Prologue
THE BONDSMITH
My boots crunched in the ice-crusted snow, sinking calf-deep with every step. Pausing, I sank lower into the ungodly drifts and hoisted a heavy pack further up my back. Frigid wind whipped at my already chapped lips and cheeks, reddening them further before pulling my hair free from its bun to swirl through the surrounding gusts.
The wind whispered of change.
Of the anger of gods.
Of the touch of Fate.
The gods were restless again, and it was only a matter of time before they came back to Elyria.
I’d hidden for centuries in the North, past the ice shelf, past the permafrost, deep in the frozen forest. I planned to die there.
But then my daughter was born, and I risked traveling across the ice shelf once to see her safe. My presence here would ultimately alert Solace and Kaos and fuel their jealousy—of my freedom and ability to entangle with the humans, their magical offspring.
They were, after all, my siblings. And the sibling rivalry was more than alive and well between us.
Even more so because we were gods, Children of Fate.
That same jealousy started the Godswar—or the Sundering, as humans called it—centuries ago, plunging Elyria into darkness. But when the Godswar ended and my siblings left, their souls brimming full of new powers that weren’t originally their own, I stayed.
I stayed to help the humans we doomed, to ensure their wreckage didn’t last for millennia.
It took generations, but the people slowly forgot about their original gods and the destruction of the Godswar, choosing to owe allegiance to just Solace and Kaos.
They even forgot me.
Something I gladly accepted—it helped conceal my presence and allowed me to carry out my mission here in Elyria.
My siblings thought I died in the Godswar, at least until I first crossed the ice shelf to hide my daughter.
Somehow, she wasn’t as safe as I thought. I watched a family for years, knew them personally, and found them kind. Yet they were not who I thought they were, and she was sold to a young Northern lord to be used as an experiment.
The anger I felt over her suffering, her terror, was unparalleled.
At the reminder of her pain, runes I’d etched on my skin so long ago, sang and burned with the promise of destruction and retribution.
But Fate called me home before I could give in to the feeling.
Our resulting conversation—bargain, really—would stick with me until the end of time.
“It’s not their time yet, daughter. I have use of them still,”he said.
“They. Have. My. Daughter,” I ground out between my teeth. “Do you know what they are doing to her? To the other children they collect?”
Fate simply gave me a droll look that neither confirmed nor denied that he knew. Fate appeared differently to everyone. To me, Fate was a male, resplendent in his finery and lounging carelessly on a throne of bones. If this was his actual face, or just what he chose to show me, I didn’t know and didn’t quite care.
“I’m Fate, daughter, of course I know.” I opened my mouth to spit more vitriol at him, but he cut me off, “And, as I said, there is a plan for them. One you must heed.”
I closed my eyes, breathing deeply through my nose.
“But, I’ll make a bargain with you.”
I cracked an eye open.
“A bargain,” I deadpanned.
