Chapter 1

Serenthuar: I could recite every relevant statistic in my sleep when I was a child. Home of the best glass and silkwork and the most desperately brilliant political maneuvering in the Sundered Realms, a consequence of devastatingly bad metaphysical luck.

And at the rate I'm going, it's the only realm I'm ever likely to see.

Liris had a secret.

If she were truly the dutiful apprentice she was supposed to be, if she believed in her elders' judgment no matter what it cost her, she probably wouldn't have a secret. So the fact that she did at all was probably a test she'd failed.

Since the very first time she'd failed as a child, she'd been as careful as she could not to fail again. Yet here Liris still was: alone, dragging herself down this same corridor again and again.

Once upon a time, every summons had set her heart to pounding, the honor of having been chosen impressing itself on her from the very walls. The path she trudged through now was a far cry from the usual austerity her people lived with. A tribute to Serenthuar's renowned craftsmanship, the corridor was draped in silk tapestries with intricately embroidered patterns and showcased the unique shaped glass no other realm could match.

A faded tribute. No outsiders had darkened these halls in months, and so they remained dark: the glory of days past gathering dust, glimpsed only in shadows by the light of the candle Liris carried with her.

They were supposed to be Serenthuar's pride, but just like Liris they'd been left to molder.

Once, Liris had answered every summons expecting to at last be given the duty she'd trained all her life for.

Now, the walls pressed in on her as she breathed the ossified air and did her best to look only down at her feet.

Not at the symbols of the Serenthuar she would never escape.

Not toward the future she'd never be allowed to reach for.

And while no one else cared, at least Liris would know she had not faltered. She'd done everything right that it was possible to do.

At least she would have that.

Along with the twisted, painful hope inside her that she no longer believed but couldn't quite let die in case maybe, finally, it was her time.

It only felt like it had taken forever to arrive at the vibrant, shimmering mosaic glass chamber at the center of the Citadel, a crowning achievement of a Serenthuar craftsmanship Liris didn't know what spells made it possible for a room made of glass on all sides to stand in a sandstone castle; spellcraft was the only discipline she expressly wasn't allowed to study.

She entered with the traditional bow she'd perfected as a toddler.

"You may rise, Candidate Liris," Elder Omaqil informed her in the same measured tone she'd only once heard him deviate from. The shadows and folds of his many wrinkles stood out against the colorful glass backdrop, and sweat glistened on his bald head.

Then another man echoed, "Candidate? A candidate is not what I was promised, Honored Elder."

Liris was too well-trained to freeze at the sound of a person she'd never met, but her heart pounded as she straightened. Had she been wrong to doubt after all? Would they finally let her go?

She ignored the swirls of color in the glass around her, the clear glass round table and chairs in the center; it was the people seated in them that mattered right now. Elder Omaqil sat in one, but the newcomer stood on the opposite side, a monochrome slash in sharp relief whose presence dominated the room without looming.

Liris fixed her attention on him, taking in his profile at a glance; that, too, had been part of her training, even if she'd had little opportunity to practice with foreigners.

He was a study in edges: taller than her, though his leanness made him look even more so. High-collared, asymmetrical fitted black coat; tight, dark gray pants leading into expensive but serviceable boots; black hair, artfully, jaggedly, cropped around his head; a golden tone to his skin where Liris' was a warmer brown; bright eyes with an epicanthic fold.

Everything gave the impression of intensity—but what she really noticed was that all his choices were generic enough to not clarify his realm of origin. The hairstyle was the closest giveaway, and even that left several options.

He had very carefully and deliberately constructed an appearance of anonymity. Why?

And what in the realms did he mean by promised?

"Candidate Liris is one of the finest ambassadorial candidates Serenthuar has ever trained," Elder Omaqil told the mystery man. "She is not only highly accomplished—"

"So why is she still here, and not off bringing glory and food to Serenthuar?"

His gaze cut to Liris, a clear challenge in it.

