Mag-log inGianna did not walk straight into the garden. She stopped at the bedroom door with Luna warm against her shoulder and turned back toward the bed, where Nolan lay on his side with one arm flung across the empty space she had left.She had promised him. Even the small things."Nolan," she said softly, and he was awake before she finished the word, sitting up with his hand already reaching for the sword that leaned against the bedpost."What is it?""Tilda is in the garden."He went still. Then he looked at Luna, who was watching him with calm dark eyes and a faint smile, as if this were all a game she had arranged and was pleased to see going so well."Alone?" he asked."As far as I can see. She knelt down and put the shard on the grass. She was crying, Nolan. I think she wants to be found.""Or she wants us to think so." He pulled on his shirt and boots in a few quick movements. "Stay behind me. If anything moves in those shadows, you take Luna and run, and you do not look back.""I wi
Tilda did not sleep that night, and she did not sleep the next.The cottage at the edge of the marsh had belonged to her mother's sister, a woman nobody in the settlement had ever met, and it smelled of damp reeds and old smoke. Tilda had walked for eleven days to reach it, sleeping in ditches, eating what she could beg. The shard had stayed against her skin the whole way, warm as a living thing, and every night it had whispered to her in a voice she could not quite call a voice.Now she sat in the candlelight, her father's last letter folded in her lap. He was not walking. He had never walked again, whatever the hand that smelled of rain had promised. A neighbor had written to say he was worse, and Tilda had read the words twice and felt nothing at all, which frightened her more than grief would have."You said he would be healed," she said to the shard.The flame inside it flickered. The answer came the way all its answers came, not as sound but as understanding, settling in her min
The army did not march home that day. It simply sat down where it stood.Soldiers lowered their weapons and slumped against the rim of the hollow, some laughing, some weeping, some staring at the clear sky as though they did not trust it. Healers moved among them with water and bandages. Wren's rogue Fae stood together at the edge of the crowd, silent, the way people stand when a fear they have carried all their lives is suddenly taken from them and they do not yet know what to do with their hands.Gianna stayed in the circle for a long time, Luna asleep against her shoulder, Nolan's arm around them both. Fenna and two healers worked over Corwin, who lay on a stretcher of cloaks and spear shafts, pale as paper, breathing slowly."His heart is steady," Fenna said at last, sitting back on her heels. Her hands were still trembling. "I do not understand it. By every rule I know, he should be dead. The sacrifice took his blood, I saw it leave him, and yet something gave it back.""Or somet
The trembling did not stop. It rolled outward from the center of the circle in slow, grinding waves, and the toppled black stones groaned against the earth as though something beneath them were turning over in its sleep. Gianna staggered, caught herself against Nolan's arm, and felt Luna stir sharply against her chest."Everyone back to the rim," Nolan shouted. "Now!""No," Corwin said. His voice was not loud, but it cut through the noise like a blade. "If we leave this circle now, we will never be allowed to enter it again. The seal is waking. This is the only hour we have.""The shadow creatures," Fenna began, gripping the satchel of fragments against her side."They will not move until the ritual begins," the elder called from the rim, her thin voice somehow carrying all the way down. "That is the rule of the old binding. The circle is a place of truce until the first word is spoken."Tilda stood quietly beside the stone basin, her hands folded, her face calm. She did not look afra
The forest east of the settlement had always been quiet, but that morning the silence felt heavy, like a held breath. The column moved slowly along a path that few had traveled in years, branches closing in overhead, the cold dawn light barely reaching the ground. Gianna rode beside Nolan with Luna held tight between them, her eyes fixed on the trees ahead."The mist is thickening," Elmund said quietly from the front, glancing back. "It was not here when the scouts passed.""It never is," Corwin murmured. He rode in the cart beside the elder, and he looked paler than he had at dawn. "It rises when the seal is near."They pressed on until the trees began to thin and the ground sloped downward into a wide hollow. At its bottom, half hidden in gray mist, stood the circle. Gianna counted perhaps twenty black stones, each taller than a man, but half of them had toppled or cracked, as though something enormous had burst out from the center long ago. The earth between them was bare and dark,
Preparations began at dawn and consumed the entire settlement for the next three days. Soldiers sharpened blades and reinforced the perimeter. Healers gathered herbs, charms, and whatever protective talismans their combined knowledge could produce. Sable and the elders copied the elder's memories of the ritual onto fresh parchment, cross-checking each detail against the oldest heirlooms until their eyes burned from the effort.Gianna spent most of those days beside Luna's crib, watching the two marks on her daughter's wrists. Since the fifth fragment had been recovered, the corrupted mark had stayed quiet, but Fenna warned that quiet did not mean safe."It's gathering itself," Fenna said, checking Luna's pulse for the third time that morning. "Like a tide drawing back before it returns.""How long?" Gianna asked."Until the ritual, I hope. Not much longer than that."On the afternoon of the second day, Draven asked to speak with Gianna alone. Nolan allowed it only after posting two gu
Gianna turned around slowly.Nolan was still standing by the window, his expression unreadable in the firelight."You found him," she said."I did.""Who was it?""A council member named Broderick. He holds a seat in the lower chamber and oversees trade regulations for the outer markets."Gianna fr
Chapter FiveThe King didn't look at her again.He moved to the head of the table, sat, and the entire banquet resumed around him, everyone pretending the last five minutes had been completely normal.Gianna walked back to their seats with Cyrus's hand clamped around her elbow the entire way.He l
Chapter TwoShe was having the best dream of her life.She didn't know what it was about – just that it was warm, and she was laughing, and nothing hurt.Then she felt eyes on her.Gianna's eyes snapped open.A man was sitting in the chair right beside her bed, close enough that she could see the i
Chapter OneThe gates swung open at dusk. Gianna heard the patrol return before she saw it – boots on gravel, wolves shifting back to skin, the familiar chaos of Valemont's warriors coming home.She was standing on the upper terrace with a glass of wine when she saw Cyrus walk through the main ga







