PROLOGUE

Two hundred eleven years ago …

L ady Rydainn held her infant son close as she approached the glowing vein that, only days ago, had been a snarling fissure of black fire that cleaved the ground. With the two moons nearly as one, the chasm of violet lava had hardened to stone, leaving only the flickering remnants of that sinister flame. It was almost time to harvest the igneous rock, but they weren’t there for the bounty it held.

They were there for the fire itself.

The men who typically guarded the vein from thieves lay in diminishing piles of ash, their bodies and armor charred to useless lumps of soot that scattered in the wind. Burned alive by a flame so hot, she could feel its radiance a half-furlong away. Sablefyre. An ancient element of the gods, forged eons ago in Aethyria’s fiery heart. A single touch could turn a body to ash, and blood to stone.

And she had arrived to offer up Zevander, her second-born son, to it.

Not by choice, of course. Lady Rydainn would’ve sacrificed herself right there and then, if it would spare Zevander from such a horrific fate. Unfortunately, the mage who’d demanded the exchange wasn’t interested in her pittance of an offer. He wanted her youngest son, and nothing more.

She forced herself to set her eyes upon the dark and corrupt soul, where he stood alongside her eldest son and husband, watching her every step from the edge of the vein. The man she’d come to know as the most dangerous mage in all of Aethyria. One of few who’d mastered the ability to control the otherwise chaotic sablefyre and discovered a means to harness its deadly and divine power. He’d once been the king’s highest Magelord, a member of the exalted Magestroli, disgracefully dismissed on accusations of demutomancy—a dark form of magic decreed illegal by the king.

Cadavros . The mere thought of his name cast a shiver down her spine.

Yet, she and her husband had been forced to make a Faustian bargain with him, in exchange for protection against the Solassions who hunted their family. Ruthless warriors, known for their brutality and violence. Enforcers, who’d have made sport of their execution.

In their moment of desperation, the reclusive mage had approached the Rydainns with an offer they couldn’t refuse. A powerful protection spell against those who sought their heads, in exchange for their firstborn’s blood magic—a sampling Cadavros had claimed would be used in his studies.

If only Lady Rydainn possessed the power to reverse time. She would’ve chided her stupidity. Warned herself not to trust his lies. For, what he’d taken from her eldest boy was far more than a sampling of his magic.

Black, beady eyes, those deep soulless sockets, stared back at her, as if daring her to run from his ghastly form. There was a time he was said to have been handsome, but the dark and forbidden magic had taken a toll on him. Sank its claws into his flesh and twisted him into a wicked beast. From the top of his head breached long branching antlers, with horns that curled back. Deep grooves etched into his hardened skin reminded Lady Rydainn of tree bark, the black pulsing veins beneath said to house small serpents trapped inside his flesh.

Evil begging to be unleashed.

His appearance was the result of having performed the Emberforge ritual on himself, the same ritual he intended for her son. A rite that only young children were believed to tolerate without any permanent disfigurement, seeing as they hadn’t yet gone through their Ascendency.

Beside the mage stood her husband and their eldest son, Branimir, whose similarly protruding black veins and coarse skin marked the horrific deformities of her first sacrifice only weeks before. A sacrifice that’d proven insufficient for the greedy mage, when Branimir had suffered the same grotesque mutations as Cadavros’s. Though far from puberty and his Ascendency into blood magic, Branimir had already begun the physical transitions, before the flame had corrupted the seed of magic that’d taken root inside of him. And while his resulting deformities weren’t as pronounced as those of Cadavros, they ensured her poor child would never know his true power—because once the black flame entered the body, it destroyed all natural blood magic.

Her demands to break the devil’s bargain with Cadavros had proven hopeless, when he’d vowed to slaughter both boys should she fail to comply. Not an idle threat, given the many inquisitions she’d witnessed where he’d exerted his power with merciless cruelty.

Tears blurred her vision, her steps faltering as she drew closer to the vein. Her younger son lay sleeping in her arms, completely unaware of the night to come. A night that would forever change the innocent baby boy she so dearly loved.

For hours, she’d prayed to the old gods in hopes his fate might be changed, that he might somehow be spared. Alas, the gods had never answered, and darkness closed in on her as the moons slipped into the shadows.

Had she the choice, she’d have sooner taken young Zevander and fled to Mortasia, beyond the Umbravale that separated the mortal lands from Aethyria. A place believed to be nothing but a barren wasteland, brimming with famine and death.

There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to flee.

