The sun was dying outside Alessandra Lombard's chamber window. It departed the desert sky like an actor leaving the stage, making way for the chill onset of night.

​

Closeted within her jewel box of a bedchamber, blessedly free of prying eyes, Alessandra folded the letter she'd spent the last few hours composing, pressing a severe crease in the parchment with the edge of her thumbnail. The wax yielded under the solid imprint of her signet ring, releasing the familiar aroma of roses and crushed bark. Alessandra stared at the resulting impression. A rearing stallion surrounded by flames. The Lombard family motif. The sight usually reassured her. Reminded her of the power of her rank.

​

Not tonight.

​

Rubbing her hand across dry lips, she reached for a glass and poured a small measure of bleshat. The honeyed drink soothed the constant sense of restriction in her throat. Her gaze drifted beyond her window to the familiar, distant silhouette of the Dragon's Teeth, and the delicate curl of smoke trickling like a warning from Ashara's Flame, the restless volcano crowning the ridge. It pressed against the eastern horizon like a bruise. A black, camel-shaped hump perpetually guarding the brutal Solmir Desert. Nearer to, the view from her balcony overlooked the opulent, manicured gardens surrounding Solharah, the Lombard family mansion. Beyond their gates, Erythrea. Overcrowded and hot. A cauldron of frenetic activity, constantly at boiling point. Its people existing in desperate, vivid life, despite the ruthless rule of the Magister, and his fanatical, loyal guards.

​

Another sip of bleshat. She turned the letter over on her desk, her mind racing ahead. Making calculations, comparing distances. Leagues. One rider could do it…He'd have to be swift…

​

"Have you written it yet?"

​

She jumped, so lost in her thoughts she hadn't heard Norina come in.

​

"You should knock."

​

Her arms full of just-washed linen, Norina grimaced. She was steadying the pile with her chin. "Only the two hands, you see," she said, with deep irony, depositing the pile on the window seat.

​

A smile flickered across Alessandra's lips. "My apologies," she said. "My thoughts are elsewhere."

​

"Aye." Norina's steady gaze took in the letter. "Are you fretting, or are you going to send it?" Her words carried the tone that only thirty years of companionship could achieve. She left the pile where it was and came to stand at Alessandra's side. A gentle aroma of desert lilies and beeswax hung around her as it always had, since they were girls together from neighbouring estates, before time could add its burden. Time had added something else. Norina's unflinching support. She'd long left the status of lady's maid behind.

​

A sigh escaped Alessandra's lips. "I am debating whether to even try," she said, keeping her voice low. For Norina's ears alone. "If she'd only answer…"

​

Norina inclined her head, giving Alessandra the point. "But the delegation set out a week ago," she muttered. "They will arrive in Epera whether or not she's ready. You've done all you can already, surely?"

​

Alessandra regarded her with one eyebrow raised and stifled a sigh. "Ten letters before this one. No reply. I can only assume she's not reading them." The knowledge pricked her like a thorn through a shoe. A sudden memory rose behind her eyes. Of Domita, at sixteen, staring at the men waiting to escort her north. Dry-eyed, refusing to meet her mother's gaze. She'd been gone ten years. A girl grown to womanhood in a foreign court. Free in ways that her mother had never enjoyed. And now, a stranger. Unknowable.

​

Norina huffed a laugh and went back to folding linen. "She never liked to attend to her correspondence. Even as a youngling."

​

"No. But this is too important. I can't leave her unprepared, Norina." She tapped the letter against her chin and then held it out. "Take this to Varek Farron."

​

Norina blinked. "Varek?"

​

"Aye. I can't trust anyone else."

​

Her friend made no move to take the letter. "But he's old, my lady. Epera is twelve hundred leagues away."

​

"Please, Norina. Take it to him. Quietly. Not through the kitchens. Make sure he's got enough money. Tell him to change horses whenever he can." Her mind made up, she pushed the letter into Norina's resisting hand.

​

"You want her to come home that much?" Norina asked.

