Chapter 1

Soren was certain he'd hear the sounds of telegraph machines in his sleep for years to come.

The building he'd worked out of ever since returning to the Warden's Island from Glencoe in Thirteenth Month of last year had once been a warehouse used for storage. After the attack on the Warden's Island last summer, they'd repurposed it for what salvaged telegraph machines were found in other buildings and those that were shipped to them from Solaria or E'ridia.

It didn't have the best insulation, and the high roof meant the sound from the ranks of telegraph machines stretching from wall to wall echoed loudly. At the far end of the building was a large analytical machine that helped coordinate which telegraph got which incoming message.

The setup wasn't as elaborate or as entrenched as it once had been before the original administrative building was destroyed by Daijal forces. But it worked, and wardens made do with what they had. So far, it was holding up to the heavy influx of messages coming from the borders and the battlefields where wardens were assigned.

Shifts were nine hours each, with the telegraph machines needing to be manned for three shifts a day. Soren had been assigned the mid-shift, which meant he didn't have to disrupt his sleeping hours, but the bulk of messages came in during that time. He'd gotten good at transcribing the coded clicks and beeps into the trade tongue wardens used, his recordings clean and precise. When a message was received and documented, he returned his own confirmation and then waited for the next one to come through.

It was tedious work that required focus, for which he was grateful. Given half a chance, Soren would spend every day since leaving Solaria thinking about the man whose heart he'd inadvertently broken.

Vanya Sa'Liandel, of the House of Sa'Liandel, was the Imperial emperor of Solaria and had once been Soren's longtime lover ever since he'd saved Vanya's life from a train wreck. These days, Vanya was an ache in Soren's chest and painful memories he couldn't let go of the same way he couldn't let go of the vow that still hung around his throat.

He was pulled from his thoughts by someone clearing their throat beside his desk. Soren looked up from the pages he'd been sorting to see a tithe standing next to his desk, wearing a brass pin that marked her as on messenger duty. The girl couldn't have been more than ten years old, but Soren knew she was probably one of only a dozen or so in her year group who had survived the attack last year. The Daijal forces had known where to target to do the most damage due to a warden turning traitor and feeding them information as well as prisoners.

The school and training buildings had been targeted first, along with the civic buildings. Both were critical infrastructure, and while buildings could be easily rebuilt, the ranks of tithes and wardens with specialized knowledge could not. Daijal had eradicated the next few generations of wardens, to say nothing of the archives that had once held records of alchemic information of the poison fields dating back to the Age of Starfall, before the current countries even existed. So much had been lost, and they were losing even more wardens to the war between Daijal and Ashion.

"The governor wants to see you," the tithe said.

Soren nodded and hit the button on the telegraph machine that would turn it off. He gathered his reports and placed them in the outgoing tray for pickup. They would be taken to a different building and entered into proper record-keeping ledgers, organized between border updates or pertaining to the war, and passed on to those who needed to know. Soren left his desk behind, the tithe enough of a reason for him to end his shift early. He followed her out of the building into a steady rain that was typical of weather during Fifth Month.

The wind accompanying the rain wasn't poisonous enough to merit a gas mask for wardens. Soren ducked his head against the rain as he jogged after the tithe across the grassy open space situated between the telegraph building and the one that now held the administrative offices after the original one was destroyed. The interior of the fort was still recovering from the attack last summer, and rebuilding all the damaged areas was slow going, even with aid provided by Solaria and E'ridia.

They reached the administrative building—previously used as barracks but no longer needed, not with the drastic decline in tithes—and he knocked his boots against the porch step to get some of the mud off his soles. The tithe left him to it and disappeared inside. Once his boots were clean enough, Soren stepped inside and nodded at the wardens manning the desks there. Only one nodded back, the other two wardens bent over their work as they sorted through paper and ledgers.

"Head on down. She's expecting you," the warden said.

The walk to the governor's office was a route Soren could do with his eyes closed. The building had been gutted in places to open up space for wardens to work in, and he passed quite a few going about their duties. The layout was temporary, at least until the new administrative building was finished. Most of the wardens who could have helped with the construction were on border patrol in other countries or fighting in the poison fields alongside the Ashion army—two places where Soren wished he could be but was denied.

Ever since Soren's arrival in Glencoe after the attack on the Warden's Island and the destruction of the Imperial palace in Calhames last year, Delani had refused to assign him a border. It had as much to do with the miscalculation of his efforts in Solaria and the Imperial court as it did with the realization that Soren may very well be someone who should have never become a warden at all. As much as he wanted to be off the island and fighting with his brethren, to be a warden meant abiding by the governor's orders. Delani had refused to let him leave the Warden's Island once they returned, and so here Soren remained.