The remorse in her husband’s eyes failed to move her, the anger slinking its way through her blood with renewed fervor. After all, it’d been his nefarious dealings on foreign Solassian land that had sealed their family’s fate. His unfaltering determination to elevate their social status, no matter the cost. She bit back the proud Lunasier magic pulsing in her veins that would’ve surely struck down her husband, had she the gumption right then. How easily he’d been convinced to offer their only sons.

Run , her head urged. Save them .

It was too late for Branimir, though. The eldest boy was the first to have suffered the ritual, and his darkened eyes had grown even more vacant in the fortnight since.

The sickly pallor of her eldest son’s skin spoke of the hours since, during which he’d been locked away in the cells beneath the castle, as his father attempted to hide him from the world. An abomination , other villagers would have called him, and understandably so. What thrived inside of him wasn’t a power of the gods, but a deeply rooted malice that’d grown stronger in the weeks since the ritual.

The notion of watching her jubilant baby, an echo of the sweet, loving boy Branimir had once been, suffer the same fate was an agony she couldn’t bear.

Lady Rydainn’s power trembled like a plucked thread, as rays of moonlight hit the sigil on the nape of her neck, penetrating the thick fabric of her cloak and eliciting a charge that hummed in her veins. It innervated every cell in her body, rousing a cold rush to her fingertips, where it begged to be turned loose. The moon affected all Lunasier that way, and Zevander shifted in her arms, as if sensing the vibration beneath his mother’s skin.

It would’ve been years before his power would come to fruition, and she’d longed for those heartwarming moments of discovery that would soon be tainted by the poison of the flame.

Standing apart from her son and husband, she kept her distance from the flame, her breaths hastening as Cadavros approached her. She curled her fingers into Zevander, when the mage reached out a bony finger that appeared more like a branch than a limb and stroked its tip down her baby’s soft, cherub cheek. A trail of blood followed, and Zevander stirred, letting out a quiet mewl that heightened as the small cut on his face deepened to a dark gash. One so frighteningly malicious-looking, she wondered if the tip of Cadavros’s finger was tainted with death poison. The mage reached again, and on instinct, she jerked the baby away, shielding him with her hands. As she took in the unsightly wound, a seed of rage bloomed inside of her. Her kettled magic surged, winding around her bones and beating against her skin, demanding to punish the mage. Her baby screamed in her arms, his face red, limbs shaking. He’d hardly made a sound most nights, a contented baby from the day he’d been brought into the world, and it tore at her heart to hear his distressed cry then.

Fighting Cadavros was futile, though. With the power of sablefyre at his command, she’d be reduced to ash, like the guards who’d tried to fight him off when they’d first arrived at the vein.

A tear streaked down her cheek. “ Pilazyo. Orosj tye clemuhd ,” she whispered. Please. I’m begging your mercy.

Cadavros wordlessly slipped his fingers beneath the baby, and her tears turned hysterical when he gave a tug.

She yanked her child back to her, jerking the young boy to her chest. “ Nith! Nith hazjo’li ! Je fili meuz! ” I will not do this! He is my son!

Zevander’s outcry, as Cadavros pried the boy from his mother’s arms, stirred her instincts. On a whim of madness, Lady Rydainn lurched for the beastly man who carried her son toward the smoldering vein, but a force struck her throat, knocking the breath out of her. Black smoke crawled from her mouth, choking out the words she’d longed to say. Stop! I surrender myself! Her unseen attacker held her there in its invisible grasp, while Cadavros didn’t even spare her a glance.

Lord Rydainn strode toward his suffering wife, but as he neared, his leg snapped beneath him with the gut-twisting sound of splintering bone. His outcry echoed through the surrounding forest, and he fell to the ground, his limb bent wrong at the knee.

Branimir didn’t move, his murky eyes vacant and lost.

In spite of the pressure at her throat and the lack of breath in her lungs, Lady Rydainn called out for her son, reached for him, but to no avail. Needles of terror prickled her spine, as Cadavros held the baby in the crook of one arm while stretching a roughly tessellated hand into the black flame that rose up from the glowing vein. The black ember he captured flickered in his palm, and Zevander’s cries quieted, the child seemingly mesmerized by the sight as the mage held it over him.

Lady Rydainn whimpered and quailed, her knees weak with defeat, and before she could shutter her eyes from the horror, Cadavros shoved his palm against her baby’s mouth, smothering him with the black flame.

Zevander kicked and writhed, his tiny feet dangling helplessly from his captor’s grasp. A potent mix of rage and anguish shook her body, the endless stream of tears creating an irritating blur in her eyes.

Branimir shifted on his feet, all too aware of how ravenously that flame consumed, judging by the way he growled and slapped at his ears. As if he were feeling his younger brother’s pain right then.

