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And the eyes. Glittering blue eyes as bright as sunlight on an aquamarine sea stared back at her, fringed with tears on white lashes and hugged by droopy eyelids. He blinked his enormous eyes.
This was no human child.
“Who—who are you?” she whispered as she kneeled beside the stump. A small part of reason crept back into her mind. Was this apparition even real?
The child scrubbed his face with the back of his hand. “R-r-rig.”
He sounded real. At least, she heard his voice as clear as a bell clanging on a crisp winter morning.
“Well, R-r-rig.” She smiled for his benefit. “My name is Anrid. But you can call me Ani if you like. Most children do.”
He blinked at her, head cocked. “Uh-NEE?” he echoed, mispronouncing her nickname in a way she found quite adorable.
“Ani.”
“Uh-NEE!” He flung himself toward her then, spindly arms no more than bone wrapped in a parchment of skin squeezing around her neck.
She held him close, clucking her sympathy. “There, there. You’re all right now.”
She couldn’t escape the rightness of it herself. She had the particular feeling that her entire life had led her to this exact moment, as if this was the one place in all of Rhuin she needed to be.
Purpose. Destiny. And affection. She sighed at the powerful wave of contentment sweeping over her as she hugged the small body against hers.
Not once did it occur to her that enchantment might be involved.
Chapter 2
The air in the underground hall smelled like the Styx, a river which cut through the soil and rock of Agmon. While there were places in these tunnels with air that smelled rotten or that held unseen dangers capable of killing an unwary traveler in mere minutes, here in the massive cavern where Imenborg jutted from the stone, the air was as fresh as a spring meadow.
Not that Jael Daemon had much experience with meadows.
In fact, he only visited them on rare occasions. They were pleasant things, he would admit, but he preferred the safety of stone walls, the darkness of the deep earth. Safe from prying eyes. Safe from wide-open spaces and endless possibilities.
No, here in Imenborg, beneath the mountains and far removed from the open sky, things were simple. There were tasks to be done, tunnels to follow. Jael’s path wound ahead, chiseled out for him by the elders who went before.
Predestined. Uncomplicated.
Just the way he liked it.
The gentle thrum of the obelisk preceded its warm blue glow. When the obelisk came to life, it meant a sister stone reached out. The current obelisk reaching out sat in his father’s office on the other side of Agmon. Jael clenched his fists and then forced his fingers to open and relax against his thighs as he faced the massive stone pillar.
His father’s penchant for punctuality saw no parallel.
Jael cracked his stiff neck side to side and prepared for the obelisks to connect. Perhaps his life wasn’t quite as uncomplicated as he might prefer.
He hated the first day of the month. It wasn’t that he didn’t wish to see his parents or hear how they fared in the capital of Elysium, the only above ground city in all of Agmon. He loved his parents. But most of their talks revolved around shortcomings. His shortcomings.
Eris and Kora saw to that.
Jael’s nostrils flared in irritation. Brothers were a necessary evil at times. Eris was perfection incarnate, the mark to hold all others accountable to. And Kora…well…Kora was another matter entirely. That left Jael stuck in the middle, neither perfect nor imperfect, just in between.
The obelisk thrummed louder, and the cerulean glow pulsed in escalating waves until it flared fully to power. A ghostly white figure appeared in the stone, but it wasn’t an apparition from the land beyond the mortal. Rather, the figure reflected a goblin noble of actual flesh and bone standing before another obelisk in another room far away. The image rippled as if Jael had dropped a stone into a pool of water.
The face in the obelisk did not belong to King Ereb, for this goblin was too young and broad in the shoulders, with pale hair and darker eyes. His face held a weariness Jael did not envy.
“Eris,” he greeted, somewhat surprised to see his older brother, the Crown Prince of Agmon and the apple of his father’s eye. Eris could do no wrong, but that wasn’t his fault. “Where’s Father?”
His brother ran a hand down his face before crossing his arms over his chest. He exhaled a noisy sigh. “What is the one thing that would make Father late to a meeting?”
