Chapter One
Isca
It always began with the feelings—too many, too loud. Need, grief, and desire all crouched in the dark, waiting for the city to wake so they could slam into me with the force of a dozen unseen fists.
Even in sleep, Caervorn's people dreamed loud enough to reach me. But before the sun rose, their emotions were muffled behind stone and timber walls. The stillness, their absence, was my only shield against the world's emotions. It was a fragile, temporary thing, but it was mine.
Smoke twisted from a few chimneys, only to vanish in the brisk spring breeze as if it was eager to depart.
At least it had a choice.
I passed beneath the gates of Avanfell’s ruins at the center of Caervorn, past the crumbling mural of the last emperor, its faded colors barely visible against the weathered stone in the dim pre-dawn light. His painted sword had been damaged by the last frost. Pieces of it had flaked away, leaving behind a dull, chipped surface that the Mage Assembly hadn't bothered to repair. The once-majestic structure was slowly collapsing into ruin, its grandeur slowly lost to the rise of newer, more convenient heroes.
My shoulders burned under the weight of my burden, each step clinking vials together, every breath reminding me how little padding my ribs had left. The mostly useless band that held up my chest dug into my bones, and my threadbare dress offered little protection against the digging edges of the crate I had stashed in my pack.
With a sigh of relief, I carefully deposited it onto my market stall, the tension leaving my shoulders with each slow breath. My body was sluggish, my mind clouded, and my mood on edge. The gnawing hunger of the past few weeks had hollowed me out.
Well, that's just one reason to put on a charming smile and sell, sell, sell, Isca.
By all the magic, even my most private thoughts were starting to sound a little crazy. I was at the point where I'd likely do something illegal if someone got too close with a honeycake in hand.
As the sun rose, people and their invisible clouds of emotions flooded the market. Canvas awnings stretched crookedly over wooden stalls laden with cabbages, bolts of wool, and iron cookware. City folk jostled between mud-spattered carts carrying baskets, avoiding beggars crouched over gutters. Children darted underfoot, chasing stray pigeons through the press of bodies, a few picking pockets along the way.
It was a colorful display of humanity against the city's gray stone backdrop. I longed to share in its vibrance, to feel like I truly belonged, but my magic, my otherness, forced me to keep my distance. The city had never known what to do with a misfit like me—too much mage for the peasants, too little for the Assembly. I didn't belong in either world, half-in, half-out. And there could never be a place for halves in a city torn apart by its own biases.
I braced myself against the crowd's emotional assault as my first customer of the morning walked towards me. From the fine leather jerkin he wore and the sword hanging at his belt, he was a mercenary.
The rich aroma of foreign olive oil clinging to his skin told me he'd just left the fortress's luxurious baths. His charming smile and confident swagger suggested a man who would flirt, buy a couple of my tinctures, then leave, annoyed he couldn't buy me as well.
This was normal. The emotions roiling off him were anything but. Anger. Jitters. Lust that was so closely commingled with pain, I could barely separate the two.
My magic gulped it all down like wine gone to vinegar.
This mercenary was half-feral. His emotions painted a picture of a man who committed a constant stream of violence, yet had faced little to no consequences for it. I needed to proceed cautiously.
"Two coppers for the vial, Ser," I said, pushing the pain-relieving tincture toward him. My voice held steady, but the glass trembled, betraying my fear.
"One," he said, deliberately loud enough for nearby ears. "And it'd better work, witch. Or I'll be back to burn the lies out of you myself."
I wanted to scream my frustration at the top of my lungs. Tell him I wasn't a witch. Witches faked having a spark of the gift to put money in their pouches. I had real magic. The true extent of which was a secret, known only to my family.
Yet, in this city, it made no difference. Being poor was enough to warrant his lack of decency toward me.
I accepted the copper because the hollow in my stomach was a more pressing need than preserving the tatters of my pride.
The mercenary smiled, showing all his teeth. Then his tainted interest in me climbed up my chest and wrapped its fingers around my throat. If I wasn’t cautious, I knew this man would be waiting for me after sundown to finish what his eyes had already promised.
But the moment the mercenary's calloused fingers brushed mine, a large, gloved hand came into view just over his shoulder. With a sudden, brutal yank, the mercenary was pulled sideways and backwards, the force of it audibly knocking the wind from his lungs.
I let out a tiny, surprised squeak as my heart pounded in my chest. The mercenary's eyes, once swaggering and smug, were wide with terror. I staggered back under the tidal wave of his choking fear.
A towering figure stepped into view, black tunic draped with a blood-red cloak, trimmed in gold. The fabric screamed power and money. He had to be a lord, or someone higher in rank. The gloved hand hadn't let go.
I couldn't see what unfolded in the next second, but the sound was unmistakable: steel sliding into meat with a wet, violent crunch. Then, the bone-snapping crack of something vital breaking.