The trauma that both of her precious sons were made to suffer tore at her heart with jagged teeth. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she watched the black flames emerge through her son’s skin, licking the night air like the dark tongues of serpents.

Zevander’s struggle ceased, his body limp. The flames died, settling across the baby’s flesh in wicked black swirls.

The darkness had accepted and branded him.

An eternal curse.

Cadavros lifted the baby and drew his noseless face over her son’s naked chest. His mouth opened impossibly wide, and he shoved Zevander’s head inside.

“No! Oh, gods! No !” A scream rattled in futile misery inside her chest, as Lady Rydainn watched in horror while the ghoulish mage attempted to consume her child.

The mage let out a boisterous roar and yanked the child from his mouth. He tipped his head, inspecting the black markings left on her baby’s skin. A deep, guttural sound rolled in his chest, and he snarled, snapping his attention back to the flame. “ Quez sa’il !” What is this?

Again, he looked back to the boy, running his finger over one of the markings on his chest. Growling, he struck the infant’s face and tossed him into the flaming fissure.

“No!” The scream that echoed through the forest could’ve roused the old gods from their slumber, as Lady Rydainn shook and cursed their names, demanding they set her free.

Lord Rydainn howled in agony, crawling toward the vein with his horribly mangled leg dragging behind him. “You bastard! You fucking bastard!”

Cadavros roared again, smoke curling from his skin, his body trembling. He reached back into the flame, lifting the boy, who neither screamed nor cried. He didn’t move, at all.

Agony clawed at her heart as she examined her baby from afar. Eyes searching for a single sign of life. The blankets that’d swaddled him had burned away, leaving him completely exposed, his head cocked to the side, eyes still closed.

Was he alive? Oh, gods, let him be alive!

Snarling again, Cadavros held the boy in front of him, looking upon him with the kind of malice that curled her stomach.

“ Pilazyo.” She shook with the plea. “Jye suaparcz vitaez.” Spare his life.

Lingering wisps of smoke drifted over the mage’s face, and she caught the glisten of raw flesh across his bark-like skin.

It was then that Lady Rydainn realized: in his attempt to harm her son, he’d somehow suffered pain himself.

The pressure at her throat subsided, and sapped of all will, she crumpled to the ground. When those cloven feet stood before her again, she lifted her gaze to see Cadavros handing back her listless child, carelessly holding him by his arm as if he were nothing but a sack of meat and bones. Feeble arms outstretched, she reached back for him and cradled him against her. A searing heat burned her skin, but she refused to let him go.

“Is he alive?” Lord Rydainn’s voice swelled with misery as he clawed at the ground toward them. “Does he live?”

She ignored him, her anger still too razor-sharp to care about his suffering, as she lifted her son to her face, noting the warm puffs of air coming from his mouth.

Thank the gods! He still breathed. On a tearful exhale, she held him tighter and kissed the top of his head. Her sweet child had survived being cast into sablefyre–a fate that would’ve left any other a pile of ashes like the poor soldiers.

Yet, he had survived. By the miracle of the gods, he’d been spared.

The babe awoke, and the once innocent blue of his eyes showed as a gradient of wine red with swirls of orange and gold that converged at the center in a black eclipse. The silvery wisps of hair that’d begun to grow in had burned away. Gone was the soul of a harmless, loving child. In his place lay the vestiges of an aberration that the gods would surely forsake.

Squirming in her arms, the child cooed and babbled, a peculiar sight, given what he’d suffered moments before. The gash at his face had blackened into a deep groove that mirrored the vein from which he’d been pulled. At the edges of the wound, smaller black veins branched out like rivulets on a map.

She ran a trembling finger over them, and on contact, she recoiled at the scorching pain that streaked across her skin. “How could you do this?” she whispered, lifting her gaze to her husband. “ How could you do this !”

Lord Rydainn sobbed in the distance, and her hatred for him grew with every new discovery of her son’s curse.

Branimir approached, his eyes wide with wonder. Tears in her eyes blurred his form at the memory of Zevander’s birth, when the boy had looked upon his infant brother with the same curiosity. How precious and innocent it had been then, those memories nothing but a forgotten dream.

He reached for Zevander, running his finger over the marking on his chest, a curious black swirl that’d seemed to anger Cadavros. On closer examination, there seemed to be words written in ancient Primyrian embedded in the swirl in a way that reminded Lady Rydainn of a wax seal across his heart. Branimir’s lips twisted to a snarl as he whispered the words that stabbed her conscience. “ Il captris nith reviris.”

What is taken will never return .