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Chapter One
Kiara
The sun hasn’t risen in days, and the people have begun to panic. I fear that if the sun and its goddess don’t return, the world as we know it will delve deeper into the shadows.
Letter from Admiral Liand to King Brion,
year 1 of the curse
Few people knew that the night spoke.
Even fewer knew how to answer when it did.
Right then, it was taunting me. The hissing winds and the bloodred moon caused the hair on the back of my neck to rise, the crimson halo an omen of the cruel grief that would soon reach into my chest and make a home there.
A curse rumbled up my throat, drowned out by Liam’s relentless snores across our shared room. Nothing could wake that boy, not even one of my colorful curses that turned Mother’s ears red.
It was nearly morning, the telltale twittering of a starwing filtering through my cracked window. Some said starwings were the gods’ spies, but I believed they were only birds, nothing more.
One of the creatures hopped onto my windowsill, its black feathers shimmering with speckles of purple, its downy underbelly a vibrant blue. It stared at me with its dark, beady eyes before taking flight, its melodious song trailing behind.
Apparently, I wasn’t anyone worth spying on.
I returned my attention to my lap, my favorite dagger resting in my gloved hand.
As I twirled the handle, I cursed Raina, our glorious and forgotten Sun Goddess. If she hadn’t left us to rot in the night, then today wouldn’t be happening.
Liam wouldn’t be taken. Not bythem—
The damned Knights of the Eternal Star.
They’d sweep into our village and steal all eligible boys, forcing them to journey into the cursed lands—into the Mist. A place where no mortal would dare venture. After the Goddess Raina had left, the Mist had risen up like an incurable malady, and our arrogant king had been fighting for a cure ever since. With crops failing, and people starving, he was working against time to produce a solution. A solution he believed could be found where death bloomed.
I just thought him to be a fool.
Hope is a dangerous thing to possess.
“Do you ever sleep?”
I jerked against my headboard as Liam’s long lashes fluttered open, his twin pools of blue eyeing me skeptically in the dim.
“No,” I answered, flicking a match on the bedside table and reaching for the candle. The wick caught flame instantly, and Liam let out another grunt when the light hit his eyes.
“I already miss my bed.” Liam groaned.
“You’restillin bed.” I chuckled, though it was strained. My red tresses brushed my cheeks as I shook my head.
“What time is it, Ki?”
While the mood was dour, it was impossible to stop the grin forming on my lips. Ki, the nickname Liam had gifted me with when he was little and couldn’t say my full name, suited me like a fine leather coat, whereas Kiara sounded too…well, notme. Feminine and dainty. A girl with blooms woven into her hair and lips that fashioned pretty words. I was neither dainty nor well-spoken. Not that I ever wished to be.
My eyes drifted to the whirring timepiece beside my cot. “Around six.”
“Gods, why must people insist upon waking at such a depraved hour?” Liam tugged the linens tighter, swaddled like a newborn babe.
“Of course you would say that. You’d be stuck in that bed all day if not for me nagging at you to get off your bum.” Bounding across the cold planks, I catapulted onto his mattress with a defiant grin, the hinges beneath me squeaking in protest.
“Ki!” Liam griped, his scrawny body trapped below mine. He was a foot taller than my five feet two, but what I lacked in height, I made up for with solid muscle. Muscle I’d worked very hard to attain. The various bruises and scars dotting my body attested to that.