She kept her expression perfectly bland, merely raising her eyebrows in return, not rising to his unsubtle bait. She was hardly that poorly trained.

And honestly, it was a great question. Mockery aside, Liris wished she could have gotten away with asking it herself.

Because her secret was not that Liris was far and away the best candidate in generations, though she was. That was a secret, because as long as they kept her trapped in Serenthuar's citadel, no one outside her teachers would ever know. Even she found herself doubting, sometimes.

Those were the times she wondered if her secret was making her crazy, or if knowing she had it was all that kept her sane, and patient; kept her from casting aside everything she'd been raised to defend out of sheer frustration.

Because the foreigner was rude but absolutely correct: she should have been out there. Serenthuar didn't train the top ambassadors in the Sundered Realms for nothing.

Serenthuar was one of the unluckiest realms to come through the Sundering, which, centuries ago, had shattered a once-whole world into pocket dimensions, each realm magically tethered to at least one other by a Gate that people and goods could pass through. Most realms were either close to self-sustaining or had enough Gates to make up the difference with imports.

But Serenthuar had only one known portal, and little arable land among its sands.

Fortunately, even before the Sundering they had been known for their craftsmanship, and the elders had doubled down on this: nearly every citizen had to devote themselves to those crafts. Crafts simultaneously expensive enough to bring in a lot of money to buy food, and small enough to not take much space going through the Gate and in so doing occupy space needed to physically take in food.

Serenthuar's known lack of Gates put them in a difficult negotiating position, but negotiating was the only way to keep afloat. Their ambassadors trained to be the best because they had to be, and they were the realm's pride as much as their art.

Except for Liris.

"Candidate Liris' skills require special consideration," Omaqil said, a useless answer that didn't surprise her.

What did was the lack of reproach for the outsider's tone; it wasn't like Omaqil to let anything pass.

"For your purposes," the elder continued, "her skills also happen to be uniquely suited."

Liris hardly dared breathe, hope a painful bolt in her chest.

Was she finally, finally going to get her chance after all, when she'd nearly given up hope?

Elder Omaquil said, "One of her accomplishments is the translation of a lost language called Thyrasel, which has elements a caster might find particularly useful."

Okay, ‘translation' was not the most accurate description; decoding an ancient language involved overlapping knowledge, but they weren't the same skill.

But Liris was far more interested in the implication that the foreigner was an adept spellcaster, and that he needed something from Serenthuar. From her. What were the elders up to?

And that thought twisted that budding hope in her chest, freezing it like a stone. Because she hadn't had any notion this was coming, and while it was true that the elders were also highly trained and Liris was isolated a lot of the time, the fact that she didn't have any idea what this was about meant that they still didn't trust her.

Which did not bode quite as well for this assignment with a foreign spellcaster.

Serenthuar was severely restricted in the amount of outside training their casters could receive, and their ambassadors trained to notice pattern iterations that could prove useful in parleying with foreigner spellcasters for knowledge they could bring back.

So what spellcraft could Serenthuar not cast themselves that was worth trading her knowledge for, that they'd held in reserve for so long?

For the first time, the caster turned the intensity of his gaze on Liris, causing her breath to catch.

But what arrested her and had her fighting to keep her expression even was not his singular focus, but the glinting black earring in the shape of flame. She hadn't been able to see it before through his hair, and no wonder.

Black flame was the unofficial symbol for people who served demons, shadowy beings that existed in the space between realms and whose only goal was to devour everything alive.

Liris thought rapidly. All the realms she'd have guessed as options for the stranger's homeland were stridently opposed to demons, so he likely wasn't a government representative. So Serenthuar was selling her twenty-three years of training to a private individual?

On one hand, that meant he must be incredibly powerful in his own right. She knew what she was worth.

Which was why she was utterly crushed, because it also meant they never had any intention of sending Liris out into the world to fulfill her duty, and her dream.