​

"I want her to be safe."

​

"Not the same thing. Not at all. She's better off where she is."

​

There it was. The room suddenly felt too hot. Too small. Another memory crowded out her last sight of Domita, narrow back rigid with hurt and mistrust. Facing forward because backward wasn't an option. The new image was a contract. Signed in the presence of witnesses and sealed in the Magister's own strongbox. It contained the avaricious glint of a smirk on Mekat Spicer's face. The Magister's iron-fisted approval. The dreadful penalty of reneging.

​

It consigned Domita Lombard to marry Cassian Spicer.

​

And she'd signed it.

​

She backed away from her friend and leaned against a chair back, one hand moulded to the frame for support, staring into space.

​

"Don't," Norina said at once. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

​

Across the city, the temple bells clanged to life, calling the faithful to evening prayers. The sound bred a subtle panic in her chest. In Erythrea, everyone was faithful. The penalties for non-compliance ensured that. She should prepare.

​

"She's not safer in Epera," she murmured, glancing across the room to her low-cushioned bed, where her veil lay, waiting for her to don it. "I wish she were. But things are moving now. And we need her. We need her back."

​

She reached for her abandoned drink. The glass chattered against her teeth as she lifted it. Norina's brow contracted, her fine dark eyes darting from decanter to glass. "Should I take that away?" she ventured.

​

"Aye," Alessandra's voice came out harsher than she intended. "Take it. We will pray. And then find Varek. Do as I ask. He'll know what to do."

​

"That old renegade," Norina muttered. Huffing a sigh, she put the lid back on the decanter and clutched it to her chest. "Only yesterday he was telling me how good it was to travel no further than the inns on Rasmid's Square."

​

Solharah's bell had added its din to the clamour from Erythrea. Alessandra raised her hand to the solcorda, stamped with the Magister's image, checking it was in place. She hurried across the room to find her veil.

​

Behind its gauzy protection, her panic dissipated. Norina slipped out of the room. Alone, Alessandra moved to the tharsil wood shutters, closing them upon the chill of the desert night.

Just for a space, she rested her head on them, her mind churning with a prayer not of the Magister's devising. Please, she thought. Let Varek get there first. Let her open it. Read it. Believe me.

​

A reluctant half-smile tugged at her lips. One born of a long history. She ruled the Lombard estates. Sat on countless councils and attended every court function. She commanded respect and fear in many quarters. Hatred in others.

​

The one thing she’d never been sure of commanding.

​

Her daughter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Domita Lombard was late. Pressing her cheek close to her mount’s sweating neck, she urged him onwards, inhaling the familiar, damp warmth of his silken coat as his pace increased to a gallop.

 

The sheep-cropped moorland rising around the Castle of Air surrounded her in every direction. The last wisps of night evaporated beneath the morning sun, bleeding light over the jagged, rosy peaks. Its warmth kissed her skin, stirring the ever-present heat in her veins. Her magic rose to meet it. Tingling in her fingers, fizzing in her blood. Behind her, Queen Petronella’s banners flapped idly atop the stronghold’s battlements, stirred by a rare southern breeze. Ahead lay the abandoned shepherd’s hut, and its pile of sheepskin rugs. And reclining gracefully, expectant and alluring, golden-haired and green-eyed, Alora de Vimes. Her latest conquest. Domita’s breath tightened in anticipation.

​

The stallion’s hooves pounded as he rounded a bend, clattering along the narrow path trodden mostly by sheep. A thin tendril of smoke drifted in the light breeze. Her attention snared briefly on the soaring flight of a peregrine falcon, launched from a falconer’s fist, somewhere on a neighbouring hillside. Sitting up, she slowed her steed to a trot as the tumbledown rooftop of the old hut came into view, sheltered by a wind-tossed stand of trees. Heart pounding, exhilarated by the wild ride, she brushed a strand of copper from her cheek. Tugging the laces at the neck of her shirt, she leapt from the saddle and tossed the stallion’s reins around a hitching post. He snorted as she ran a hand through his tangled mane and stooped to loosen his saddle. Away in the distance, a small troop of riders was making steady progress towards the castle. She squinted, shading her eyes against the glare. Impossible to see who they were from this distance, but something flickered against her magical senses. Familiarity. Who were they? Battonians? She frowned. Surely not. Battonia was hundreds of leagues away. Nothing to do with her now, thank the gods.

