only what others wanted.”
My brother frowned. “That’s a little unfair.”
I nodded in agreement before continuing, “The province of Daeronia, beyond the northern borders of Sabithia, was given to Clan Dravilec, the healers, to keep them close to the Dyzvati.” I thought on how much of a fairy tale this sounded now, a millennium on from the beginning of Phaedra. “Now there are so few mages left. Papa says there are none left in Vasterya at all. And now only the kral and Princezna Haydyn remain of the Dyzvati.”
“What about Alvernia?” my brother asked in a hushed voice.
I shuddered at the thought of Alvernia; the stories I’d heard of the rough, uncivilized northern mountain people, terrifying tales of their macabre misdeeds and ignoble existence, all because the power of the Dyzvati waned toward the middle of their province.
“Alvernia was given to those of middling magical abilities. Several of the Glava went with them, as there were so many, and set themselves up in the southernmost point in the city of Arrana.”
“Where the vojvoda lives?”
“Yes, where the vojvoda lives.”
“I wish I was a vojvoda. Or a markiza. Or a vikomt!” he cried excitedly, pushing himself into a sitting position. “I’d have horses. Lots of horses. And gold! We could play treasure hunt!”
I laughed and nudged him playfully. “All those titles and you didn’t choose the best.”
“What?” He pouted.
I stood, bracing my small hands against my youthful hips, legs astride, chin defiant. “Why … kral, of course!”
“Yeah!” He jumped to his feet now, mimicking my stance. “I am Kral of Vasterya!”
“And me?”
“My servant.”
I growled in outrage. “Servant indeed.”
I still remember the sounds of his beautiful laughter as I chased him for his teasing.
At the grumbling of our bellies, my brother and I reluctantly ceased playing and walked home. I held his hand as we wove through the fields. I remember the gust of wind that shook the gold and purple and blew my hair back from my face, sending shivers of warning down my spine. My feet moved faster then, and I tugged on my brother’s hand each time my heart beat a little quicker.
I can still see the expression on my father’s face when we appeared out of the fields, his countenance pale and slack, his eyes bleak. My mother clung to his arm, her eyes as glassy as my favorite doll’s. At the sound of a horse’s nicker, I turned to see strangers outside our home. Four men, all dressed in livery that matched those of their horses. My eyes were drawn to the emerald-and-silver heraldic badges with the silver dove crest in the middle. Our symbol of peace.
They were from the palace.
Fear gripped me and I had no understanding of why. I trembled so hard, I thought I must be shaking the very ground beneath my feet. Instinctively, I pushed my brother behind me, out of the view of the men looming ominously over our parents.
One of them descended from his beast. I realized he did not wear the livery. He alone came toward me like a serpent slithering on the ground, his purple cloak hissing in the breeze. His eyes were the deepest black and probing, so fixated on me I quivered in violation as if he had actually touched me.
“This is the one.”
“You’re sure?” asked the soldier who towered over my parents.
The serpent smiled, ready to strike his killing blow. “She is the one.”
“No!” my father bellowed as my mother whimpered at his side. “Run, Rogan! Run!”
But I was frozen in place by their panic, an ice sculpture who watched two soldiers hold my father as he struggled in their arms, and a third pull a dagger from his belt and plunge it into his heart. My father twitched and stiffened in their hold, a horrifying gurgling noise making its way up from his chest to spurt a thick, bloody fluid out of his mouth and down his chin.
My mother’s screams played the soundtrack to this memory before the dagger-wielding soldier strolled toward her crumpled figure, his black-gloved fingers stroking over her hair. They slid like leeches down to her throat and back up to her cheeks. And then he twisted her head between his hands with a jerk that sent an echoing crack around my world.
That’s when I felt the tug on my hand and remembered my brother. With a thousand screams stuck in my throat, I whirled with him and began to run, dragging him with me into the cover of the fields, my father’s last