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CHAPTER ONE

(Twoyearsearlier)

A month. A month had passed since I’d seen Jules. Since the Bastardmaker had taken her. Since the Imperator had ordered her arrest.

I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the sun to reverse course, to stop shining so fucking brightly through the glass of my window. How could it be day again? How could it be light and beautiful outside? How were the sounds of waves crashing against the shore and birds singing with the ocean breeze allowed to continue when Jules was…Jules was….

I rolled over in my bed, burying my face between two pillows. As if I could suffocate my thoughts, my memories. As if I could stop time.

A sob wracked my chest, but there were no tears in my eyes. My cheeks and my pillows were dry and had been for days. I’d run out of tears.

My older sister Morgana stomped down the hall, the exasperated cadence of her footsteps giving her away. She paused outside my door. A moment passed before there was a knock. I sank deeper into my pillows, clutching my belly. I needed to eat. My stomach was aching, and nausea roiled inside of me I was so hungry. But the thought of leaving my bed, putting food in my mouth, chewing, tasting, swallowing…that left me feeling sicker.

Morgana’s knocks came louder, more urgent, until her fist was pounding the door with an unrelenting force.

“I’m asleep!” I yelled—or, at least, I tried to yell. My voice was raw and muffled, cracked from days of crying and disuse.

“You’ve been asleep half the week.” The door burst open. The hinges creaked sharply before coming to an abrupt stop. My door couldn’t open all the way—not with the barrier of clothes strewn in piles across my floor. “Fucking Moriel.”

I didn’t move, didn’t look up. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want anything. Just Jules. Just for Jules to be…to be….

Here.

But she wasn’t. She never would be again. We’d gotten official word. She’d reached Lethea, the place where they took criminals, the place where they took those with vorakh, forbidden magic. Lethea was the place where those Lumerians were stripped—had their magic taken away. It was a procedure that killed. And we’d been informed the procedure was complete. Jules was gone.

“It smells like gryphon-shit in here,” Morgana said. Her sandaled foot landed with a slap against a free space of carpet. Cursing under her breath, she paused before there was another slapping step and another as she awkwardly weaved her way through the labyrinth of the mess my bedroom had accumulated.

“Lyr? Lyr!”

My mattress shifted with Morgana’s weight. Incense clung to her skin, the scent wafting toward me. It was perhaps the first pleasant scent that had been in my room in days.

“You have to get up.” There was no gentleness in my sister’s voice.

“Get out,” I said, my own voice hollow.

“Tristan sent word for you this morning.”

I groaned. “Already?” Tristan and I had been courting for the past month. After a season of flirtation, we’d finally become official—on the same night Jules had been arrested and taken.

I wasn’t up to it today, to seeing the wealthy nobleman whose Ka hated vorakh so much they tracked, hunted, and arrested them. Every Lumerian Tristan caught with forbidden magic was handed over to the Imperator, the nephew to the Emperor, the overseer of half the Lumerian Empire—and a monster.

Seeing Tristan was draining me. I’d had to pretend for a month, a whole fucking month, that things were fine, that I was myself and not remotely sad at all, like I’d forgotten Jules had even existed. It was the only way for my family—my Ka—to survive.

I’d preened in front of Lumerians when we were out and smiled for the nobles who attended the parties at Grey Villa while I hung on Tristan’s arm so I could shift public opinion of Ka Batavia back to a favorable light. I had to show that despite having a family member with vorakh, we fully and completely repudiated and rejected our cousin. After all, the youngest Heir to the Arkasva—me—was dating the most prominent member of a Ka known for hating vorakh—Lord Tristan Grey. His grandmother, Lady Romula, a powerful member of the Bamarian Council, had even released an official statement blessing our new and fragile union.

I could handle the fake smiles, the waving, the dancing, the sitting still and looking pretty. I’d been born to move through life with eyes on me, with scrutiny and gossip following my every move. I was Heir to the Arkasva; it was in my blood.

But playing my role in private was harder. I’d had to pretend for Tristan that I’d wanted his touches and kisses as much as I had before—before he’d turned on Jules.

Another noble Ka, Ka Azria, had had vorakh in their family. They’d ruled the neighboring country of Elyria for years. When their secret had been discovered, the Emperor had obliterated them—every last child had been killed.

Both my public smiles and my private kisses were to keep us from that same fate. But today, my body and my heart just didn’t seem to care.

“Lyr,” Morgana snapped. One of the pillows over my head was snatched away. “It’s noon! Which you’d know if you saw which direction the sun was shining in through the windows. You don’t hear the timekeeper having a Godsdamned concert every hour? How many pillows are on your head?”

“What do you care?” I asked.

“Auriel’s bane.” She pulled my blanket, making a noise of disgust as the fabric pooled around my ankles. My whole body shivered as cool air hit my skin. “Seriously, Lyr, when was your last bath? Never mind. I don’t want to know.” She tugged on another pillow. “Gods, I can’t wait until my fucking Revelation. Then I can use a stave instead of touching this shit.”