Chapter Three

T he cool morning light filled Evienne’s chamber as she caught her own gaze in the full-length mirror.She hardly recognized the woman staring back at her. Her skin was as pale as it had always been, but her cheeks now wore a rosy glow. Bright hazel eyes met her stare, unmarred by the bruised purple that had haunted them in the past.

Her figure was full and soft, not wrung out with anxiety as it had been for so many years. She had been wasting away, but the woman before her now was living . She smiled at this version of herself, healthy and whole and completely her own.

She turned away from her mirror and paused to breathe and feel this moment. Today was another day she could live as her own person, find out more about who she wanted to be.

This room the queens had given her after her divorce from Dominique had been her haven these past three years. The whole room was a rich mahogany, with sculpted wooden trees lining the walls. They stretched up to the ceiling to create a canopy of carved wooden branches and leaves.

The warm wood of the room was accented by plush furniture in shades of green. A fireplace dominated one wall of the room, while a floor-to-ceiling bookcase covered the opposite wall. A massive rug in a shade of deep crimson spanned the center of the room. In one corner, a bronze door led to her marbled bathing chamber.

The queens had given her free reign to do what she wished with this space, and she had made it luxurious and comfortable. Evienne liked nice things and took joy in surrounding herself with objects that she had chosen for herself. After so many years of being dictated to, she made an effort to seek out things that she loved.

Evienne grabbed her bladed silver ring, slipped on her soft leather shoes, and set off.She groaned at the soreness of her muscles from yesterday’s mission. She was grateful that blood magic didn’t require extensive physical combat training, but it would be nice if her body didn’t protest quite so loudly after a day of riding.

She was headed to the Academie du Sangviere to observe the young mages training for the upcoming tournament that would take place during the millennial celebration.

She arrived just as two young mages took positions across from each other in the training yard, and a professor signaled for the practice duel to commence. Both mages pricked their palms, calling to their magic. One summoned a translucent red shield that Sangviere were trained to use defensively, while the other launched an aggressive volley of razor-sharp darts made of red ice.

A Sangviere’s basic powers manifested in ways that were unique to each individual; sometimes a blood elemental presentation, other times weapons of blood. The possibilities were endless, but these defensive and elemental summonings were the most common applications of blood magic. Only the most advanced Sangviere could master the ancient art of Regne du Sang. Evienne had felt the call of that deeper magic after only a few months of her training; it had always felt so natural to her.

While using one’s own blood to perform the Regne du Sang to control animals was, to many, questionable enough, the Sangviere possessed a magic that was darker still. The Valsang was a forbidden art, and the only way to take control of the blood of another human being, Sangviere or not. The art of Valsang required the use of another human being’s blood—any human blood other than the casting mage’s would do. Because of this, and the moral ambiguity of controlling other people, the use of Valsang had been outlawed in Ichorna for centuries.

Evienne’s mind wandered as she watched the duel, contemplating the moral implications of blood magic as she had many times before. She started, pulled abruptly from her thoughts, when she heard someone say her name; one of her fellow professors was asking if she would accept a student’s invitation to duel. During these practices, novices could ask to spar with anyone, but it had been a long time since a student had tried their luck with her.

She took a deep breath and stepped into the center of the courtyard. The professor who was serving as the referee let Evienne and the young Sangviere take their positions, then signaled them to begin.

Evienne gave the student a moment to make a move, and they foolishly chose to go on the offensive, summoning a dagger of pure blood and rushing at her head-on. She let the student take a few steps as she pricked her palm—in a breath, she had summoned her scarlet fire to her hand. The next moment, she launched her flames at the other mage. They were forced to dodge, dropping to roll out of the way.

Evienne tracked their motion, whirling to her right to send a stream of crimson flames toward the student where they now crouched near the ground. They summoned a barrier to deflect the flames. Evienne didn’t let up, allowing her fire to slowly consume the student’s shield.

Finally, the student yelled, “I yield!” And Evienne immediately stopped the onslaught of her blood fire. The now-humbled student was out of breath, and inclined their head to her as she passed them on her way out of the dueling ring. “Thank you, High Sangviere,” the student said reverently. Evienne smiled at them in acknowledgement.

As she took her place back on the edge of the courtyard, she realized the gaze of one of her fellow professors, Julien, was fixed on her from where he sat across the way.

Julien had been a few years ahead of Evienne in school, and they had dallied a bit in the years since Evienne’s separation from Dominique. He was handsome enough; tall and broad with dark brown skin and eyes to match. He was kind, too. She returned his gaze openly, and Julien smirked at her. Perhaps she needed a distraction tonight.

·

N ight air danced across Evienne’s damp face from the window by the bed she found herself in. She blinked slowly, drawing fresh air into her lungs, feeling seconds of her life drifting by.

Julien made some sort of burbling noise from where he lay next to her, signaling his deepening slumber. She slipped from the bed, as she always did after this sort of thing, dressed quietly, and left.

Evienne wanted desperately to find a love that felt safe, but she didn’t know how to trust herself to truly love again after Dominique.

The dim halls of the palace floated by her bleary gaze. She loved sleeping too much to be traipsing around in the middle of the night like this, but moonlight trysts rarely occurred at six in the evening, as luck would have it.

She found the door to her rooms quickly, shuffling in and heading straight for the bathing chamber. A quick rinse would do; anything to get Julien’s cologne off of her skin. It smelled nice, but she wanted to feel clean.

