Chapter 1

The city screamed as fire ate it alive.

Overhead, a gray sky swirled, large flakes of snow liquefying and then evaporating before the moisture could reach the burning buildings. Flames crackled and danced, sending joyous greedy tendrils over stone and wood—hungry and murmuring, expanding as it ate. Places once so familiar—the villas and temples Sorcha saw every day—were destroyed.

A thousand tiny fires converged to consume and transform, revealing the bones of a fallen civilization. Ash drifted around Sorcha, dancing on updrafts and settling between cobblestones and on window ledges, a flurrying storm of destruction and despair. The high castle at the center of Golden Citadel was a column of fierce fire, the huge stones at the base buckling under the weight of the sagging upper towers.

The gold on the minarets was melting, rivers of molten metal coursing over the stones. It would run down the streets. There was enough gold to encase the whole city and soon it would flow down until it reached the outer walls.

There were no other noises beyond the fire. No one screamed or spoke, no one cried or whispered. There was no one left to do those things. They were all dead.

The gates had shattered, then the walls had been breached, and once inside, the Horde had killed anyone who survived the siege. There hadn’t been so many of them left. Not at the end. Half the city had gone to the White Snake—the child of an assassinated emperor, son of a revered empress—a ruling prince and merciless tyrant. He’d offered favorable terms: come willingly, be under his rule, and live.

Living was all that mattered.

The rest had been slaughtered.

Sorcha hurried down the center of Ruby Road. There were no shadows to hide in, no place to find cover. The only way to avoid the flames was to walk down the middle of the main road that spiraled from the Citadel gates to the high castle. The other roads were narrow, villas only a few feet apart in places, with footbridges built to connect buildings, potted plants and grapevines trained over wooden arches to bring much needed green to the city. People lived as much in the streets of the Golden Citadel as in their homes here.

Had. She corrected herself. Had lived.

The stink of singed hair clung to her, the strands of golden thread and pearls hopelessly tangled in her messy dark braids. Her left shoulder throbbed painfully, relentlessly, as a result of a falling ornament in the temple. The gown clung to her, wet with the blood of the final ritual, the bodies of those she’d come across in the streets, and one bloody knee. She’d tripped and landed hard in the courtyard before the temple gates. Each breath pulled in fine drifting ash, leaving her eyes and lips gritty and the back of her throat coated.

Sorcha wanted a cool drink of water and shade, the comfort of a plush sofa with downy feather cushions and fresh silk against her skin. Already, her last meal haunted her—the uneaten rubbery chicken, a bruised pear with only a single bite taken from it, and a goblet of wine left half-full. There was nothing like that behind her anymore and nothing like it ahead.

Run, Rohan had said. Make your way out of the city. Find the Androphagoi dedicated to the Saint. Always go south, keep the golden star burning on the horizon to your right—keep to it faithfully—it is a symbol, a sign that the Saint will return soon.

Then everyone, even the White Snake, would know the true power of the god.

The star would lead her to safety. It meant hope. Beneath it, she would find someone to guide her. Sorcha was going to need their help to find all the scattered relics, to do what she’d been born to do, and resurrect the Saint.

But it would take time.

Time was an enemy as great as the Horde.

Both waited for Sorcha beyond the city gates.

* * *

A soldier found her before she reached the fourth switchback on Ruby Road.

The street had been empty, and the growl of the fire rumbled around her, beams crashing in a shower of sparks and splinters, roofs collapsing in waves. A street away, a temple to a minor god shivered and came crashing down, stones exploding outward, toppling into the surrounding buildings and sending out a dark cloud that reached her.

A distraction, only a second of distraction, and in that moment, a man appeared in front of her. She froze, hand going to her mouth in surprise, smothering the exclamation of fear. She cursed herself for hesitating, cursed the fear coursing through her veins while her legs refused to move.

He smiled, his pale eyes glittering with hunger. He had rough features, with hair shaved close to his skull and a fresh scar running from temple to ear. When he spoke, the words were harsh, coming from deep in his chest, but she couldn’t understand the language.

Shaking her head, she took a step back, mouth dry and unable to speak. She took another step, and for a brief moment, she wondered if she might be able to outrun him.

But he moved swiftly, darting forward and blocking her path, closing the distance between them in a blink. He leaned in, his face inches from her own. Foul breath washed over her face, metallic and sharp, and with a shudder, she realized his mouth was dark with a mix of blood and ash.

“Don’t touch me,” she whispered, clearing her throat and repeating the words with more strength.

The man laughed, throwing back his head, eyes squinting.

Sorcha leaned away, looking around wildly for someone, anyone. There is no one left. They’re all dead. She stepped closer, kicking his shin, her soft slipper coming up against thick, studded leather.

His laugh deepened, the bite of his fingers becoming unbearable.

“Help!” she screamed, frustrated with herself for wasting precious energy. There would be no help for her now.

“Help!” The man mimicked—mocking her—the word strange in his mouth. He spoke again, accent distorting his language, but she caught it clearly enough. There is no one to save you.

