Excerpt

Chapter One

The moon was full and already at its zenith.

He was late.

Paladin Balen cursed under his breath. The conspicuous lack of music made his stomach twist. King Zavrius should have been playing that damned lute-harp by now. Running in full armor through a forest at night, Balen would be lucky if he didn't catch his foot on a root, fall, and break his neck. That would be his luck, dying, stupidly, just before he claimed the most prestigious role in Cres Stros. He needed to focus on the uneven path before him. But how could he?

King Zavrius, and everyone else, was waiting.

Balen's foot slipped in the mulch. He staggered forward in the dark, only righting himself by some miracle. He resolved to push the king from his mind. Always easier in theory. He failed.

Focus. You show up smeared in mud, and Zavrius will be offended.

And Zavrius knew how to hold a grudge.

The winding path straightened. It became a sudden arrow-sharp road cutting through an archway of evergreen trees. The path was lit by torches, their bare flames licking at the balmy air. Balen took a breath and slowed.

The primordial majesty of the Gedrok's Glade opened before him. A massive, ancient and long-dead creature lay slumped in a semicircle at the perimeter of the clearing, forming the northern barrier. These massive beings had been named gedrok after the ancient king who had first harnessed their magical properties. This gedrok possessed a strange, composite quality. The top half resembled a giant, bulky panther, but its lower half tapered away into a lean serpent tail. Its head looked like an earless cat's skull with a fine layer of skin laid over the bone. The rounded head sat tall; at four men high, the creature's glazed, sunken eye could watch the whole glade. Skin covered in off-white and aquamarine scales enfolded long, blood-red tendons and sheathed near-transparent bones. It smelled faintly of brine and oakmoss. Parts of it had been carved away over the years, to create both magical instruments and armor, including Balen's own. Now the creature's rib cage looked brittle and weak. Fat, wild vines wove through places where harvesting the skin had exposed the ribs. The light glinted along Balen's gedrokbone armor as he passed. Flickers of prismatic color split through the darkness.

Balen raised his head proudly to the ancient creature. This was the source of his power. He couldn't help but feel a kinship with it.

On a wooden dais beneath the gedrok's open rib cage, King Zavrius waited.

King Zavrius, fifth heir to the Dued Vuuthrik Dynasty, was a languid vision in the moonlight. He sat sprawled back in a carved wooden throne, tall, lean body stretched out with one leg softly bouncing. At twenty-two, Zavrius somehow managed to have the demeanor of a child and an old man at once. The moonlight turned the shadows on his tawny skin the color of wine. His deep-brown hair had been pulled up away from his face, so Balen had a moment to clock the king's expression. Slight knot in his brow, quirk to his lip. He was making a show of inspecting his finger- nails. Balen had known Zavrius for years, and still couldn't be sure what sort of mood he was in.

Not a single soul in the dynasty had ever expected Zavrius to be king, and the tension of their uncertainty about him filled the night air.

Zavrius sat alone on the dais, facing rows and rows of seated nobility and other dignitaries. All of them were dressed in exquisite regalia, but many avoided including the deep mauves and purples Zavrius favored.

As Balen stepped forward into the clearing, a hundred faces turned to glare at him. The nobility wasn't used to waiting. The Paladin grimaced, raising his chin high as he walked. He raked over painted faces and bored expressions, looking for nobles he recognized, eyes hovering on those he didn't.

He spotted three delegates from the Rezwyn Empire in the front and felt his hand twitch instinctively toward his sword. Balen had to suppress a sneer. Two pale men sat either side of a bearlike woman. The men were dressed in cream-colored ceremonial robes. The loose garments fell like sacks over their bodies, but Balen could tell they were brawny beneath them. Fringed head covers obscured their richly beaded hair and faces. Balen suspected these two were priests. Pulled by the severity of the central figure, Balen noted her oddly pale skin and thick, black hair before his eyes caught on the sash that signified her as the Rezwyn ambassador. Balen spotted the strange symbol of the empire's war god emblazoned on her cuirass—the twisted, open maw of a human-boar crossbreed roaring at the sky. It was provocative, but not as provocative as their faces; all of them sported different derivations of the wartime paint the Rezwyns wore on the field. For a group of diplomats, it was jarring. But that was the empire for you. And with how tense things were now, it was to be expected.

At the foot of the dais, between the nobles and the king, stood a line of Balen's fellow Paladins. The newest recruits stood stiffly at the center, strikingly unarmored, as they had yet to be confirmed into the order. Balen's peers were positioned alongside them. His senior, Duart, gave him a wink as he went by, but Balen knew not many others enjoyed losing this honor to him. The hard-set jaw of Alick, another senior, made Balen feel his youth like a stone in his belly. Alick's armor was exquisite. Heavy plate crafted from any- thing else looked bulky, but the gedrok's body made hulking pauldrons and greaves appear sleek and fitted.

