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  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-one

  Fifty-two

  Fifty-three

  Fifty-four

  Fifty-five

  Fifty-six

  Fifty-seven

  Fifty-eight

  Fifty-nine

  Sixty

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  One

  To Ethan and Madelyn Walker,

  who make their mom proud

  every. single. day.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Cara Witter Books

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except for use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design by Janci Patterson

  Water splash istock.com/hidetoll

  Water Circle istock.com/RomoloTavani

  Particle Wave istock.com/piranka

  Map Design by Isaac Stewart

  Published by Garden Ninja Books

  carawitterbooks.com

  First Edition: June 2020

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Prologue

  Year 1139 of the Banishment Era

  Captain Marcas Halvor hadn’t always done the grunt work of personally guarding the prisoner cells of the Castle Peldenar dungeons. Since the injury he’d taken to his knee in the first battle of Berlaith, he’d done little more than oversee guard training and assign schedules—a change in routine for which his wife had been grateful.

  But this prisoner was different. This prisoner was the Lord General’s own daughter, and Marcas was one of the very few men trusted to know she was here.

  Marcas arrived early to begin his shift, as usual. It set a good tone for his men, and so it became a habit that followed him even to an assignment like this. He nodded to the guard at the dungeon entrance, who was sitting on what was affectionately called the Throne of Splinters. The men complained about how worn and uncomfortable the wooden stool was, but it had become enough of a long-running joke that they were all loath to replace it.

  “Captain Halvor,” the guard said, with a stifled grimace that immediately made Marcas concerned.

  “Lieutenant,” Marcas responded. “Is everything well?”

  Bartek nodded. “Well enough. This bloody headache keeps getting worse, is all.”

  Marcas frowned. Bartek hadn’t been the only one complaining of headaches over the last few days. Marcas himself had gotten one just yesterday, and it had taken all night for him to sleep it off. “And the prisoner?”

  He didn’t have to specify which one. There was only one prisoner currently being held in the dungeon of Castle Peldenar. The rest had been discreetly transported to the city’s holding cells.

  Bartek shifted uncomfortably, and Marcas knew it had nothing to do with the Throne of Splinters. “Not much different. A little louder than usual.”

  “Well, then. Another few hours, and you can head home to your wife,” Marcas said. “Get some sleep. Maybe some of that bluefern tea. My daughter-in-law brings some over when my leg gets bad, and it does the trick.”

  Bartek smiled, though it was clearly pained. “Forgive me, sir, if I think this one may be better cured with a few pints.”

  “Short-sighted as ever, Bartek,” Marcas said with a chuckle, clapping the guard on his shoulder. “Just don’t blame me when your head feels like a blacksmith’s anvil in the morning.”

  Bartek laughed, but Marcas could see a trickle of sweat coming down from the man’s brow. He considered sending him home early—Bartek’s replacement would be here before long, anyway—but the Lord General had been specific in his orders. One guard inside the dungeon proper at all times, watching the girl, and one guard at the entrance, keeping out anyone not authorized to enter—which was pretty much everyone save Marcas and six other hand-selected soldiers. And the Lord General himself, of course, though he didn’t visit much.

  In a way, Marcas couldn’t blame him. No man could endure seeing his young daughter like this.

  Bartek stood to open the door for Marcas, and though the lieutenant’s posture was straight and proper as ever, Marcas couldn’t help but notice how he slumped back onto the stool as soon as the door started to close.

  If Bartek was suffering some sort of illness, Marcas truly hoped none of the other six men were likewise plagued. They were already stretched thin enough as it was in their rotating shifts.

  Of course, none of them had expected this particular assignment to stretch on for almost a year, with no end in sight.

  Marcas was used to the dungeon stench by now, though it didn’t make that first whiff of piss and rat dung and gods knew what else any more pleasant. Even with only one prisoner in here for the past ten months, the smell hadn’t lessened any. Centuries of use had baked it into the walls.

  Far more disturbing were the sounds the girl had started to make the last several weeks. Bartek had been right; she was louder than usual today. A thin, reedy shriek echoed around the dungeon hall, and Marcas winced as he approached her cell door.

  “Has she eaten?” Marcas asked Sten, the guard standing outside the door, peering in through the barred grate. Sten startled at Marcas’ arrival.

  In any other situation, Marcas would have severely reprimanded one of his men for being caught off-guard like that. But this was not any other situation.

  “No, sir,” Sten said. “It’s like yesterday and the day before. She’s just picked at it and mashed her hands in it.”

  Marcas sighed. “At least she hasn’t thrown it against the wall yet.”

