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Like most cities, Zilvaren, the Great and Shining Banner of the North, was fashioned after the shape of a wheel. Around the city’s outer limits, the different spokes—walls designed to keep people contained in their wards—towered fifty meters high above the shanty towns and overflowing sewers.
During reckoning, when the suns, Balea and Min, were at their closest and the afternoon air shivered with heat, being trapped belowground in the festering sore that passed as a prison beneath the Immortal Queen’s palace would not be fun.
staggered back. “Residents of Third Ward are quarantined. Punishment for leaving the ward is… is…” There was no punishment for leaving the Third; no one had ever done it before.
The dead were left to rot in the streets of the other wards, but things were different in the tree-lined, leafy walkways of the Hub.
Queen Madra’s pride demanded that her guard be the best of the very best. But Madra’s pride was a hungry thing and quite insatiable. Her men not only had to be the best. They had to look the best, and a guardian’s armor was no light thing.
wall. As I heaved myself over the ledge, particles of quartz in the sand began to vibrate, jittering in the air a millimeter above the sandstone as the gold came alive.
The gauntlet whispered, rocking rapidly as I brought myself up to straddle the wall. The particles of quartz rose up, up, up. She sees us. She feels us. She sees us. She feels us. She—
When I was little, Elroy had been a giant of a man. A legend amongst even the most dangerous criminals that ran the Third.
It was only recently that I’d begun to understand that he was in love with my mother. After she was killed, little by little, piece by piece, I’d watched him wither away, becoming less of himself. Becoming a shadow. The man that stood before me now was barely recognizable.
It did mean something. Sometimes, objects shook around me. Objects made of iron, tin, or gold. Once, I’d been able to move one of Elroy’s daggers without touching it so that it had spun around and around on my mother’s dining table, balancing on its cross guard.
It didn’t take long to find Hayden. Trouble had a way of following him, and I was an expert at seeking it out, so it was no real surprise I almost tripped over him, sprawled out and bleeding into the sand in front of The House of Kala.
Brynn had a surname, but no one knew it. When asked, she’d say she’d lost it as a child and had never bothered to locate it again. She said family names made you easier to find, and she was right.
Where she was from, Kala meant funeral, and Brynn didn’t appreciate being likened to death.
I knew a liar when I saw one, and the man sitting opposite me was a seasoned professional.
I live here, so I can take care of my grandmother. You know that. Gracia, remember? You’ve met her. Gray hair? Wicked temper?”
Rojana Breen’s place—my mother used to send me by there when she’d heard the traders had come back with fruit. Unlike the rest of the Third’s smugglers, Rojana only traded in food and water. Her illegal trade would still get her hands chopped off, but they wouldn’t get her killed.
Vorath Shah peddled snake oil:
Gifts that had long since been lost to us.
How, after over a thousand years, did the queen still live? Madra was human, so why didn’t she die? He claimed to have access to the fount of her eternal youth and peddled that in bottles, too.
The rebels my mother had helped before her death had done more than hide in our attic. They had trained me. Taught me how to steal. How to survive. How to fight.
Soon there were at least ten of them casting off circles of golden light that revealed the dour faces of long-forgotten gods chiseled into the stonework of the walls.
Amongst them, the only two I recognized were Balea and Min, the physical embodiment of Zilvaren’s suns—twin sisters, identical in appearance, beautiful and cruel.
She was a dainty, graceful thing, but just like everything else in this strange hall, there was something strange about her.
“It was the Fae, wasn’t it?” she hissed. “They’ve found a way through. They’ve come for me at last?”
“They want this land, I assume. Tell me, what will they do if I don’t return these arid, worthless, barren sand dunes to them?” she asked skeptically.
“That’s why we met here, of course. I had to see for myself if this place remained untouched. The banished Fae can’t return so long as all remains the same here, you see. I knew nothing would have changed, but I do have a nasty habit of letting paranoia get the better of me.”
I couldn’t answer him. I was a burning wick, consumed by pain, but there was something inside of me, something cool, and calm, and made of iron, that rose up and claimed Harron’s knife as its own.
