Page 27 of Shifting Hearts

THIRTEEN

Kieran

T he wind shifts.

It carries the scent of iron and ash, war. I feel it before I hear it; The low thrum of boots on stone, the distant clatter of blades. The mountain is waking.

I step onto the balcony, shirt half-buttoned, mark still burning from the rite. Below, shadows move through the mist. Figures. Dozens. Maybe more.

My hand goes to the hilt at my side.

So this is how it begins.

I knew Archane, my second-in-command, would rally them, I knew the laws I wrote would be turned against me, but I didn’t expect them to come this soon. Not before the sun had even broken the ridge.

The first figure breaks from the fog. Hooded. Silent. Then another, and another.

I brace myself.

But they stop at the gates.

One kneels.

Then two.

Then all of them.

A third of the Brotherhood, those who didn’t rise when the call to war was made. The ones who walked out, the ones who remember.

I descend the steps slowly, heart hammering.

The first to rise is Garrick, scarred and silent, once my fiercest lieutenant.

“We heard the rite,” he says. “Felt it in our marks. You bound her. You broke the code.”

He steps forward, unsheathes his blade, and lays it at my feet.

“So we broke with them.”

I look out at the sea of faces. Some I trained, some I bled beside. All of them were marked by the same fire.

“You’ll be hunted,” I say. “Branded traitors.”

Garrick shrugs. “We were Forsaken long before they called us that.”

The sun begins to rise, casting a golden glow across the mountain. Then I sense her. My mate. Everything I’m fighting for, sliding up beside me and grasping my hand.

For the first time in years, I’m not alone.