throat. Rynna had lived peacefully and quietly for hundreds of years and this was the inglorious end she would meet? Bleeding, poisoned, sick…and for me? Tears burned my eyes, but I blinked them away to glare murderously at the man across from me. He sheathed his weapon and removed the scarf hiding the lower half of his face. I took in the shadowy eyes, the black beard…and the necklace with a snake fang cast in silver.
Terror gutted me as I realized who he was: the leader of the Jav Darhu, the Red Fangs, infamous Erdemese mercenaries who tortured and murdered at the whim of whoever stuffed their coffers. If you owed a debt you could not repay, if you had wronged a wealthy and vindictive family, or if you had simply bedded the wrong person’s spouse, there was always the possibility that the infamous Captain Ardjan Nasso and his Jav Darhu would pay you a visit.
Many immigrants who came to the embassy in Yorth had fled our home country because of the lawless mercenaries. These victims had trembled in fear standing before my father, as though wary their stalkers might leap out from behind his cluttered desk.
But as far as I knew, the Jav Darhu had never pursued a target beyond the mountainous border Erdem shared with Perispos, much less across the Mizrah Sea.
Until now.
EIGHT
GLISETTE
PERISPOS, TWO WEEKS LATER
OUR carriage sped past sunflower fields and vineyards bordering the road to Halithenica like the green-and-yellow patchwork squares of a nursery blanket. Spindly cypress trees peppered the rolling countryside, trailing off toward a forest in the distance. I longed to take my aching legs on a tour of the landscape, to pluck sweet grapes from their vines and wander through towering sunflower stalks.
The fortnight at sea had been mind-numbingly dull. After a few days tossing in the waves, only the occasional storm or molten red sunset had sparked any sense of wonder.
“There’s the palace,” Perennia said, pointing out the carriage window as the road wended. “That dome at the top is the largest Edifice of the Holies in all of Perispos. Citizens can climb the stairs and say their prayers atop the tallest summit in Halithenica.”
I hunched to peer out her window and found the palace overlooking the sprawling royal city. I groaned. “Can we please just materialize? It will take us a mortal lifetime to get there.”
“You want to arrive looking like the entitled elicromancers they think we are?” Perennia asked.
“I don’t have the energy to fool them. I’m your queen and I order you to materialize with me.”
“We’re not that far.” Perennia settled the matter by opening her beloved book to a page with a folded corner.
“What if Mercer is right?” I asked, looking beyond the red-tiled roofs of the city to the countless tracery windows and turreted walkways of the domed palace. “What if Ambrosine has begun to court darkness?”
Perennia closed the book. “We can pull her back from the precipice.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I agreed. “Even if she has strayed, she is our sister.”
She nodded, her flaxen curls bouncing. “We must do what we can to reason with her.”
As the road dipped, the city submerged beneath a hill until only the magnificent Edifice of the Holies jutted above thick grasses awash in sunlight.
“But if for some reason you were forced to confront her…” Perennia added, to my surprise. I did not think she wanted to consider the possibility. “You would prevail.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She fights only for herself. You fight for more than your own happiness. That gives you a power she cannot match.”
Pride swelled in my chest. I wondered what Mother and Father would think to see me now. Before they had been murdered here in this very land, the last request I’d made of them was to bring me a pair of white leather slippers from Halithenica. Father had asked Ambrosine and me to make sure Devorian attended to his studies in their absence, and Mother asked us to confer with the head maid to oversee the domestic duties. Ambrosine had acquiesced with a saccharine smile—she loved being the most responsible in their eyes.
But I had groaned. I had recently completed my tenure at the elicromancer academy in Arna and wanted to do nothing but host celebratory parties and gossip with the daughters of favored courtiers.
“The staff shouldn’t need us breathing down their necks to do their jobs, and Devorian’s nearly a man,” I had argued, shrugging against Father’s farewell embrace. I scowled as Mother brushed a