The metal screeched in my ears—a horrific, awful sound that cleaved me to my soul. The sound of madness. Gritting my teeth, I answered the voice inside of me, commanding me to unmake the dagger, like such a thing was even possible.
“I can’t go. She won’t let me!” Harron had plenty of room to flee, but the man was frozen solid, muscles locked up, too petrified to move an inch.
I’d thought it was some kind of lever. But this close, I could see that it was, in fact, a sword, buried halfway up to its hilt into the ground.
“Saeris, no! Do not touch the sword. Do not… turn the key!” he panted. “Do not open the gate! You—you’ve no idea the hell you will unleash on this place!”
“Let’s be done with it, then,” a small voice whispered in the back of my quieting mind. I grabbed the old sword by the hilt, a bolt of energy firing up both arms as I drew it from the stone and turned it on Harron.
“Obsidian. Ob-obsidian!” exclaimed Harron. “Broken. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Down in the ground. In the passageways. In the walls. They move. In the ground. I can’t… it won’t die! It has to!” he screamed.
“I’m Everlayne. I’ve been visiting you,” she said.
head. “A male. He came because the sword called to him…”
“Ahh. Saeris. A pretty name. A Fae name.
“I take it… we’re not in the Silver City, then,” I said slowly. She smiled. “We’re not.” My stomach rolled. “Then where are we?” “Yvelia.” She beamed, as though her one-word answer explained my entire situation.
His eyes were the darkest brown, his fair skin splattered with what looked like mud. His sandy brown hair hung past his shoulders, the top part sectioned and tied back into a war braid. He was frighteningly tall, his bare, muscular forearms covered in intricate, interwoven tattoos that blurred as my eyes tried to focus on them.
The male—Renfis—glanced briefly in my direction, eyes shifting over me where I lay in the bed, before returning his attention to Everlayne. “Right. Sorry. Manners have never been my strong suit. Irrín’s destroyed what little etiquette I had to begin with.”
I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was something dangling from the necklace—a small silver disc. A family crest, perhaps? The disc was engraved with tiny markings, but I’d be damned if I was going to study it up close. Now that it wasn’t hanging around my neck anymore, the chain felt like it was humming. The strangest energy fired up and down my arm, not painful but certainly not a pleasant sensation. And it was cold. So cold.
“I’m not going to lie to you. Some of the tales your mother used to tell you were true. My people can be ruthless and cruel at times. There are those of us who endeavor to be different, but… occasionally there’s simply no other option. We’ve been waiting to retrieve that sword you drew for a very long time. But to have found you along with it…”
“You have no idea how important you are, Saeris. I’m afraid my father isn’t liable to give you up any time soon.
“He is Belikon De Barra,” Everlayne said evenly. “King of the Yvelian Fae.”
Hah. Another day, another monarch throwing my ass in jail.
“It’ll grow well here. Long hair is a sign of high-born status for Fae women. Others will be jealous of your dark coloring, too. Dark hair is a royal trait amongst the Yvelian Fae.”
“Superstition and sacrilege. Your queen is human. And even though the sand and the wind swept away the names of the gods, I assure you Madra knows them. That she’s chosen to let them vanish from her people’s history speaks volumes of her corruption.”
“Styx, god of shadows.”
“Kurin, god of secrets. Nicinnai, goddess of masks. Maleus, god of dawn and new beginnings. These two are often counted as one god,”
“Balmithin. Twin sisters. Goddesses of the sky. Legend says that they once were one god, but a mighty storm came, and Balmithin refused to take shelter as it raged across the land. The powerful spirit within the storm was furious that Balmithin didn’t cower before him, and so he lashed her with forks of lightning. Again and again, the lightning struck Balmithin, but she didn’t die. Instead, she cracked and split in two, becoming Bal and Mithin. Bal is the goddess of the sun, but goddess of the day in a looser sense. Mithin is the goddess of the moon, but again, she presides over all of the
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“That’s Zareth, god of chaos and change.”