​

A chill brushed the warmth from her skin. A momentary image of her mother's latest letter, locked in her trunk with the others. The unbroken seal staring at her like a reproach. Or a warning. She shrugged it aside as the battered door creaked open. Alora leaned against it, one long leg extended, green eyes rich with desire, and every thought of home, of riders on a distant road, burned away beneath the familiar, welcome pull of wanting someone who wanted nothing from her but this.

​

Domita was happy in a crowd. She preferred her love life conducted in private, behind a locked door, on her own terms. Wrapped in a narrow world of pulsing heat and Alora's sighs, her terms were the only thing she let herself think about.

***

Two hours later, caught in the afterglow of sated desire, Alora nestled against her, heavy-lidded, ready for sleep. Domita untangled herself and stood, scraping her hair back from her face, conscious of the ever-present need for action. For freedom.

​

“You’re leaving?” Alora pouted. Deprived of Domita’s warmth, she sat up, clutching a sheepskin to her chest like a child’s comforter.

​

“I have duties,” Domita said, closing her shirt. “The Queen needs me. I will prepare your mount. You can leave after me.”

​

Her lover scowled and hooked a near-empty decanter towards her with a decisive jerk of her wrist. “You can saddle her, if you will,” she buried her frown in her cup. “I will go when I wish.”

​

“As you command,” Domita said airily. “I’ll see you later.”

​

Alora stared at her. “I don’t understand you.”

​

Domita shrugged. “What would you have of me?” she argued. “You wished for pleasure. I have given it.”

​

“But…”

​

Domita held up a quelling hand. “There is no but,” she whispered before Alora could say what was on her mind. “Don’t wish for it. I cannot give you what you want.” She paused, searching Alora’s emerald gaze. Alora was beautiful. Perfect, in fact. But there was no way Domita could allow herself to become involved. Not with her. Not with anyone.

​

“We can meet here whenever you wish,” she said, her voice hoarse with regret. “But I cannot declare myself to you in front of all. ‘Tis impossible.”

​

She didn't let Alora see what the words cost her. Once before, long ago, she'd let herself be seen, and the ground had shifted beneath her feet in under a week. That was a mistake that still burned. She'd never make it again.

​

“You cannot declare yourself to me,” Alora murmured. “You won’t even let me touch you.” She dropped her eyes, but not before Domita caught the hurt in them. She sighed. Love after love ended like this. In a welter of pain and thwarted longing. Alora was not the first.

​

“Am I another notch on your bedpost, Domita Lombard?” Alora asked. She dropped the comforter and stood naked and proud, her face hard. “Am I not good enough for you, daughter of Battonia?”

​

“'Tis not that…” Domita protested, hearing the weakness in her answer. Hating herself for it. “You are more than good enough. Even for a king, let alone a Lombard.”

​

Alora raised a delicate eyebrow. “But I can’t be,” she said. “Or you would let me in. What threat am I to you, Domita? Do you think I want to hurt you?” She took a step, reached to touch Domita’s flushed, freckled cheek. Domita shied like a startled horse. Alora stared at her, stunned and wounded in equal measure. “Not even that much?” She whispered, almost to herself. “Domita…”

​

Speechless, Domita shook her head. She backed up to the door, palms raised. “Pax, Alora,” she murmured. “I can’t explain. Not even to myself. Please try to understand.” Mouth dry, she fumbled for the ancient lock, frantic to escape. The meanness of their surroundings blazed to the forefront of her senses. Low, wattled walls and a smoke-stained ceiling. The grubby tangle of sheepskins.