What Soren wanted—desperately, perhaps selfishly—was his border in Solaria back. But that was lost to him, as much as Vanya was as well. Even these many months after that ugly, wretched night trapped by revenants in the Imperial palace and the one after when he'd last felt Vanya's touch, Soren still ached for the other man. The vow hanging from his throat was a reminder of what he'd lost, but Soren still couldn't find it in himself to give it up, to send it back, not when it was the last feasible connection he had to Vanya.

Even if he could return to Solaria, he knew Vanya wouldn't want to see him, much less forgive Soren for lying about being able to cast starfire. No matter that his secret had saved Raiah's life—it had irrevocably damaged the trust between Vanya and Soren. After all the betrayal Vanya had suffered, Soren had made it so much worse by hiding a past he had never claimed but which others had bestowed upon him.

As for starfire, even now, Soren was loath to ever cast it again. That power was anathema to being a warden, and this life was the only one he knew. He wasn't ready to give it up for a different road.

Soren let those melancholy thoughts slide away once he made it to Delani's office. He could see her door was propped open, and he had to edge his way past pushed-together desks filled with wardens and tithes working on filing reports and filtering vital information for the governor to review. Soren had spent his own fair share of duty at those desks before getting assigned to the telegraph building.

He reached the doorway and knocked on the frame, waiting until Delani looked up from the half dozen reports scattered across her desk before stepping inside. "You wanted to see me?"

The governor leaned back in her chair, a creaking sound coming from the motion. "Close the door and take a seat."

Soren did as ordered before sitting in one of the wooden chairs in front of her desk. He leaned back, rolling his shoulders a little as the sheath holding his poison short sword pulled at them. No warden went weaponless in the fort these days, when before, those wardens who returned for a respite from their border patrol didn't mind leaving their weapons in the barracks.

Delani studied him with her one good eye, the other a pitch-black prosthetic painted with gold flecks to look like the night sky. The monocle goggle that helped with her depth perception was strapped securely around her head. Her short, dark hair sported more white these days. Signs of stress were in everyone, but they didn't have the luxury to succumb to it.

"You're aware of the doubling of revenant numbers in Daijal and Ashion since winter, correct?" Delani said.

"Every warden is," Soren said.

"Even pulling our ranks out of Daijal and Urova, wardens are barely able to clear the poison fields before more revenants come through. Winter brought heavier rains and snowfall than the previous years, and there are more bogs to deal with. We're losing too many wardens to the dead and the war, and we don't have enough tithes ready to graduate, to say nothing of those tithes we lost in the attack. We need to replenish our ranks for the future."

Soren went still beneath her piercing, knowing gaze. "Have you decided if you will lift the stay on Solaria's sanctions?"

Since the founding of their country, the Houses of Solaria that claimed the Imperial throne had buried their royal dead rather than burned them. That adherence to a form of worship for the Dawn Star had resulted in a secret crypt underneath the royal grounds, accessed through the private star temple used by the Imperial family.

Soren had become aware of the crypt during the funeral for Vanya's parents when Vanya had invited him to participate in the funeral rites. The iron coffins with their welded-shut lids in the crypt below the Imperial palace had held an unknown number of revenants—revenants the House of Kimathi, in an unconscionable attack backed by the Daijal queen, had let loose during the Conclave of Houses.

He still woke sometimes from the nightmare of being trapped in a metal coffin, listening to the sounds of a revenant trying to claw its way inside. He might be a warden, used to fighting against the walking dead, but being at their mercy like that was something he never wanted to experience again.

The crypt with its buried dead had been something Soren couldn't hold back from Delani, no matter how much he cared about Vanya and the other man's precarious hold on the Imperial throne. It was law in every country on Maricol for citizens to burn their dead and leave names on a memory wall. Burning the dead was the only way to ensure a body didn't rise as a revenant, an action written into the Poison Accords that governed the relationship between wardens and Maricol's countries.

Because Solaria had broken the Poison Accords—at the risk to their own citizens and others—that country owed the wardens enough tithes they could replenish their ranks within the next few decades. Neither was Solaria the only country to be hit with sanctions. Daijal, too, had been slapped with them, albeit for vastly different reasons. The wardens couldn't enforce the sanctions on Daijal so long as the war was ongoing, but already Daijal was feeling the bite of having no wardens to lend aid against revenants or cleanse the poison fields.

Right now, the war was giving ground to the dead. Soren knew they needed more tithes, but he also knew handing down the sanctions now would weaken Vanya's grip on power and leave Solaria vulnerable.

"I'd send you to deliver the news if I thought it would get us anywhere," Delani said.

Soren had spent many years in the Imperial court learning how not to show his feelings. He doubted he was fooling Delani. "If you hand down sanctions now, it might destabilize the war effort."

"Solaria's Legion is deployed to their northern border and no further. Neither Daijal nor Ashion has risked a skirmish with that country's army. They are not involved in any war effort, despite Ashion's numerous requests for support and aid."

