“And with me?”
“That remains to be seen.”
Cleo hadn’t expected him to make any promises to keep her safe and alive, so she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t. His silence was just more proof that the boy she’d seen intimidating and humiliating Kurtis was the real Magnus.
“Now, let me ask you a question, princess,” Magnus said, locking gazes with her. He drew so close to her that they were nearly touching and she moved backward until her spine was pressed up against the balcony railing.
“What?” She tried to inject the single word with as much defiance as possible.
“Have you managed to send word to Jonas Agallon and his trusty rebels informing him of your current whereabouts? Perhaps he can chase after Amara and bring you back the water Kindred.”
The name Jonas Agallon was a sharp slap back to cold reality.
Cleo pressed her hands against Magnus’s chest and pushed. “Step away from me,” she hissed.
“Did I strike a nerve? Apologies, but some subjects need to be addressed—even if they prove unpleasant to you.”
“I’ve already told you that I don’t and have never had anything to do with Jonas Agallon and his followers.” The belief that she’d colluded with rebels was what had led to her imprisonment and the king’s command for her immediate execution.
But it was the truth of course—she had conspired with him. But she’d never admit that out loud. Especially not to Magnus.
“Well, regardless, might I suggest Jonas as an archery tutor instead of Kurtis? Kurtis is skilled in the sport, I suppose, but Jonas—now there’s someone who’s killed Auranians and Limerians alike with his arrows, while Kurtis has only aimed at painted targets.”
“Kurtis will do nicely, but thank you for your opinion.” She shoved past him, then glanced over her shoulder as she left the balcony. “Good day, Magnus.”
He watched her leave the balcony with narrowed eyes. “Good day, princess.”
CHAPTER 4
LUCIA
PAELSIA
He’d asked her to call him Kyan.
He didn’t look much older than twenty years of age. He had dark blond hair, sparkling amber eyes, and was taller than any man Lucia had ever known.
Immortal and indestructible. Omnipotent and fearsome. Able to end a mortal’s life in a flash of fire and pain with a mere thought. He was the elemental god of fire, previously imprisoned within an orb of amber for countless centuries.
And now he sat right across from her, slurping barley soup in a small public house in northern Paelsia.
“This,” Kyan said as he signaled to the barmaid for another bowl, “is absolutely delicious.”
Lucia regarded him with disbelief. “It’s just soup.”
“You say that as if this isn’t a miracle contained within a wooden bowl. This is sustenance that feeds both the body and the soul. Mortals could live off unseasoned meat and plucked grass and yet they choose to make concoctions that smell and taste divine. If only they applied their minds to everything in this manner, rather than wasting their time squabbling about mundane topics and killing each other for petty reasons.”
When they’d first met, she’d expected him to lay waste to Mytica immediately in his quest to assassinate his enemy—a Watcher named Timotheus who, according to Kyan, was the only remaining immortal who had the power to imprison him again.
At the time, she’d been so numb with grief she hadn’t been able to think straight. Her pain was so great that it was the only thing she’d wanted to share with the world.
Lucia wondered what her father and brother might say if they could see her now, sitting in a tavern, across from the soup-eating fire Kindred. The thought almost made her smile.
“Eat.” Kyan pointed to Lucia’s bowl.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Do you want to wither away and die?” He raised a pale brow. “Is that what you’re doing? Starving yourself so you can be reunited with your beloved Watcher?”
Whenever Kyan said the word Watcher, his expression darkened and his amber eyes flashed bright blue.
Anger. Hatred. The need for vengeance. They simmered just beneath the otherwise genteel exterior of this powerful being.
It was much the same whenever Lucia heard Alexius’s name. The pain of having learned that he, too, had used her for his own gain had faded in the days since she’d lost him. The scar tissue that wound had left behind had grown thicker, tougher, as protective as a plate of armor.
No one would ever use her like that again.
“No,” she replied. “Believe me, I want to live.”
“I’m very glad to hear that.”
Lucia stared down at her bowl and brought a spoonful of soup to her lips. “This is watery and tasteless.”
Kyan reached over and took some for himself to sample. “To you, perhaps. But that doesn’t make it less of a miracle.”
The miracle Lucia wanted to come upon most of all was a witch—the older and more knowledgeable the better. They needed one who knew where to find a very special kind of stone wheel used as a magical porthole leading directly to the Sanctuary, the legendary world of the immortals, where the Watchers had stood guard over the Kindred in their crystal prisons for millennia.
Lucia had wanted to know why neither she nor Kyan—as powerful as they both were—could sense this magic without outside help. He explained that there was no magic to sense, that such magic had been hidden to protect the Sanctuary from outside threats.