 

Under her searching fingers, the lock gave way, and she ducked out, heaving fresh air into her lungs, gasping for breath as if she’d run a race over the scorching sands of Battonia. The dryness tickled her throat. Disappointment and threat. Loss and longing. Soul-deep and bitter.

​

It was the work of an instant to tighten her mount’s saddle and fling herself aloft. She tried to close her ears, but the echo of Alora’s shout as she rushed to the door blazed in her mind.

​

“If you ever decide to stop running, Domita Lombard, you know where to find me.”

​

Mouth clenched in a snarl, Domita pressed her face to her horse’s neck and mopped her tears in his tangled mane as he cantered down the track. She didn’t look back.

​

CHAPTER TWO

​

Teeth gritted against the hard lump in her chest, Domita straightened in her saddle as she careered down the last dusty slope. The north-facing battlements of the Castle of Air ranged in front of her like a row of blunt teeth. Members of the Queen’s Guard paced the narrow walkways, their plumed helmets ruffled in the breeze. Ever watchful against the threat of rebellion that still smouldered beneath the industrious activity of Epera’s Citizen workers.

 

Blotting the last of her tears with the edge of her lace-trimmed sleeve, Domita joined the well-trodden track leading to the northern gate, jogging past a creaking cart stinking of fish bound for the castle kitchens.

​

She plucked at her shirt, easing it from her perspiring flesh. The guards acknowledged her arrival with a casual nod, waving her through past a sweating merchant, who argued his case as he presented his credentials. She could feel his envious scowl on her narrow back as she passed momentarily into the shade of the gate. The northern courtyard thronged with the usual motley assembly of servants, Citizens, and nobles. Waving away the attentions of her groom, who moved forward to take her horse, she vaulted smoothly to the ground.

​

“Nay, Berrick, I’ll see to him,” she gathered the reins in a practised fist. “You go on. ‘Tis nigh on time to eat.”

​

“Aye, M’lady. Sir Dominic Skinner were looking for ‘ee.” Berrick sketched a hasty bow and disappeared to his quarters.

 

Domita sniffed the air. Pottage and bread. The familiar aroma wafted to her from the huge kitchen doors, standing open against the summer heat, fighting a battle against the grassy stench of horse dung and the putrid smell of rotting debris from the castle middens. Her stomach rumbled, proclaiming hunger. Domita clenched her jaw and led her horse to the coolness of the castle mews.

​

The lofty royal stable block loomed solidly in front of her, the busy courtyard gradually clearing of people as the castle temple bells rang for noon. Her throat had clenched against the tangle of emotion twisting in her gut. A complicated mixture of thwarted desire, anger, and shame.

​

“Always the same,” she muttered, loosening the saddle and throwing it atop a saddle block. Her horse, a fine Battonian stallion named Blackthorn for his fine ebony coat, blew at her as she turned him into his stall. She sniffed approvingly. Berrick had been busy mucking out. The air smelled of fresh straw. Clean water in the bucket. A fragrant helping of sweet hay in the manger. Despite her inner turmoil, a half-smile tugged at her mouth.

 

She smoothed Blackthorne’s mane. “We’ll have Berrick groom you after the noonday meal, my brave heart,” she whispered. “I’m late. As usual.” Blackthorn snorted and dropped his head to the water.

 

Domita patted his flank and hoisted his kit onto her shoulder, intent on taking her equipment to the nearby tack room and returning to her chambers. She hoped her maid had prepared a bath. Her mouth thinned as she strode across the quiet courtyard to the tack room. Carefully labelled with the badge of each noble house, hooks and saddle horses laden with costly leather dominated the space.​

​

Domita inhaled the smell of wax and bear fat blooming from the ordered ranks of embellished bridles and heavy Eperan-design saddles. She sighed as she hooked her tack onto the Lombard space. The chances of a bath were slim. Unlike Berrick, her maid, Lolita, had no love or regard for Domita and spent as little time working for her mistress as she could.

