, every history from that time agrees that he was real. And it was fourteen hundred years ago, give or take. The exact timeline was lost in the Bleakening,” Bo said. “He was summoned. Brought here, maybe even forced into this world by the Predeii. Some think that he was even bent to their will.”
“God or sorcerer, how could anyone force him to come to this world?”
Bo fiddled with his collar. “Predeii are the predecessors of the Privileged. Powerful sorcerers that make today’s Privileged look like schoolchildren playing with fire. They were rulers in the days before Kresimir, and they sought a way to expand their power. They summoned Kresimir from”—he made a mystical gesture with one hand and shrugged—“and they bid him use his power to bring order to the Nine.”
“The saints?” Taniel said.
Bo gave a shake of his head. “No. Good thought, though. The saints—Adom, Novi, and the rest—they came later, when Kresimir was not up to the task anymore and needed to summon brothers and sisters to help him. Their shared his power and his wisdom, and when he left, so did they.”
“But the Predeii remained?” Taniel asked. “They’d be thousands of years old.”
“Or more,” Bo said. He shrugged again. “They discovered a way to keep from dying from age or disease, even before they summoned Kresimir. Sorcery was more potent back then. I don’t even know if anyone has the power to kill a Predeii now.”
Taniel swallowed. He looked over the edge of the cliff, into the swirling clouds of nothingness below. “You mean she’s not dead?”
Bo’s face was grim. “I don’t know. Probably not, though I’m trying to remain optimistic. Either way, we have to go find out. If she survived, then Adro is in great danger.”
“How?”
“She wants to annihilate our armies, our sorcerers, and our powder mages. Half the work is already done with the royal cabal dead. If she summons Kresimir back, then he’ll do the rest of the work for her and Adro will be under her thumb. Kresimir made it clear once that he had no interest in ruling the Nine for very long. If Julene proves to him that the kings and their royal cabals are not up to the task, she thinks he’ll leave her in charge. She’s been waiting a long time to rule.”
Taniel scoffed. “Kresimir. Who thinks of things like that? Kresimir is long gone.”
“Julene doesn’t think so. Neither do the Kez nobility, and certain factions within the Kresim Church.”
“Why would she want a god here? It sounds like she’s nigh unto a god herself.” It explained the battle at Adopest University—how Rozalia and Julene seemed so powerful, and how Julene survived Rozalia’s assault.
“Power. That’s all Julene cares about. Power over others. The history books refer to the Bleakening, a time when knowledge of Kresimir was lost. Only the royal cabals remember what happened during the Bleakening. It was a war between the Predeii and the new kings of the Nine and their royal cabals. Julene claims, quite proudly, to have started the war. Millions died. In the end, the Predeii were vastly outnumbered and lost. Some died, some fled. Others hid. Julene was one that survived.”
“You seem to know a lot about her.”
“We were… together… once.” Bo grimaced.
Taniel couldn’t help but bark a laugh.
“I’m not proud of it,” Bo said.
“What in the Nine did you see in her?”
Bo sniffed. “She’s very good in bed.”
“She’s—apparently—fifty times your age!”
“That gives her a lot of experience.” Bo examined his nails. “And she doesn’t have the best judgment when it comes to her emotions. She fell for me and taught me things she shouldn’t have.”
“And now she’s trying to kill you? Why?”
Bo tossed a rock over the cliff and watched it until it disappeared. “You say she was employed by Tamas?”
“As a mercenary, yes. To hunt down the Privileged.”
“Likely she saw an opportunity she couldn’t ignore. She doesn’t like the other Predeii, and she certainly doesn’t like me. You saw