Doranei turned to face his vampire lover. Zhia frowned under his scrutiny as Doranei appeared to search for something in her face. Her black hair was tied up in a way he’d not seen before, braids woven together and bound by a thin copper band on the top of her head. It wasn’t quite the style many mercenaries used, but it was similar.
‘It was fast, too fast to follow properly. I only heard one scrap.’ He gestured at the Ruby Tower, now just an outline in the evening gloom. ‘What your friend will have to say about it I don’t know.’
Zhia didn’t rise to the bait, knowing he was looking for an excuse to rage, to vent the grief he felt over Sebe’s death. He didn’t want to hurt her, she knew that, and anyway, any confrontation between them would leave Doranei injured, not her, but she suspected he’d prefer a beating to the pain of grief.
‘Ruhen is not my friend; you know that’s not the reason I cannot join your assault.’
Lord Isak’s death had resonated throughout the Land with enough force to turn a dozen men and women in Byora alone into prophets, but it was a death less than an hour before Isak’s that had cast this veil of anguish over the King’s Man. Zhia had seen the destruction of the junction of roads not long after; she could easily picture the wild storm of magic unleashed there by a maddened Demi-God. Buildings had shattered at Aracnan’s touch; the cobbles were torn up as though fifty-foot claws had ripped through the street.
Sebe’s body was buried in the devastation, and the wrecked houses were still burning fiercely when she returned to the city and found Doranei, filthy and soot-stained, tearing his hands on the rubble, alongside dozens of others. Only fifty bodies were recovered in the end; hundreds more, Sebe amongst them, had been lost to the ferocity of the flames.
Zhia had dragged Doranei to safety, all but imprisoning him in the tavern’s cellar to keep him off the streets, but he had barely slept since. He would lie in the bed they shared, his eyes wide; staring at nothing, while she lay powerless to help. At times he looked almost frantic, bewildered, as the tears refused to come, undone by a lifetime of stoicism and detachment.
From his own position three streets away Doranei had heard Aracnan’s crashing response to Sebe’s poisoned arrow, increasing in violence as the seadiamond venom burned ever hotter in the Demi-God’s veins. It was a weak poison compared to most, but Aracnan had made the mistake they had been counting on. When he’d been struck in the shoulder he’d realised the bolt might be poisoned, and had used magic to counter the effects - but this particular venom was magnified by the presence of magic.
Witnesses had reported the stones cracking under Aracnan’s feet as he screamed in agony - the flesh of the nearest bystanders had blackened and burned even before he started lashing out with arcs of fire. The house where Sebe was positioned, most likely levelling a second crossbow at Ilumene, had exploded under the magical assault. Only Aracnan’s collapse into unconsciousness from the mounting pain had saved the district.
Zhia’s voice forced its way into his thoughts. ‘Doranei, what did the prophet say?’
The King’s Man looked down, knuckles white as his hand tightened on the window sill. ‘A great lord falls, a new God rises.’
CHAPTER 1
A whisper of evening breeze off the lake brushed Mihn’s face as he bent over the small boat. He hesitated and looked up over the water. The sun was about to set, its orange rays pushing through the tall pine trees on the far eastern shore. His sharp eyes caught movement at the tree-line: the gentry moving cautiously into the open. They were normally to be found at twilight, watching the sun sink below the horizon from atop great boulders, but today at least two family packs had come to the lake instead.
‘They smell change in the air,’ the witch of Llehden commented from beside him. ‘What we attempt has never been tried before.’
Mihn had noticed that here in Llehden no one called her Ehla, the name she had permitted Lord Isak to use; that she was the witch was good enough for the locals. It was for Mihn too, however much it had confused the Farlan.
Mihn shrugged. ‘We are yet to manage it,’ he pointed out, ‘but if they sense change, perhaps