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As it trickled from my grasp, I made that last move. I shot it out, wrapped it around the greedy warrior. And I pulled.

Pulled until sinew and tendons, blood and bones bent to my will.

Crimson leaked from his nose, his ears.

“I am not your puppet,” he spat, voice caught in the wind. It swirled around us with dying leaves and flowers and signs of how close we had been. Puppet, puppet, puppet. “Nor am I a fool.”

“You are no puppet,” I said through clenched teeth, “but you become a greater fool each day.” Gods, it should not have been this way. If I had only seen the signs.

Blood poured over his chin, the stream growing thicker. His skin paled, but it was not fear entering his eyes. It was triumph. And that chilled me enough to loosen the grasp on his being.

“What have you done?” I gasped. My light dimmed.

“Brother…” A hoarse whisper. Sad eyes. “What have you?”

First, an echoing silence filled my mind. Then—an explosion.

With a roar, I ripped back the reins of my magic. Rocks shattered, peaks trembled, trees swayed. The domain bent to my will.

The warrior’s palms slapped into dirt. His coughs wracked the air, each puncturing the force of wind around us until all that was audible was those dragging, wet heaves.

Blood splattered earth.

Promise seeped into dust.

And he collapsed before me, still in a pool of his own sacred blood. The light we had both been emitting flickered out until only the ghostly-silver glow of the moon remained.

I toiled through the shocked grief that swarmed me as I stared at those sightless magenta eyes. I had no choice. This was not my fault. The warrior brought about this end.

Pressing my palms into the dug-up earth, I inhaled the iron-tinged air, reminding myself he had done this, not me. The warrior had been greedy, and that was the story legends would spread.

As I worked to persuade myself of it, the wind calmed. The earth began restoring itself, and I convinced myself he had been a ruin of Angels.

But accusatory magenta eyes swam behind my lids.

What have you?

I failed, that was what I had done. I would not fail with the next chosen.

Part One

Bia

Chapter One

Ophelia

My heart had broken so many times, I thought it would have stopped beating by now. Surely one organ could only take so much pain before it decided to quit. In the two months since the Battle of Damenal, a hole had formed behind my ribs, widening each day, swallowing up pieces of me. That cavity echoed with a dark void, a blade swiped clean between my bones.

Slice. Puncture. Bleed.

It was the rhythm I operated to, and I masked my pain with work. Restoring what had been damaged throughout Damenal when Queen Kakias had launched an attack on the city atop the peaks. On that midnight when she defied the bounds of magic and used my blood for an unnatural immortality ritual.

That rhythm was how I found myself at the grand set of stone stairs that used to lead to the Sacra Temple, the largest in Damenal, located in the Sacred Quarter in the western quadrant of our divine city. The site of the blast that killed my father and the rest of the Mystique Council on Daminius.

The explosion meant for me.

Because I was supposed to be in the temple that day.