For just a moment, Liris thought that if a portal to the void opened beneath her feet, she would let it simply suck her away.

And then into her spiraling despair, the demon servant said, "All right, Candidate Liris. Impress me."

A test. Had he seen through her so easily? Liris clenched her teeth against the ingrained urge to leap to meet it.

But nevertheless it was a rope she grasped onto, centering her.

Liris did know what she was worth, and just because Serenthuar didn't value her didn't mean she had to accept it.

So this was a test, but not the kind either the elders or the demon servant thought.

Time to play the game for all she was worth.

"How may I address you, honored guest?" she asked.

Not a rebuke, following in her elder's example; but not an acquiescence, either.

By his mocking smirk, the man knew it.

"Jadrhun," he said.

Claiming neither title nor realm of origin; an outcast, then.

Liris looked over to Elder Omaqil and bowed without taking her eyes off his. "Is this what you summoned me for?"

In that question were all the others she couldn't ask:

You know what he is?

And: This is what you would make of me?

He did not flinch. "It is," he said, and that was enough.

Liris saw in his empty eyes desolation and desperation. She saw the echo of the hallway no new visitor had been enticed to visit in months despite the vaunted skills of Serenthuar's ambassadors, the once-envied tribute that existed to mark what Serenthuar had to offer fading into obscurity.

In the Sundered Realms, that was a death-knell.

Liris thought that would be all, but then Elder Omaqil added, "I summoned you to do your duty. Tell him about the patterns."

A punch to the gut wouldn't have hit her as hard.

Oh, it was enough, and more than. It was the final betrayal, trapping her into this.

Serenthuar needed help more than ever, and this was what the elders chose for her duty? Sacrificing her to serve demons?

Part of her was shocked.

Worse, part of her wasn't.

That part was very, very done.

Liris said, "Of course I will do my duty."

And prepared to do anything but.

She'd have to pretend to: Elder Omaqil had heard enough reports to recognize if she lied outright. Pretending was the only way she'd escape, and if she lacked worldly experience, she'd had a lot of practice pretending for the people who controlled her life.

Liris crossed to the table. "Do you have paper and ink, Jadrhun?"

"Always." The caster reached into his coat and produced a pad and pen in seconds.

With reflexes like that, he had to be a field caster, not just in research or support.

Well, she'd had a lot of practice pretending not to be a threat, too.

Liris accepted the pen and quickly wrote out a simple sentence as she explained, "Thyrasel is a language from one of the lost realms that once shared borders with the realms now known as Otaryl and Periannolu."

Jadrhun looked at her sharply. "Yet the language was lost before the realm?"

"Yes. The language had never been particularly widespread and fell out of use even within the realm centuries before the Sundering. Few original written records survive today—less than a bookshelf's worth—and since most scholars had long since given up hope of translating them, Serenthuar now owns most of them."

"And you the lone expert. Convenient."

His tone was mocking; his eyes anything but.

A chill ran through her. "Not for learning purposes. It's enormously complicated, and I'm afraid you'll have no one else to help you."

You can't kill me yet.

Because he would, of course he would: the elders had bargained to a demon servant a language no other caster would be able to translate and thus dispel. As soon as she taught him the language, he could open portals for demons no one would be able to close.

"I won't need help for long," Jadrhun told her, and it didn't sound like a boast, even though he knew nothing about the language yet.

It sounded like a warning.

Maybe if she were a better person, she'd let them kill her right now and prevent even the possibility.

But Liris had sacrificed enough of her life to people who would discard her, and as long as she was alive, she could thwart him.

And her despair had morphed very, very quickly into towering rage.

Rage, she could use.

Thyrasel wasn't the only lost language in Serenthuar's libraries, but it was the most difficult. That was why she'd chosen it.

Fatalism would be giving up, when instead teaching Jadrhun the hardest languages she knew of would buy her time to win this rigged game the elders had placed her in as a pawn—as long as he committed to learning it.