  “Not yet,” Sten agreed, turning back to stare in through the grate even though Marcas had arrived to take over his shift. Marcas understood all too well. After months of watchi
ng an innocent little girl possessed by the evils of blood magic, there was always a gut-wrenching relief at the end of a shift. And yet it was difficult to pull his eyes away, to know that while Marcas would go home to his wife and children and warm hearth, this poor child would stay here in the dark and cold and dungeon stench yet another night.

  Marcas drew in a deep breath to steady himself—piss scent be damned—and looked into the cell just as the girl let out another loud shriek.

  The torchlight in the hallway behind him allowed him to see the small room clearly enough. A child’s bed in the far corner, with a thick blanket wadded up on one end. A chamber pot in the other corner. A cloth doll on the ground beside a pile of books whose pages had been ripped to shreds just last month.

  A girl with long red hair huddled in the center of the room, her small, pale hands in front of her face, ripped pieces of paper littering the ground around her like patches of dirty snow.

  The lady Daniella, only eleven years old. Nearing twelve now, Marcas reminded himself. Almost the age of Marcas’ youngest. Not tucked away in some country estate to recover from illness, as the populace thought, but imprisoned here to protect her from herself.

  And the Lord General from her.

  In between those piercing cries, she babbled to herself, nonsense words and sounds like an infant might make, which were almost more difficult to hear. Marcas remembered well the girl who he’d been tasked to bring into the dungeon ten months ago—crying then, too, but also pleading, begging for her governess, promising that whatever she’d done to make her father mad, she wouldn’t do it again.

  Fortunately, Lord General Diamis had prepared Marcas beforehand that she’d beg, that she’d say anything which might gain her enough sympathy to be released. Or rather, that the blood mage controlling her would make her do those things. For that was what Marcas had to remind himself every day—this wasn’t a little girl in there, but the shell of a little girl being controlled by the vilest of magics. All of this even now, all the hysterics and seeming madness, was merely a trick by the blood mage to get them to set her free, where she would do the mage’s dark will.

  Or perhaps it was all just a way to torture the Lord General further. Diamis had been very vocal about his determination to eradicate blood magic and those who practiced it. It was his faith in the Lord General’s determination that allowed Marcas to continue with this assignment, day after brutal day. That, and the hope that the Lord General would be able to track down the mage that had corrupted his child and make him pay. And the even greater hope that after all this time, the Lady Daniella was still in there somewhere to save.

  Seeing her there, rocking back and forth . . . the latter was difficult to imagine.

  “Go on, Sten,” Marcas said quietly. “Give your father my regards.”

  Sten nodded shakily and pressed a hand to his forehead.

  Marcas took a step back. A long trail of blood had started dripping from Sten’s nose. The young guard wiped at it and stared, blinking, at the red on his fingertips.

  “I’m sorry, I must’ve . . .” he trailed off, uncertain. Marcas’ stomach turned—not at the sight of blood, but at a growing unease becoming a spike of fear. The headaches, a sudden bloody nose for no reason . . .

  The girl in the cell let out a howl, scraping her fingers across the stone floor, scattering bits of paper. Pain ripped through Marcas’ head, as if her fingers scraped across the inside of his skull.

  Marcas stumbled back with a curse, bracing himself against the slick stone of the hallway wall. Sten lurched against the wall, too, crying out.

  The sensation passed as quickly as it had come, though he felt a warmth running down his neck. He pressed his fingers to it, and they were as red as Sten’s.

  Blood was trickling out from his ear.

  Marcas swore again, his hand instinctively going to the sword at his side. Were they under attack? Was someone trying to get to the girl? He’d heard of poisons that could be spread in the air, which could have effects like these. It couldn’t be blood magic; Marcas was extremely careful with his blood, and his men were, too. There was no way someone had gotten hold of blood from all of them.

  He looked in on the girl once more. She was shaking now and crying softly. Was she feeling the headaches too? Marcas couldn’t tell. All he knew was that his job was to keep the girl locked away and safe. Safe from herself—under constant watch so the blood mage controlling her couldn’t make her hurt herself—and safe from anyone who would try to come from the outside.

  And he wasn’t about to let either the Lord General or Daniella—whatever might be left of Daniella—down.

  “Sten, watch her. I’ll send Bartek to get the Lord General.”

  Sten nodded, though his eyes flicked nervously to Marcas’ ear.

  Marcas ran back to the dungeon entrance, shoving the door open. “Bartek!”

  The lieutenant jumped to his feet and swayed with the sudden motion. Blood dripped from his nose as well, and his eyes were wide. Marcas looked around the small entryway, looked up the stone stairs leading into the rest of the castle, but found no one there doing any kind of Vorgalian magic or releasing a deadly potion.