"They fight over the vasilyet."

Delani made a throwaway gesture with her hand. "That is a proxy fight. If the emperor had proof of Eimarille being responsible for the destabilization of his country's government, the Legion would have marched on Daijal last year. We need tithes if we're to handle the dead once the war is over. Our records might have been destroyed, but I know from previous research us wardens needed to double our ranks in the aftermath of Ashion's initial civil war. We number less now than we did then. We can't do our duty unless we fill our ranks."

"And if doing so causes the House that holds the Imperial throne to lose power to one who won't care to pay sanctions, what then?"

"We will pull our people out of Solaria the same way we did with Daijal and Urova."

Soren swallowed tightly. "What about the Wastelands and Rixham?"

Delani leveled him a flat stare. "We would guard Solaria's northern border. Your concern is noted, but I know your feelings toward the House of Sa'Liandel. As I recall, I sent you to observe the Imperial court, not bed the emperor."

Soren refused to feel shame about that, even if his cheeks did heat a little. He knew he'd overstepped when it came to Vanya, but he couldn't regret the days he'd woken up in Vanya's bed. He ached for those moments, even now, missing the other man in a way he'd missed no other. His relationship with Vanya was complicated. Soren had tried his best to keep it out of the public eye, but the Imperial court ran on whispers, and there'd been no hope of hiding where Vanya's favor lay.

Other wardens had expressed their displeasure with his choices since his return to the island, but at least none had tried to kill him like the rionetka in that Ashion border town. Amidst everything else that had happened, Soren's past indiscretion with a head of state wasn't the worst problem they were dealing with.

"Solaria is the only country with a military that can stand against Daijal's and win, but only if they're not rocked by internal divisions, which will surely happen if you insist on the delivery of tithes," Soren said carefully.

"They haven't chosen to engage."

Soren wondered what Vanya would think of his defense of Solaria, if Vanya even thought of him at all these days. "If Eimarille's war continues how we believe it will, Solaria will have no choice but to be drawn into the conflict. Would you rather have them solidly capable or the Houses at each other's throats again because you demanded sanctions from all their people?"

The Conclave of Houses hadn't fixed the animosity between some of the bloodlines, merely patched over the cracks at the behest of the Dawn Star. Still, all the news coming out of Solaria spoke of the palace being rebuilt and Vanya conducting government out of Oeiras.

"You act like they have a choice about their payment. You don't have the authority to argue for them. You are a warden, not Solarian." Delani paused, raising the brow over her good eye. "Though I wonder if you were supposed to be even that."

Soren shoved down his anger, knowing it wouldn't help him here. "I am a warden. This is the only road I have ever known."

"You have a sister. Two of them, if the broadsheets out of Ashion are correct. Your records as a tithe were destroyed along with everything else, and there is the question of starfire that runs in the Rourke bloodline."

"We give up our countries and we give up our names when we become tithes. My loyalty is to the wardens, and it always has been. Whatever people think I am, they are wrong."

The Dawn Star had set him on this road, and Soren would walk it as a warden until he died and his ashes danced amongst the stars. Whatever crown he may have once worn in some other life, whatever name he may have once had, he didn't want it.

All he truly wanted was the love of a man who wanted nothing to do with him anymore.

Delani sighed, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the desk. "We both know you are not just a warden, and I can't ignore that fact forever, the same way I can't ignore the sanctions owed to us. Daijal is readying for a heavy push east now that the snows have melted. You are right that we can't afford for Solaria to be splintered when Eimarille eventually turns her attention to that country. War will only delay the inevitable, but the sanctions will be paid."

"Will you tell the emperor that?"

"It will be relayed, but not by you. Your duty remains here on the island."

Soren knew it was too much to hope that he'd be assigned his old border again, but with the crypt emptied, there was nothing left for a warden to guard. Still, he tried not to be disappointed. "I would be of better use in Ashion with the war effort."

Delani snorted. "I have it on good authority Eimarille hunts for her brother, and I'm not inclined to give her what she wants."

"I'm not?—"

"I'll believe what I want," Delani said, cutting him off. "Because to ignore the fact staring at me with the same gray eyes in a face with similar features as a purported Ashion queen would risk what the wardens stand for, and I won't break the Poison Accords like those before me apparently did."

Soren snapped his mouth shut, teeth clacking together. "I'll do my duty."

"Of that, I have no doubt."

It was as much a dismissal as any, and Soren left the governor's office wishing for a world that didn't end at the shores of an island in the middle of the Celestine Lake. He wanted—more than anything—a road that would lead him back to Vanya. That was a prayer he had no right to speak, because wardens were Maricol's starless, nameless children, and there would be no star god to hear his words.

It didn't stop Soren from dreaming of Vanya that night and waking the next morning aching for the touches that had seemed so real in the middle of the night.