As long as she was clever enough to overcome her lack of experience, with only one shot at survival.

The most important test of her life.

Liris smiled and arched her eyebrows. "We'll see if you're up to the challenge."

Jadrhun's eyes flashed with genuine humor. "Oh, you are good, aren't you? I dare you to dazzle me."

Watch me."You casters and your spell languages are all about complexity, as I understand, and spells use patterns?"

Jadrhun tilted his head. "If that's all you know about spells, I'm curious how you're so certain your Thyrasel will be worth my time."

Liris mimicked him. "I'm surprised you didn't know Serenthuar ambassadors never study magic. If we did, given our many other accomplishments, no realm in the universe would believe we weren't set on infiltration."

"Very different from spying, of course."

"Oh, quite. One takes over a Gate's security personally; the other has people for that."

Jadrhun grinned at her—until Elder Omaqil cleared his throat, his gaze narrow, and then Jadrhun's expression took on a vicious edge.

"What," he said, "is it not enough for her to do her duty, she's not allowed to enjoy her time, either?"

Disdain for the elders, or anger at his position—or hers? It didn't matter.

She should not have been enjoying verbal fencing with a man who served demons and would definitely kill her as soon as was practical. But she was, and if it was sanctioned, that was somehow worse.

Elder Omaqil didn't answer him, instead nodding at Liris to continue. As if he trusted her to manage a demon servant when despite all her training she had no real-world experience, or maybe as if someone as untrustworthy as Liris couldn't mess this up.

But she was absolutely going to mess everything up.

As badly as she could manage.

"I admit I assumed Serenthuar ambassadors studied spells in secret," Jadrhun picked up again, as if inviting her to confide in him.

Ha. Liris wished she had studied magic, if only to feel smugger about denying him. With Elder Omaqil's suspicious gaze on her, she didn't dare joke about it now.

Instead she sighed dramatically. "Alas, not me, but I know enough to understand how much Thyrasel has to offer you. An optimal spell language requires the complexity of a living language but not the ongoing changeability, which is why casters derive fixed rule sets from dead languages. The context from other languages in the spell further limits the possible translations, but the more complex the language, the greater the power, or something to that effect, correct?"

"Correct." Bored; she was losing him.

Not for long. "Spells also derive complexity from patterns, and that is what Thyrasel is made of."

Jadrhun rolled his eyes. "All languages have patterns."

"Not like this." Liris tapped the pen on the table to draw his attention to the paper. "Don't look at the individual symbols; look at the sentence from the top-down."

He narrowed his eyes. "All right."

"Now this one." She penned another sentence, then another.

He frowned, then his eyes widened. "The shapes have meaning?"

"Yes. There are distinct shapes for different registers: in order, those are a plea, a request made of an equal, and a command. Now look at the shapes of the letters and compare them."

"They're nearly the same sentence, but the shapes of the letters themselves are different."

Void, he was quick. She supposed that was to be expected of a powerful field caster: he could probably read as many languages as she could.

"Yes. Each letter conveys tone or emotional subtext. That plea is angry; the command is sad."

"The various markings? The slashes and dots on the edges aren't part of the letters?"

"No, but they're sounds. Sort of like an idiomatic footnote to the thought—that plea carries the connotation of, ‘don't you think this is silly?' while the command affirms, essentially, ‘that's the way things are'. All of that before I've even taught you a single word."

Complex, with built-in patterns, and no other spellcaster knew it to thwart.

The most perfect spell language for a demon servant.

Jadrhun's intensity was back in force, piercing her with his gaze.

"All right, Liris. I'm impressed."

Bittersweet triumph pierced her.

Of course this stranger wouldn't know he'd just offered her the first official acknowledgment of her life, and it was for serving demons.

Then again, given the seriousness in his gaze, maybe he did.

She bowed. "As the only fluent person alive, I'll be delighted to be able to share this knowledge with another person who can appreciate it."

Don't forget you can't kill me yet.

