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It was an evening of brutal realization.
I remembered something my grandmother had once said when she’d caught me coming home with a split lip. I’d been twelve at the time, training with Micah in the woods, and it had been a particularly intense session of hand-to-hand.
Without a word, she’d motioned me into the kitchen, out of my parents’ sight, and stooped to her knees, digging around beneath the sink.
When she’d finally reemerged, she’d held a miniature glass jar, the facets glinting in the light of the sunfire. She’d rubbed at the glass, drawing my attention to the pale scar in the shape of a crooked star that ran up the length of her right thumb. An old wound, she claimed, nothing special. Yet whenever I asked her about the odd mark, she’d hush me and tell me to quit being so nosy.
“This will help, Kiara,” she’d said, sitting down at the table, medicine in hand. The jar had smelled like the wild trees and the full moon. It had also smelled of mint.
“One day, you will need jars and jars of this,” she’d remarked, arching a thin brow while dabbing some of the cool jelly onto my busted lip. Being the little brat that I was, I’d rolled my eyes.
“You’re going to get in trouble with that attitude of yours,” she’d scolded, even though there was mirth in her voice. “But I think it will be your greatest weapon, child.”
“My attitude? I prefer my dagger!” I’d brought the freshly sharpened blade up so that she could see.
Grandmother had given a riotous laugh. “That will help, of course.” Her weathered fingers had closed around my wrist, forcing the hand that had clutched my dagger to my side. “But it’s what’s in here”—she’d tapped the side of my head—“that will get you through the darkest of nights.”
I might have been young, but I’d recognized the look that had flashed across her seasoned face. It had been…pride.
“One day you’ll see more than you ever thought possible.” She’d cupped my face, her amber eyes reflecting my own. “You’re the light in my life, Kiara. In more than one way.”
I’d never known exactly what she’d meant by that, but those words had haunted me every day for five years.
Grandmother would want me to fight. To succeed. Even if I was surrounded by those soulless Knights. But she was right about one thing—
My attitude was by far my greatest weapon. One I would use to obliterate all doubts that women couldn’t hold their own in battle. Couldn’t be warriors.
Perhaps it was time to loosen my restraint, to unleash the girl I’d long ago imprisoned.
Fate might have brought me here, but from now on, I would be the one to choose my destiny.
Chapter Ten
Jude
There have been reports of missing people in the villages bordering the Mist. They vanish while the realm sleeps, leaving behind all they own. It is my belief that they are being taken. By whom, I have yet to discern.
Letter from Admiral Jarkon to King Cirian,
year 11 of the curse
I watched from the shadows as Kiara tiptoed back to her room, the jar of healing ointment clutched in her gloved hands. She appeared to never take off those gloves.
Thank the gods she hadn’t been too stubborn to take my offering. There’d been a fifty-fifty chance.
The jar had cost me a week’s worth of wages, and I wasn’t sure why I’d bought it for her in the first place. It wasn’t because she was a girl. Kiara could hold her own in any fight, and I imagined that, with her obvious history of combat training, she’d taken a few punches before.
Lying to myself did me no good. I knew the answer well enough.
She made your heart pound for the first time in years.
Fighting and killing had become my everyday life, and after the initial years of slitting throats and performing whatever method of torture King Cirian requested of me, I no longer felt the same adrenaline. In fact, I hadn’t felt much of anything, which had been fine by me. It made every vile act I committed a lot easier.
But now that my pulse was racing and my skin tingled as if microscopic raindrops fell upon me, I knew it would be much harder to shove that feeling down again.
My next stop would be far less pleasant, but entirely necessary.
Shoving off from the wall, I glided down the hallway to the officers’ mess hall.
