Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

ZEVANDER

Z evander had grown weary of the hunt.

He stalked toward his prey, who stood pressed against the cave wall where the fool had trapped himself in a poor attempt to hide. A black leather mask concealed the notable scars on Zevander’s face, and the hood of his cloak shadowed his identity. Not that the man he chased would ever have the opportunity to disclose such details.

“Please! I’m begging you! Whatever you want is yours!” The man’s overfed body trembled beneath a fine silk nightshirt stained by the vintage wine he’d been guzzling when Zevander had startled him earlier.

Had the pathetic creature known who Zevander was, or what he’d come to collect, he’d have probably bashed his own skull against the rock wall behind him to be spared the pain that awaited him.

Zevander strode closer, removing his glove, and held his palm upright. Summoning magic was as fragile as thin glass, and yet, he’d learned to traipse the finer edges with a sickening ease. His skin held intricate carvings, cicatrices of ancient glyphs that called forth the sablefyre slumbering inside of him.

He only needed to give it purpose.

The older man before him collapsed to the ground and held up his hand in defense, shielding his face in futility. As if he had the power, or strength, to block what was coming. As Zevander had learned of his prey, the elder man’s magic was turning useless rocks into precious jewels and amulets. A skill that’d served him well in the bustling kingdom of Costelwick. The soft blue glow of the sigil on his forehead not only alluded to the terror pulsing through him right then, but confirmed his bloodline as Lunasier. Like Zevander’s late mother, who’d also been Lunasier, his power was born of both moons.

A golden ring sat in the folds of his pudgy finger, and Zevander reached out, snatching up his hand before he could lower it.

He stared down at the chunky white stone, with its tiny flecks of silver moondust embedded into the gold band. Vivicantem . All mancers required the coveted nutrient, formed naturally in the Cor of Aethyria and mined once a moon cycle from deep lava trenches known as veins.

Forged by the very flame that had marred Zevander’s flesh.

Consuming the element awakened the inherent powers that all manceborn acquired from their bloodline, but because of the difficulty of extraction and high demand for the element, only the wealthy could afford the vivicantem-infused foods and drinks, grown on farms and orchards owned by the king. Without it, power was useless, an atrophic muscle inside the body that could do nothing but wither over time.

The unauthorized mining of it was a crime punishable by execution, so those who couldn’t afford it eventually lost their magic, while wealthy hoarded the precious mineral. Wearing it as jewelry to boast their status, a sickening reality that prodded Zevander’s rage as he studied the purity of the stone. Nothing but ornaments to decorate their gorged bodies.

“Aethyrians starve while you flaunt your riches,” he said, tossing the man’s hand aside.

The man took hold of the index ring and tugged. “It’s yours. You can have it. Enough to last you a month, at least.”

As he struggled to remove it, Zevander raised his palm, and a black mist swirled and shifted to an obsidian flame in the center of his hand. He unclasped his arm bracer, showing where a scorpion, seared on the back of his palm and wrist, rippled as it came to life beneath his skin.

The man’s eyes widened. “Are you a high mage?”

Zevander snorted at that. “Worse.”

Realization seemed to dawn on the man’s face, as his brows pinched together. “You’re a Letalisz.”

An assassin for the crown. Most of Zevander’s prey were commissioned by the order of the king, and he’d learned to dispense of his quarry with a very skilled slice of a blade.

But he hadn’t come on orders of the king, and he had no intention of drawing his blade. The brand of magic he intended to inflict on the man was forbidden in the kingdom, an ability Zevander had managed to disguise for most of his life.

“Why?” The man shook his head. “I’ve done nothing wrong. Why me?”

“Because you breathe.” Zevander threw his hand forth, sending a blast of flame over the man, whose screams and cries of pain echoed throughout the cave.

Within seconds his flesh and bones had burned to ash.

Zevander plucked a dark, red sphere that sat atop the pile, and deposited it into a satchel at his hip. Bloodstone. Derived from a form of demutomancy, the practice of altering blood–an outlawed magic that had cursed Zevander’s family for centuries. Had anyone known he possessed the forbidden power, he’d have been hunted down and brutally destroyed by the king’s Imperial Guard.

Through the remains of the ash, he rifled a finger in search of the white stone hidden there. The gold band had melted away in the flames, leaving only the chunk of vivicantem.

Zevander studied it for a moment, then plopped it into his satchel alongside the rest of the man’s remains.