And of course, he was right. She knew it.

But a flicker of movement over his shoulder stopped her heart.

A tall, ashen man walked calmly up behind her captor, eyes an unusual pale yellow, flat and dead. His face was expressionless in the flicker of firelight. Without speaking, he thrust a dagger into her captor’s back, holding Sorcha’s horrified gaze, twisting the blade with a jerk of the wrist.

Sorcha stumbled back, the dying man going with her, his weight taking her to the ground. They landed together in a heap, pain shooting through her as she was caught between the weight of the man and the cobblestones.

Her captor tried to roll, eyes wide, mouth open, his grip on her finally easing.

The stranger followed him down, plunging the blade into his back again and again, the motion frenzied even as his face remained serene.

Sorcha sat frozen, unable to move, a scream echoing through her mind even as her voice failed her.

Get up! Run!

As if the man had heard her internal voice, he turned to her. Blood speckled his cheeks and splattered his black armor, and it dripped from the hand still gripping the blade. The attacker wiped the blade on the dead man’s cloak, his eyes leaving her face for a second.

She surged to her feet and bolted, clutching the fabric of her crimson dress, desperate to avoid tripping over it. But the man was up and moving more quickly than she’d anticipated, following with an ominous creak of leather and rattle of chainmail.

Sorcha glanced around, mind racing. The buildings to either side were burning. There was nowhere to run. The flames or the man? She made the decision in an instant, cutting to the left, focused on an open doorway where fire burned beyond.

The man grabbed her, jerking her backward, away from the flames she’d been so eager to embrace.

“Don’t be a fool,” he hissed, blackened teeth flashing. “There is someone who wants to meet you.”

His accent was strange, but he spoke her language more smoothly than the last man had. Even if she hadn’t understood, his message was clear. Don’t die before I get a chance to kill you. She didn’t bother to answer, fighting his grip, twisting to dislodge his strong fingers.

He watched her, a hunter studying a rabbit caught in a snare—dispassionate and calculating.

Her skin crawled, the hair on the back of her neck rising. This man was more dangerous than the other one had been.

Without another word, he began walking, dragging her behind him with one hand tight on her wrist. He didn’t pause when she stumbled, keeping her upright through force and determination.

She gasped as her bones creaked and squeezed together, and wondered if he’d break her wrist before they reached whatever destination he had in mind.

Sorcha’s head buzzed with what-ifs, fuzzy and disconnected from the world around her as she stumbled down Ruby Road beside this stranger. Her mind spun back, returning to the temple of the Saint and her final moments there. She tried to see what was around her, ground herself to this moment, but it was just as horrible as what had already happened. The memory, the horror of it, came to her like the visions that had been a constant since her childhood.

Blood. There had been so much blood. Spreading out, reflecting the fires, reminding her she had promises to keep. The faces of her friends and family, the temple elders and fresh initiates, the people she loved.

Gone.

Tears threatened, a stone in her throat, lungs on the verge of giving way to heaving sobs.

No. She wouldn’t expose those parts of herself, her terror and sorrow, the weight that had settled so completely in her bones. Don’t think about it. She would escape this man and find her way out of the city. There was a chance, she was still alive, and there was always hope.

Turning her attention to the part of the city they were now moving through, she was surprised to see how far they’d come. They were close to the outer wall here. It towered above her, throwing deep shadows across thatched and tiled rooftops, the shade beginning to scatter and flee as the fire spread out from the city center.

The man steered her down a smaller street as yet untouched by the fire, toward one of the larger plazas near the main gate. They passed shopfronts with shattered windows, glass gleaming on the ground—reflecting firelight—splashes of blood on the walls and cobblestones. But no bodies that she could see.

In a way, that was worse. To know people had died, to see the evidence, but not the bodies. Where had they been taken? Or had they risen from death to walk the streets like the old legends described?

A shiver rippled through Sorcha, cold lingering as they rounded another corner and came out into a plaza with a fountain bubbling at the center.

The area was full of armor-clad figures with their hands on their weapons.

All eyes focused on her.

Sorcha lifted her chin. Countless times, she’d moved through the court of King Roi, talking with advisors or generals, courtesans, or minor nobility. She knew who she was in every room she entered. There had been men as bloodthirsty as any in the Empire of the White Snake. She’d passed among them all—oracle and extension of the Saint—without ever questioning her safety. But this was different. These were the men who had brought the Golden Citadel to its knees.

“Keep walking.”

Her captor jerked Sorcha forward when she hesitated. If the man who gripped her arm so tightly wasn’t in charge, who would be?

Then she saw him. Sorcha stopped, brows pulling together, curious despite herself.

The man radiated power, an intensity that commanded attention and forced everyone else into the background. He had unusual features, with hair and eyes as black as onyx, which made her think of silence at midnight. No stars, no moon, only a watchful void. The black armor and leather gloves he wore were just as dark, the war horse beneath him a similar shade. A white wolf skull was tied to the saddle. The stories she’d heard said he wore it into battle, that his sword was always wet, that the blood on his hands would never dry.

The Wolf.