Once Balen passed through the line of his fellow Pala- dins, he could ignore his king no longer.

Zavrius sat with his lute-harp over his lap, watching Balen's every move. It was a stunning, magical instrument. Made from gedrokbone with tendon string, its bowled back was bone white and pearlescent. Streaks of red shot through the ribs like veins.

"Lovely of you to join us." Zavrius pitched his voice just loud enough to reach a few of Balen's Paladin brethren. Balen bristled at that.

Of course. Zavrius would make him a fool just for a laugh. But since he'd managed to arrive late for the event he'd dreamed of for years, Balen thought maybe he deserved it.

When he took his place at Zavrius's right hand, the anger turned to nerves.

"I'll make this up to you," Balen said.

Voice lower now, a private whisper from Zavrius: "Does that mean you've had a change of heart?"

Balen's breath stopped short. He glanced over at Zavrius, who was now fixing him with a cold stare. His fidgeting had stopped. The torchlight flickered around them, making Zavrius's eyes glint gold. In them, Balen saw himself with his heart in his throat at seventeen, leaning in for a kiss—a year Zavrius's senior, and three times the bumbling mess he still found himself to be. He blanched. Balen opened his mouth but found no words.

Zavrius raised a dismissive hand, his frown dissolving into a satisfied smirk as his leg resumed its playful bounce.

"Don't make promises you know you won't keep," Zavrius whispered.

Zavrius always managed to throw him off. Balen bris- tled, momentarily angry at how easily Zavrius got to him. Getting himself involved with the king he was sworn to protect—any half-brained dolt could tell how resuming their old love affair would end.

"Shall I begin?" Zavrius asked, though he didn't wait for anyone to answer.

There was an entire retinue of court musicians that could've opened this ceremony, but the king had insisted it be him alone. Zavrius had said something about the dull, sluggish way they performed—a long rant. Balen suspected the truth was much simpler. Zavrius loved to play. When Sirellius had been king, he rarely got the chance.

Now, he could perform.

The first lilting notes of a lute-harp glided through the glade. Balen, who knew little about music, knew at least this much: Zavrius played beautifully. There was none of the timidness he'd heard from other musicians, where the first notes lurch out of instruments and crawl their way forward. Zavrius's music rose. Balen took in a slow breath and closed his eyes.

At first, Balen thought he'd never heard this song before; that all this was Zavrius gloating, showing off a new composition. But then Zavrius peeled back on the flourish and the melody slipped through. Balen's mouth twitched with a smile. He heard the rhythmic beat of the dynastic anthem, a consistent, marchlike sound that had his new authority pounded into every note. Then, when Zavrius added some musical flourishes, he heard the influence of Zavrius's late mother, Arasne, in the notes. It wasn't that the music was sweet or gentle. Zavrius had stitched one of Arasne's arcane arrangements to the anthem. And since this lute-harp belonged to the late queen, the Paladin felt certain there was some arcane power behind Zavrius's play- ing now. How else could he explain the wash of calmness and awe that had come over him? A similar, comforted expression appeared on the faces of the nobility. Everyone watched with a shared awe as Zavrius's music urged flame from the torches to break free and float around him. Wisps of fire were shaped into arcane fireflies that fluttered up and illuminated the gedrok's translucent bones.

The sound swelled, swaying between the gedrok's ribs, a mournful elegy, yet triumphant in places. Zavrius was the fifth heir, newly appointed, playing in the miasma following the deaths of the whole royal line. All of that and somehow the music never sounded morose. Always, somehow, slightly reserved.

It took seconds for Balen to register that Zavrius had finished playing. The fireflies flickered out one by one. The music lingered in the glade like it was clutching to life, and the spell behind it faded slowly. Balen struggled to tell when it had vanished completely, which said much about Zavrius's power. He wondered if that should frighten him. But then Balen looked over at the king, saw him tilt his head with a satisfied sigh, and found him . . . beautiful.

Compulsively beautiful. Compelling in a way that being drawn to him was necessary and stopped feeling like it was somehow Balen's choice. This—Zavrius—wasn't something he missed, he told himself. Not the playful snark, nor the private smiles. He had trained too hard for too long to miss someone like him.

"So?" Zavrius whispered.

The Paladin looked down, suddenly interested in his sabatons. Hundreds of eyes were on them. "You know you always play well."

"Sure," Zavrius said, placing the lute-harp delicately on the stage. "But I like to hear you say it."