She could barely keep her eyes open under the spray of warm water, letting her mind drift, imagining a better encounter than the one she’d had this evening. What would it be like to take a lover that could satisfy her every want? Even Dominique had never really asked what it was Evienne wanted. Dominique knew her way around a woman’s body well enough, but desire is the domain of the mind.

Sleep found Evienne quickly that night. In the darkness behind her eyelids, soft colors danced, never quite in focus. The flutter of wings filled her restless mind. The colors shifted into focus for only a second, revealing the downy wings of a great luna moth before a searing red light drowned everything out. Evienne gasped as she jolted awake. In the dark of her room, she thought she heard the echo of a scream.

She waited a moment, barely able to draw breath. Seconds slipped by, and no further sounds of distress met her ears. A vivid dream, then, just like all the ones before.

Waking up alone in a bit of a panic was nothing new for Evienne. Even when Dominique had shared her bed, Evienne was always careful not to disturb her.

She’d been having dreams like this for years. Not outright nightmares, but always tinged with an undertone of malice. Sometimes, the luna moth drifted through her mind; sometimes a mighty gray dragon.

A few times, a pair of piercing sea green eyes glowed in her mind’s eye. One thing never changed, though. There was always the horrible red light.

She had tried to tell Dominique about the dreams once, but her then-wife hadn’t seemed interested, telling Evienne that it was surely just some childhood daydream lingering in her mind. Dominique had always been dismissive of the things that really mattered to Evienne; she had her own idea of what should be important and held to it without remorse.

Evienne adjusted the pillows behind her back and sat up in bed, her legs still tangled in her sheets. She stared at the window, filled with dawn’s earliest gray. Another day stretched its long hours before her, and she sighed.

She tried to live her life passionately, but lately she wondered at the path she had set herself on. The things that matter most in one’s life change over time, and it had been a long while since she considered what truly mattered to her.She loved Ichorna, but the aggressive pursuit of technological progress and trade with the rest of Domhan na Rùin never struck her as all that important. She had just gone along because of her love of her magic, and because she heard all her life that this was a noble pursuit.

Her friends, Cecelia, Sylvain, and the queens; her mentor, Hestia; this was the tiny family she had made for herself over the years, and each of them mattered to her immensely.

The people of Ichorna mattered, too. Evienne had always seen all of the heartache in the world and felt it so keenly, so intensely, that it was almost too much. But her love for the people of this country had driven her to study to become a Sangviere in the first place. She studied and practiced so that she would be prepared to defend other little girls as alone as she had been.The emptiness she had felt when her father sent her away had slowly faded over the years as she filled her life with other things she cared about, but it still felt like a deep bruise on her heart. Evienne settled back down into her pillows, clutching her blankets under her chin. She tried not to think too much of Mulhouse and all she had left behind.

Her combination of aptitude and diligence landed her at the top of her class throughout her schooling. She had blinked, and suddenly, she was the High Sangviere of Ichorna. It was a title that had never been held by one so young before. Evienne was barely thirty; the next-youngest had been forty-five.She would serve either until she retired, or a new monarch took the throne.

She tried to fill her role with the confidence it deserved. The queens certainly trusted her—Aldith never would have chosen her if she had any reservations about Evienne’s abilities.

Evienne was the strongest Sangviere Ichorna had seen in centuries. Her Regne du Sang was unrivaled. It had come to her disturbingly naturally, but it was her tireless study of the art that had truly set her apart.

As a girl, Evienne was thrust into this world because of her talent at school. Her father—the governor of Mulhouse—sent Evienne to a boarding school in the capital in a work exchange agreement when he no longer wanted to pay for her care at home. She was allowed to live and study, but she worked at the school in exchange for her room and board.Despite the relative comfort of her situation, the feeling of being unwanted by her family haunted Evienne to this day.

It was at school that she met her best friend, Cecelia, and Aldith. Dominique joined their cohort a bit later, when they were around thirteen. The four of them became fast friends, all talented in their own right. Aldith and Evienne had shown the earliest aptitude for the Regne du Sang, while Cecelia’s study became more specialized in the physical magics used for archiving.

Dominique was interested from an early age in the blend of science and magic that made Ichorna so unique in Domhan na Rùin. She was always at the Centrale Dellumine, learning about the capture of raw magic to be converted to energy to power the city.

As the light in Evienne’s room shifted from dark gray to pale purple, her thoughts drifted through the life she had lived. Thirty years of days and hours and minutes, decades of feelings and trying not to feel, thousands of dreams and moments; what would today’s hours bring?

Evienne slipped out of bed and dressed in a deep blood red gown. Its layers of chiffon and silk moved fluidly around her legs, while the bodice wrapped her curves in smooth overlapping layers that came to a point at her collarbone. The dress had a high neck and long, fitted sleeves. It was dramatic, but she loved it. Even if she didn’t feel intimidating, she enjoyed dressing the part.

She left her silky hair down to fall in soft waves around her shoulders. Her hair had an unruly, wild curl to it naturally, but she took pains to style it into this smoother state every few days. Next, she darkened her eyes with a smudge of black liner, and dabbed a deep red stain on her lips, the color so dark it was almost black.

The woman staring back at her was fearsome, powerful, self-assured. She knew in her heart she was the first two of those things. It was the last one that needed some work.

Evienne set off through the halls of the palace with a lightness to her step; the mornings she met Cecelia in her study for breakfast were her favorite. She was so wrapped up in her eagerness to talk with her friend that she slammed right into a tall, willowy figure as she rounded a corner. She righted herself, readying to apologize, when she realized who she had run into—and was struck by an overwhelming urge to flee.