With a dull thud, the mercenary's top half collapsed forward onto my stall.
Vials shattered, scattering herbs and glass across the stall. I stood frozen, staring dumbly as his torso slid across my counter, painting it red. Below the table, his legs hit the ground with a sodden smack. Blood spilled in both directions like someone had split a wineskin onto the cobblestones.
When the scene fully registered, my magic surged up in my chest. It tore out of me in a silent scream of feeling. The desperate, involuntary cry demanded peace, stillness, no more.
A wave of calm more powerful than anything I'd ever cast engulfed the market.
And just like that, everything I'd done to make myself easily overlooked and meek failed. The stares, the judgment, speared into me from a hundred different eyes.
The executioner staggered back half a step, avoiding the spreading pool of blood. He recovered quickly, but his next movements were stiff compared to the feline grace he'd shown in cutting a man cleanly in half.
Ignoring me completely, he barked at unseen helpers, "Clean this up!"
Only then did I realize that Mage Assembly guards were stationed a mere twenty paces away. They'd made no attempt to intervene, and they still hesitated to act, like they were stunned by my magic or his brutality.
Trying to focus on anything other than the corpse right in front of my face, I noticed that the mage's cloak wasn't right. Where was the dark purple of the Assembly?
I didn't have time to puzzle it out. A glint of steel caught my eye as the executioner crouched, reaching for the mercenary's belt. Those same gloved hands, miraculously unmarred after committing such a brutal killing, rifled through the dead man's pouches.
"You rob him too?" I snapped, though my voice trembled with something closer to despair than anger. I added a late, squeaky, "My Lord."
His head turned slowly, as if he were unaccustomed to being addressed. Glacial blue eyes, dancing with a wild light I'd never seen the likes of before, lifted to mine. He trapped me with his stare, a predator assessing if I was danger, dinner, or something else entirely.
"Why not?" he asked, his deep voice dry with dark amusement. "He doesn't need it anymore."
For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to the space between us as I scrambled to think of a clever reply—or any reply at all.
Something with claws flared behind his eyes. It examined me with such intense scrutiny that I was left speechless for a second time.
I might've missed the flicker of his eyes to the corpse, the twitch in his jaw, if I hadn't been constantly watching him, searching for whatever came next. He'd shown the faintest shiver of discomfort, like he wasn't as untouchable as he wanted to seem.
The moment broke as cleanly as my vials. All traces of humanity were gone from his expression just as quickly as they'd arrived. He returned to being the cold, hard dealer of butchery.
He dropped his gaze and turned back to his ruthless work, yanking the coin pouch free and tossing it. It landed with a clatter on the blood-slicked counter beside the mercenary's death-frozen face.
"You see theft," he said, his voice now a low rumble. "I see the consequences of his ill treatment of you. And for your lost business."
"What?" I gaped, disgust rising like bile. "My business will only suffer because you cut him in half on my market stall…my lord."
His jaw worked. "He was found guilty of murder, rape, torture, and mutilation. His sentence has been passed." The mage's deep voice was matter-of-fact. It wasn't cruel, but rang with finality.
Turning his head slightly, he shouted to the guards, "I'd be happy to demonstrate that again with one of you. Clean. Now."
The sound shattered the fragile spell of silence still lingering around us, and I flinched.
I forced an innocent, obedient smile onto my face, trying to cover how truly shaken I was. Numbly, I watched as the mage executioner scrutinized me with that same unnerving intensity. He studied my lips for another long moment, then sneered and turned away.
By all the gods, what kind of man could cleave someone in two and still find the time to study my smile?
Only after he vanished into the crowd did I finally feel the deep, reverberating echoes of his regret and sorrow. I swore the trailing end of his magic brushed mine in farewell.
My breath caught.
I hadn't felt anything from him before. Not anger, not satisfaction, not even indifference. For someone like me, that was impossible.
My sixth sense, the one that let mages feel magic, told me the well of power within that man was enormous. Like his emotions, I hadn't sensed it at first because I'd been too overwhelmed by the mercenary's terror, too busy trying not to drown in the blood and my own fear.
The guards finally moved. Two lifted the legs, two the torso. None of this was done with reverence for the dead or even with a mind to spare the gawking crowd from the gruesome sight. I remained plastered to my seat, unable to move, but they paid me no mind.
One wiped up the blood that slicked my stall and swept the broken glass and ruined herbs into a waiting bucket. Another cleaned the ground.
They'd had all these materials with them. Was the mage executioner in the habit of such acts in public places?
That awful, wet crack still echoed in my head. For the first time in my life, I couldn't decide which was worse: feeling too much, or feeling nothing at all.
A shiver ran down my spine. I prayed I'd never have to see that man again.
But the gods only laughed in my face.