Corayne set her feet. They were already too close for her to run, even if she wanted to. It would do her no good to turn her back now. She thought of the knife in her boot. It had never been used, but it was a small comfort.

“Good evening,” she muttered, standing aside so they could pass.

Instead they halted, standing shoulder to shoulder. Or shoulder to chest, rather. One towered over the other, standing at least six and a half feet high. At this distance, Corayne could tell he was a man, broad and well built. He held himself like a warrior, his posture rigid. The shape of a sword poked out beneath his cloak. His hood kept most of his face obscured, but there was a scar she could see, even in the blue darkness. It dragged at one side of his pale jaw, ragged, wet, and . . . still healing.

Corayne’s stomach turned. No spine echoed in her head.

“The port is behind you, friends,” she said. “This way’s the road to Tyriot.”

“I do not seek anything in Lemarta,” the man answered from beneath his hood.

Fear clawed inside her. She moved before the man, stepping back, but he stepped forward to meet her, his motions too smooth, too quick. The other figure remained still, like a snake coiled at the roadside, waiting to strike.

“You keep away!” Corayne snapped, drawing the dagger from her boot. She waved it between the travelers.

To her dismay, the man lunged forward, and Corayne tightened her grip, willing herself to fight. But she couldn’t move an inch. No spine roared, and she braced herself for a blow.

Instead the man sank to a knee before her, his sword suddenly in hand, the tip of the gilded blade pointed to the dirt. Corayne eyed the silver hilt and good steel. He bowed his head and pushed back his hood, revealing a golden curtain of blond hair and a beautiful face half ruined with scarred flesh. A strange design edged his cloak, antlers worked in silver thread.

“I beg your forgiveness and your mercy, Corayne an-Amarat,” he said softly. His eyes glinted green, but he was unable to hold her gaze.

Corayne blinked, her eyes darting between the travelers. She was torn between fear and bewilderment.

Finally the smaller person sneered, revealing the lower half of a woman’s face. She crossed her arms over her chest. Each finger was tattooed with a black line stretching from knuckle to nail. The pattern was familiar, but Corayne could not place it.

“Did you intend to frighten the girl to death, or are you simply incapable of interacting with mortals properly?” the woman drawled, her glare leveled at the man’s back.

Mortals. Corayne’s head spun.

He gritted his teeth. “I must beg your forgiveness again. Killing you is not my intent.”

“Well, that’s good,” Corayne sputtered. Her hand dropped, the dagger useless at her side. “Who are you?”

Even as she spoke, her mind supplied the answer, remembering corners of a children’s tale or a sailor’s story. Immortal. He’s an Elder. Born of the dead Spindles, ageless and without flaw. Children of a lost realm.

She had never seen one before. Even her mother had never seen one before.

The immortal tipped his face up so that the stars illuminated him fully. Something had cut—no, torn—the left side of his face, ripping ragged lines from cheek to neck. Her eyes lingered, and he recoiled beneath her scrutiny.

He is ashamed, Corayne knew. Somehow it made her less afraid.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

The Elder sucked in a heavy breath.

“My name is Domacridhan of Iona, nephew to the Monarch herself, blood of Glorian Lost. I am the last of your father’s Companions, and I seek your aid.”

Corayne’s mouth dropped open, shock pulsing through her. “What?”

“I have a story to tell you, my lady,” he murmured. “If you would hear me tell it.”

4

IMMORTAL COWARD

Domacridhan

The horse was dying beneath him, foam blowing from her mouth. Her shoulder was scarlet, caked in blood. My blood, he knew. The wounds had barely closed despite the long days. He tried not to think about his face, clawed and cut open by those things, those abominations. An army of something, from a realm he could barely fathom. He still felt their fingers, broken nails and exposed bone beneath rusty armor. They were far behind him now, hundreds of miles away. But Domacridhan looked back, emerald eyes wide.

How he’d escaped, finding one of the Companions’ horses, he could not say. It was a blur of noise and color and smell, a ruin of memory. So the days passed as he raced on, one kingdom bleeding into another, hills into farm and forest and hills again, until the ground turned familiar. He cut through the mountains of the Monadhrion and the Monadhrian, the Star and the Sun, to the hidden glen. It stretched, filled with mist and yew trees, divided by the winding silver ribbon of the River Avanar. He knew this land as its son and prince.

Calidon.

Iona.

Home.

Not long, he told himself, willing the horse to last. Not long.

He could hear the horse’s heartbeat, thunderous and failing. He kicked her again.

It is her heart or your own.

Mist peeled back to reveal the Vederan city of Iona on a stony ridge, perched where the Avanar met Lochlara, the Lake of the Dawn. Rain and snow stained the castle city gray and brown, but it remained magnificent through the ages. It was home to thousands of immortals, hundreds of them Glorianborn, older than Iona herself. Tíarma, the palace, stood proudly at the knife-edge of the ridge, with only cliffs below.

The mossy walls of the city were well defended. Stoic bowmen stood the length of the ramparts, near indistinguishable in their forest greens. They knew him on sight, their vision perfect even at a distance.

A prince of Iona returned, bloody and alone.

The mare carried him up the ridge and through the gates, galloping as far as the Monarch’s palace. Dom leapt from her back when she fell to the ground. Her breath came heavy and slow, and then not at all. He flinched as her heart beat its last.

The guards flanked their prince without a word. Most were golden-haired and green-eyed, their faces stark white in the mist, their leather armor embossed with the crest of Iona. The great stag was everywhere—in wall carvings, in statues, on the tunics and armor of his fellow Ionians. It loomed over all things, proud and distant, eyes all-seeing.

My failure laid bare before it, he thought.

Ashamed, Dom entered the palace of Tíarma, passing beneath the yawning oak doors. Someone pressed a cloth into his hand, and he took it, wiping at the dried blood on his face. His wounds bit and stung, some splitting open again. He ignored the pain in the immortal way.

But he could not ignore the feel of his own torn flesh.

I must look like a monster.

After five hundred years living within Tíarma, Dom knew it well. He strode rapidly past halls and archways branching off to different wings of the palace and fortress. The feasting hall, the rose garden at the center of the palace, the battlements, and living quarters. They all blurred in his mind’s eye.

Only once had he wept upon these stones. The day he became an orphan and ward to the Monarch.

He did his best not to weep a second time.

Cortael, my friend, I have failed you. I have failed Allward, failed Iona. And failed Glorian too. Failed all things I hold dear.

He reached the throne room too soon. The doors were twice his height, carved from ash and oak, intricately made by immortal hands. The sigils of the many enclaves intertwined through the wood, fluid as water. There was Ghishan’s stoic tiger; the black panther of Barasa; a wheeling hawk for Tarima; Hizir’s lithe stallion with Sirandel’s clever fox underfoot; a Syrene ram crowned in spiral horns; Kovalinn’s great bear on its hind legs, the sand wolf of Salahae, and Tirakrion’s shark bearing rows of daggered teeth. Twin stags reared over them all, chests thrust forward, their antlers impossibly large. Dom had left these doors weeks ago, Cortael at his side, his stern face pulled in resolve, his heart still beating.