  “Bartek, go get Lord General Diamis immediately. Tell him that—”

  Marcas’ words were cut off by a scream louder than any of the others, a girl’s scream that bounced around in his head like it was trapped there. Marcas tasted blood on his lips, in his throat. Bartek fell forward to his hands and knees, coughing blood onto the floor.

  Marcas stumbled back toward the dungeon cell, toward the girl. He could get her out, get her away from this attack, whatever it was. Even blood magic-controlled, she was still a small child and wouldn’t be able to overpower him in the time it would take him to get her to Diamis.

  He didn’t make it halfway down the hall before a searing, ripping sensation throughout his body sent him to the ground. He cried out, the pain more intense than any he’d felt in his life, terror washing through him deeper than he’d felt on any battlefield.

  He lifted his head in time to see young Sten collapse as a cloud of red mist burst from his body, pouring from his mouth and eyes and ears and even his skin itself.

  Marcas gagged, choking on his own blood, weeping tears of it, watching it pool beneath him on the ground.

  The last sound he heard was the soft whimper of a child.

  One

  Fourteen Years Later

  Saara—Chosen of Nerendal, new queen of Tirostaar—wasn’t in the throne room when Kenton came looking for her, but the godstone was. The stone pulsed from its pedestal. Hungry golden flames swirled in its depths, and Kenton found it difficult to pull his eyes away. Despite the many years he had spent poring over the Banishment Chronicle, seeking out the chosen that he knew must exist, he never truly considered the jewels themselves as anything more than a goal to be obtained. The means of stopping Diamis.

  Kenton couldn’t touch the stone—that privilege rested with Saara, the bearer of Nerendal. Yet here in its presence, he saw that it was more than the Chronicle could ever convey, more than he would have ever believed.

  It lived. Nerendal himself was encased within the stone, a concept familiar as breathing to him, but which within the last few days had become undeniably new. Kenton thought his belief in the gods, in the truth of the Chronicle, had been strong before—after all, he’d been leading this group through battles of magic and daring castle escapes for this very purpose. But now everything was different. Solid. The history was tangible in a way that it never could have been from maps and words on paper. A small part of Kenton wished he could feel what Saara must have at touching the Sunstone, at claiming and being claimed by her god.

  Of course, he didn’t want the death that would rapidly follow if he did so.

  “I find myself coming in to stare at him quite often,” remarked an accented voice from beh
ind him.

  He turned, a little unnerved by the fact that he hadn’t heard Saara approach. The soft soles of Tirostaari shoes allowed for more natural stealth than he was accustomed to. She was dressed in loose red pants, over which draped a tan silk robe tied tightly around her small waist. Her soft leather boots were dyed the same shade of tan and laced up to her knees. On the mainland, the clothes would have been a man’s outfit, but even with her dark hair pinned up, Saara was incapable of looking like a man.

  “I can understand why,” Kenton said. “It’s not exactly what I expected.”

  “I don’t think any of the bearers are what you expected either. Such are the ways of the gods, I suppose.”

  He gestured to the stone. “Yet look what you all have accomplished.”

  Saara smiled and stepped up beside him. Tiny licks of flame ran over her hands; rather than hiding her power, Kenton had noticed her using it often since she’d taken the throne. A reminder, he supposed, to anyone who might be questioning her right to rule.

  Kenton cleared his throat. He’d come here for a purpose, not to gawk at the stone. “Have you spoken to Talia yet about being your steward? Ruling in your absence?”

  Saara’s face, momentarily lightened by her brief smile, returned instantly to its usual hard expression. “No. I can’t leave so soon after banishing my aunt. You and the others are all free to go, but I’ll have to stay.”

  Kenton’s chest tightened. “You know the fight isn’t over. Diamis may not be threatening you at this moment, but when he finishes with Mortiche, he’ll come for you. And if he releases Maldorath—”

  “I know,” Saara said. “And I’m willing to meet you in Peldenar when the others have their gods. Peldenar is on the coast—you can send me word when you have them. We’ll arrange a meeting place before you leave, so we don’t have to trust it to letters.”

  “Saara,” Kenton said. “We need you. The other bearers need you. The gods called you together because they knew we’d be stronger as a team, and there’s so much work left to do.”

  Saara shook her head. “I’m Nerendal’s bearer. Chosen, as you yourself admitted, to claim the godstone and rule Tirostaar as her queen. Not chosen to roam the Five Lands looking for missing gods.” She waved a hand at him dismissively. “The Four only know how long it will take you to find them.”