​

Distracted by her thoughts, the familiar colours of her native land warming the embroidered edges of a saddle blanket folded on a shelf near the door almost passed her by. She turned on the threshold, her mouth dry, and reached a hand to it.

 

Her blood chilled. The Spicer family emblem—two spice sacks and two pestles joined by a crossbar of wands, foursquare on the fine linen. Alarmed, heart racing, her gaze snapped to its neighbour. The Lombard crest, four racing horses, black against the blaze of amber gold, struck her like a fist. Her hand flew to her mouth. Her instincts had been right.

 

Battonians. Here.

 

Doubt and dread raced each other through her veins. “No, surely not…” she murmured, backing away. Step by step. As if the innocent banners of the two mighty rival dynasties of Battonia could sense her presence. “Our retainers and theirs would never travel together. Surely…” She turned the edge of the Spicer blanket and moved closer, squinting in the dim light. “No…”

​

Another crest winked at her. Embroidered in gold. Her heart sank to her dusty boots. Not just a delegation, then. No simple messengers, these. She had a sudden vision of the jaws of a trap closing around her. Snapping shut.

 

Overhead, the last temple bell calling the castle inhabitants for their meal clanged in her ears and then faded away. It left a somnolent silence behind it, broken only by the ever-present chatter of sleepy starlings and the gentle coo of pigeons in the castle dovecotes. Someone in the distance shouted a question. Another voice answered.

 

Dust motes dancing in front of her eyes, she turned like a sleepwalker to the sunlit courtyard. The Magister had sent these people. That was his standard. The flamboyant letter ‘M’ flanked by two batons. Already low, her spirit dipped, bowing its head under the onslaught of her thoughts.

 

Her lip curled. The Magister. Usurper King and everyday tyrant. Ancient patriarch of the Spicer family, Battonia’s despot ruler, and still alive, somehow. No-one knew how old he was. Rumours abounded. He drank the blood of virgins, gathered at the full moon. The ancient devil, Prystolatis, had cursed him to serve out his days for as long as the sun shone on Battonia. To some, he was a god. A saviour.

​

Domita’s stride increased. By the time she reached the gathered, watchful cool of the Castle of Air, she was scurrying for the safety of her familiar chambers in the South wing. Throwing decorum to the wind, she ran. Left behind the scent of warm bread and Argentian wine, the laughter of the court she had made her own, as it wafted from the Great Hall.

​

The Magister had sent someone here. To the far north of Arcanis. Her breath hissed between her teeth as she took the stairs to her apartments two at a time, trying to quell her fear. It couldn’t be for her. She had lived in Epera for ten years. Served her friend, the Queen, as the First Lady of her household. People liked her here, if you discounted her many jilted lovers.

 

The polished metal handle burned warm under her touch as her magic ignited, driven by the fire of emotion beating at her centre. Breathing heavily, she all but fell through the door, locking it securely behind her. Crossed to the window, and closed it, taking a moment to scan the bare wall beneath and above it.

 

A bath of cold water lay waiting to be heated in front of the unlit fireplace. A tidy court costume lay like a stricken corpse across her mattress. Domita took a few moments to scan the furthest corners of her abode. Checked under her bed and in the enormous trunk that footed it. Stacked untidily within, the unopened pile of letters from her mother slid apart like a pack of playing cards as she lifted the lid, releasing a waft of cinnamon. The space was easily enough to conceal a man. Her mouth was dry, and her mother’s familiar crest, stamped into the saffron-coloured wax, caught her eye. A single stallion reared against a backdrop of flame. Her magic flickered in her fist at the sight of it. She had stopped reading her mother’s missives years ago.

 

Her fingers crept towards the latest parchment. The wax stallion’s edges appeared slightly more defined. As if her mother’s temper, always controlled, never on show, had ignited momentarily into a jab of irritation as she sealed the page. Her fingers hovered, grazing the paper. The imprint pressed deep, solid beneath her thumb. If she lifted it now, if she read what lay beneath... But no. There was no fighting her internal resistance. The hard stone wall of her anger. Swallowing hard, she let the lid of the trunk slam shut.

