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He turned to his sons. “In three days’ time we will set foot on the ice.
When we return to this ship, it will be with a dragon egg.”

“Together,” Erik whispered, clinking his vambrace off Calen’s.

Calen drew in a short breath, settling himself. This was everything he’d
been training for. He was ready.

”And so it begins.”

”And so it begins.”

“But what drew Aeson’s attention was the white wood bow slung over Dann’s back. Shit. He’s never going to shut up about that.”

I knew then that our old world of Urth had perished, even as
Dr. Talos had foretold, and that our boat floated not there,
but upon the waters of the Urth of the New Sun, which is
called Ushas.

By blade and blood, I am yours, my Queen.

“Have you come to take me?” he asked. It was no more than a whisper.
“I’m not Death,” I told him, “though I’ve been mistaken for him often enough.”
“I thought you were, sieur. You look so kind.”

It cannot be.

“Your men will be placed in our brig under guard. No harm shall befall any of your people. By the Blood Imperial, I swear it.”

She spat at my feet. “What good are your words?”

Perhaps you ask yourself that very question, Reader. Perhaps you sit there and whisper to your pages, asking if I am not the Sun Eater? Asking if it was not I who burned the fleet at Gododdin and set fire to that whole world? It was. In the annals of history’s greatest killers, Gadar Malyan merits but a chapter, a heading.

“This isn’t a camp,” I said again, more strongly. “It’s a slaughterhouse.”

Essence is not Blood Magic, Rist. It is Life Magic.

I had passed Maro then, and flinched as though the man had rammed a dagger between my shoulder blades. Had the story reached even here?
Is it true you can’t be killed?”l

“You saved me. You saved me. It isn’t your fault. It’s theirs. And we will rip them apart.”

I was going to die.
Get up, boy, came a voice I had not heard in a long time.
My father’s voice.
Get up.
I can’t.
You will.

Perhaps they lacked free will, or like the pagan emperors of old believed free will the province only of those great ones—like Alexander—they named gods on Earth. Who now can say? There are so few of them left.

So few who survived me.

All fell and faded in that feminine Dark. I forgot to breathe, and she pulled away, pressed her forehead to mine. “Listen,” she said. “You’re not going to die. I’m not going to let you.”

Breathless, I believed her.