The queen gave them more than a day. She put them up in her keep. People had made a fuss about Armitage until Geneve stared them down. She didn’t know what to say, so settled for glaring. Rumors spread about the Adept who’d cut down a Champion, so the glare was enough. Armitage said he thought it funny but didn’t laugh. He watched Sight of Day a lot and spent time with the Feybrind when he thought no one was looking. Geneve needed answers. She left the castle alone, on foot. No one had seen Tristan, and she feared him dead, especially after Beck and Fidget were brought to the castle stables. Her weary feet led her through Ravenswall. Geneve wore no armor. She couldn’t stand the golden sun’s weight today. She carried a black sash with five gold bars. Read More …

When Nicolette fell, so did Meriwether’s hands. The compulsion to not speak was gone. He scrambled to his feet. You saw the divine. Geneve brought the Storm. She beat a Champion, blade on blade, and saved, like, everyone. She knelt in a crumpled huddle beside Israel. The pool of red beneath the Knight didn’t grow. He was well dead, so Meriwether didn’t go there.  He found himself by Vertiline’s side. Blood still flowed from her arm. How she was still alive was a mystery. Maybe the Chevalier was too ornery to give up. He yanked off his belt, then worried the buckles on her greaves. The metal was twisted, the cut edge melted as if a great heat passed through it, but nothing burnt the flesh beneath. Tresward mystic Smithsteel shit. Ignore it. He lashed his belt around Vertiline’s arm. She stirred, Read More …

Geneve’s eyes snapped open, breath dragging through her chest. Her body felt raw, her mind bloody. Memory after memory snicked into place, pieces of a puzzle, fragments of a person, held apart from the rest of her for thirteen years. Each one hit with the force of a punch. Israel is my father. Vertiline knew. My mother sold me. She stood on weary legs. The witch Nicolette faced Meriwether. He held Geneve’s borrowed steel with trembling arms. She could see the fear in him, burning like a bonfire. Terrible, and wonderful, that he would bring his beautiful, fragile self between her and a demon. Geneve stepped to his side as she’d been taught. Cophine’s third stanza, for closing distance. She took the sword from Meriwether, feeling a gentle strength in her hands. A feeling she’d never had before because she’d always been Read More …

It wasn’t her first memory, just the first to arrive. Geneve felt it slot into place like a wooden piece from a child’s puzzle. It had the same bright, lacquered edges children love, painted in brilliant vermilion. She stood in a town square. Or above it: her feet were on wooden planks, coarse cut and rude. To her left and right were the tall faces of her fellow slaves. Tall, because she was five, but for all she was young she felt something was terribly wrong. A slave to her right was Feybrind. Worn, faded pelt. Patchy, because even they got old. Emerald green eyes undimmed by time, because the People weren’t made to cower. Her name was Time of Waiting, and she’d volunteered to be here, because Geneve’s mother wasn’t. No, that wasn’t right. Geneve’s mother was below in Read More …

Meriwether stood atop what might have been a nice taverna, if not for the dead milling in the courtyard out front. To his left, a woman with dead-white hair glared hate at the risen below. To his right, Sight of Day stood with a bow, arrow nocked, but no apparent desire to use it.  It wouldn’t make much difference. There’s a thousand dead below, and he’s got maybe thirty arrows. White-Hair sniffed. “You want to go in there?” She pointed at the bank, around which most of the dead’s attention focused. “Want? Hell, no. Need? Yes.” Meriwether flexed his hand. It felt strained after smashing the Feybrind control device. Won’t kill me, though. “We just saw a Champion enter. I’m going to help.” “And you want us to lay down covering fire?” She held up fingers hooked into claws. Arcs of electricity danced Read More …

The air tasted of copper. The hair on Geneve’s nape rose. Her fingers felt thin, too weak to hold her borrowed blade. Or perhaps it was her soul, too weak to hold her body upright after the compromises she’d made to get here. I’m no Knight. I’ll never be Israel and can’t touch Vertiline. And here I am, standing with them, against a Champion. Nicolette’s poise was faultless. Her stance was exactly as written by the Three. Her glass blades moved with precision even clockwork couldn’t give. Every part of her was matchless perfection. The Three walked not with her, but in her. She was their Champion in the world. A tiny dragonfly appeared on one of her sword’s edges, glittering with inner heat, before taking flight to circle her head. Another joined it, then four more, giving her a crown of flying fire. Read More …