​

Heating her bath was the work of moments. She released the triumph of her flames and heat into the water, judging the temperature by the rising steam. It rose gracefully into the still air, softer than flame.

 

Naked and standing with one foot in the tub, Domita let the steam glide over her body, shivering at its lingering caress. Steam curled against her throat, warm fingers against the pulse of her rage. Her body ached from holding too much inside. Heat, power, hunger. But the water was safe. The water would take it.

 

She sank into the copper tub, grateful for a safe release of her tension. The subtle settling of banked rage in her blood. Her head fell back with a sigh of relief as her muscles relaxed, little by little.

 

If only she could stay here, lulled and soothed by the yielding weight of water. Her antidote. Her peace. There were various sources of water dotted at intervals throughout Domita’s suite of rooms. She ordered them full and fresh every morning. A lesson learned long ago when she claimed the source of the Lombards’ link to the eternal sacred flame. It was that or risk her unfettered energy setting her surroundings ablaze. Nowadays, Domita prided herself on her control of her Gods-blessed gifts, and the water was just a precaution. Now she was glad of it.

​

Too agitated to linger, she leapt from her bath, conjured a quick blast of warm air with which to dry herself, and fumbled her way into the simplified version of a court gown that had little need for the ministrations of a maid.

 

Her jaw tightened as she cinched the constrictive corset around her already narrow waist and placed a headdress fashioned of gold and topaz around her brow. The spotted mirror, rubbed free of condensation, displayed a young woman, forehead creased with an irritated frown, olive-skinned, her hair a mass of tumbled curls wound carelessly into a loose pile. Her freckles stood out against her skin. Her brown eyes blazed with heat. She smoothed the copper folds of her gown with a hand she forced not to tremble and raised her chin.

​

She would attend the meal as her duties dictated. Perhaps these visitors were only a delegation from Battonia, with a request for more Eperan metal goods. She would watch. Listen. Learn.

​

Locking her door behind her, she hurried back along the empty passageways, one hand clenched around her eating knife, the other curved possessively around a twist of flame, ready to protect herself.

 

Outwardly composed, her thoughts were a twisted mass of confusion and anger. No matter how she tried to frame it, her instincts were rarely wrong. Her time of freedom from Battonia’s twisted religion and endless politics was over. If she breathed deeply, she could almost smell it. The spiced desert wind, rich with roast goat and ginger. The opulent, exotic perfumes and the clash and clatter of the crowded bazaars. Blinking, she refocused on the heavy grey stone. This was Epera. They were feasting the Battonian arrivals. Honouring their presence with a taste of their southern fare. A diplomatic touch only Petronella would have ordered.

 

Her heart heavy, Domita nodded at the guards as they ushered her into the Great Hall.

 

Eyes turned her way. Many eyes. Including those of the Battonian contingent. Raising her chin, she dipped a court curtsey to Petronella and Joran, engaged in conversation with their exotic guests. The walk down the Great Hall to the royal dais seemed to take forever.

 

The Battonians watched her, the light of battle in their rich brown eyes. She held their gaze as long as she could, her brow furrowing. Heavily bearded and almost hidden in his complicated robes, she could have sworn she knew one of them. There was a smirk in his eyes before he nodded coolly at her. Waiting for her to realise the inevitable.

 

But she knew. Oh, she knew.

 

The flesh on the back of her neck prickled with tension. In her mind, the trap sprang shut. Her hands were shaking as she took her seat. She had to pass the older of the two Battonians to reach it. His murmur, scented with tobacco, touched her shrinking ear. “Suhar matronis venat.” She shuddered.

Old Battonian. “Your mother sends her regards.”

 

Her eyes dropped to her platter, already heaped with a slice of spiced goat. Her fingers tightened on her knife, but she was no longer hungry.

​

It had come for her.

​

Battonia had come for her.