More importantly, don't lose interest.

"I'll retrieve my notes so we can begin in earnest," Liris continued, heart pounding, palms sweating, desperately hoping no one noticed. This was it. "As I never intended to teach, I will need a few minutes to sort them appropriately and would not waste your time. Elder Omaqil, you will see to our guest's needs in the meantime?"

She willed him to believe her just this once, made her expression resolved as she faced the representative of her government, which had evidently decided it could sacrifice everyone outside their own realm and her; made it determined as though she were committed to doing her duty and would prove they had nothing to fear from her no matter what.

It ought to be believable, given how much of her life she'd wasted trying to do exactly that.

Elder Omaqil inclined his head: acknowledgment. Her heart almost broke because that was the first from the people she'd been working her hardest for all her life, and it was for a lie.

"Then I leave him to you," Liris said, which was cruel, and she thought she should have regretted it but didn't.

She turned her back on them and left.

Liris had a secret.

She just had to make sure no one found out until she was too far gone to stop.

Liris returned to the corridor, but not for long.

If she played this right, she'd never have to trudge through these hated halls again.

She took a branching path that led not to the library and her notes, but to a garden in the inner courtyard, a vision of the rare green plants that would grow in this desert. All one way or another covered in spikes for an unforgiving climate, decorated with tempting, vibrant flowers.

Liris thanked the gods that her summons had come in the middle of the day, when the sun was at its most intense and no one would be out in the courtyard to see her.

Pulling off her sash and then her tunic, Liris wrapped each cloth around her hands as she made her way to one particular cactus that had been old even before the Sundering and was now significantly taller than even the arched dome of Citadel. Higher up than she wanted to dwell on now that she was bigger and probably couldn't climb as quickly, one arm of the cactus grew in a perfect circular loop.

Liris pulled vibrant red petals off the flower buds and filled her hands with them.

They'd disguise her blood for a little while.

Liris took a breath, closing her eyes.

She was really doing this.

She was really going to expose her secret after all, in the worst possible way.

She opened her eyes and looked up, squinting against the glare of the sun at how far she had to go.

Liris put her first hand on the cactus and almost screamed. The desert didn't forgive, and neither did Serenthuar. Gods, she'd forgotten how much this hurt.

No, that was a lie. It wasn't just hope that had held her complacent all these years; it was also fear.

No time for that now. Her choice was certain pain or certain death. She could only come back from one of those.

Gritting her teeth, Liris put her second hand on the cactus.

Then she climbed.

The pain was a reminder of where she was now, and what she was leaving behind.

Serenthuar emphasized devotion above all, and Liris understood they couldn't afford to lose their most talented people. She'd always felt guilty for keeping this secret, never sure if it really was a secret or a test of her discretion, but now she wondered if she was the first to need to escape.

Blood-red petals dripped away from her. Liris tried not to rush, her mind sharp and focused while her limbs trembled. Too fast and she could mangle her hands beyond repair, but she knew how to be careful, now.

Liris hadn't always understood that the elders' idea of devotion to Serenthuar was fixed, and her critical mistake had been letting them know she had ideas about change. She'd made sure she was too good to stop training, but she'd never overcome that one error.

Yet here they were, allying themselves with literal demons rather than risking a change to the status quo.

Liris hadn't risked anything in too long. She'd grown so careful she'd allowed them to trap her.

No more.

The pain was unbearable now, but it had always been more than she could bear. She'd heal, if she lived. She didn't know what her future would hold. Maybe it wouldn't be better, but at least it would be not this.

And she would know she'd tried.

At least she would have that.

Liris stared at the circle of the cactus.

She'd always wondered if this was the real test, to prove that ultimately, there was no duty Serenthuar would demand of her that she wouldn't do.

Well. If this was a test, she was going to fail it.

Liris had a secret.

And she had never in her life felt a rush like she did when she leapt through the circle in the sky that was actually a nearly unknown Gate and tumbled into another realm.