More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Sablefyre. An ancient element of the gods, forged eons ago in Aethyria’s fiery heart. A single touch could turn a body to ash, and blood to stone.
The man she’d come to know as the most dangerous mage in all of Aethyria. One of few who’d mastered the ability to control the otherwise chaotic sablefyre and discovered a means to harness its deadly and divine power. He’d once been the king’s highest Magelord, a member of the exalted Magestroli, disgracefully dismissed on accusations of demutomancy—a dark form of magic decreed illegal by the king. Cadavros. The mere thought of his name cast a shiver down her spine.
His appearance was the result of having performed the Emberforge ritual on himself, the same ritual he intended for her son. A rite that only young children were believed to tolerate without any permanent disfigurement, seeing as they hadn’t yet gone through their Ascendency.
because once the black flame entered the body, it destroyed all natural blood magic.
The notion of watching her jubilant baby, an echo of the sweet, loving boy Branimir had once been, suffer the same fate was an agony she couldn’t bear.
Her sweet child had survived being cast into sablefyre–a fate that would’ve left any other a pile of ashes like the poor soldiers. Yet, he had survived. By the miracle of the gods, he’d been spared.
He reached for Zevander, running his finger over the marking on his chest, a curious black swirl that’d seemed to anger Cadavros. On closer examination, there seemed to be words written in ancient Primyrian embedded in the swirl in a way that reminded Lady Rydainn of a wax seal across his heart. Branimir’s lips twisted to a snarl as he whispered the words that stabbed her conscience. “Il captris nith reviris.” What is taken will never return
I was no more than a few days old when I’d been found abandoned before that cursed arch in a wicker basket, a single black rose upon my chest. No one knew who’d left me there, but every villager speculated that, whoever they were, they must have hoped the woods would eat me, as well.
Emotions I was forced to keep hidden for fear of looking possessed by evil, as girls were often perceived when they felt too much.
I’d learned at too early an age that the sound of a girl’s scream drew nothing more than apathy.
Until the parchment settled, and a new phrase appeared where mine had been, in the same hasty strokes of my own handwriting. God is Death. I frowned, my mind teasing the possibility that I’d inadvertently written that. I hadn’t. God is Death? What did that even mean?
rose up through the trees in a ghostly reverberation. “Maevyth,” the voice whispered in whimsy, the sound of my name casting a chill across my skin. I swept my gaze over the shadowy tree trunks, recalling a cardinal rule of the forest: never answer to your own name. “God is death,” it said, echoing the words on the paper.
“I will marry and I will claim you as my ward.” “Only if your husband allows such a claim,” I argued. “Oh, he will.” She smiled, as if she were already aware of her unnamed suitor’s intentions.
“Do you think the Sacred Men wear anything under those robes?” Aleysia asked, her unseemly question breaking the silence between us. “Or do you think their nether regions just sway back and forth as they walk? Like the snout of a pendulynx.”
Broken families were considered undesirable, though. A punishment of The Red God. And those cursed with a godless daughter, as I was often referred as, ensured we’d never find good standing in Foxglove.
He stared down at the chunky white stone, with its tiny flecks of silver moondust embedded into the gold band. Vivicantem. All mancers required the coveted nutrient, formed naturally in the Cor of Aethyria and mined once a moon cycle from deep lava trenches known as veins. Forged by the very flame that had marred Zevander’s flesh.
“You’re a Letalisz.” An assassin for the crown. Most of Zevander’s prey were commissioned by the order of the king, and he’d learned to dispense of his quarry with a very skilled slice of a blade.
Zevander plucked a dark, red sphere that sat atop the pile, and deposited it into a satchel at his hip. Bloodstone. Derived from a form of demutomancy, the practice of altering blood–an outlawed magic that had cursed Zevander’s family for centuries. Had anyone known he possessed the forbidden power, he’d have been hunted down and brutally destroyed by the king’s Imperial Guard.
The Sacred Men believed the end of mankind would arrive in the form of total destruction and complete blackness, and that The Red God would deliver them to the Eternal Light. They also believed the more sinners they thinned from our community, the purer their devotion.
How tragic that a woman’s worth equated to the depth of a man’s pockets.
“I also know that the delicate black rose doesn’t grow well in these parts. Our winters are far too cold for its fragile roots.” I puzzled her words and their meaning. Everyone knew I’d been found with a black rose, but maybe she knew something more. Something they didn’t. “Where do they grow?” “Where the gods see fit to plant them.”
“You may have repulsive eating habits, but I’ll admit, you’re terrifyingly cute,” I spoke on the cusp of a whisper. “Adorrifying. And chaotic. I think I’ll name you Raivox.” Raivox had been a fierce Vonkovyan, who’d plundered and raided in the age of old. History books had always described him as a contradiction of charmingly violent. It seemed fitting for the little monster.
