he tempest hadn't waylaid our trip, and we knew luck had little hand in it. The ship, still battling its way through buffeted seas, was fortified with endless layers of magic and spells. None of them the work of any of the passengers aboard. They had been inked and cast long before we left the port three nights ago by hands that were powerful and unholy, capable of wielding such dark sorcery.

Three full days of doing nothing but waiting and plotting and scheming. And starving. There had been no provisions hauled in the many crates and boxes piled in the bow or stacked in the lower rooms. Only corpses—so many of them. I didn't know who they had been, what role they had plaid, what mistake they had done to be killed in our lands. Almost eight thousand years of war had driven so many mad, had wrecked their nerves and patience. Their hope.

We didn't ask about them. Didn't even show any sign of disgust at the choking stench, or at how the ship had dipped so many times beneath the water—unlike so many.

There were months at sea between Cantelot and Eziara through a steady weather, and with how it had not stopped raining for almost a week, war would have erupted by the time we reached the shore would the ship not have been charmed. Would it not have sailed as fast as the winds, almost detaching itself from the very water until we were months' worth of sailing from Cantelot. Even then, it still fed on the magic that encircled it in the shape of black clouds that bled with the endless-spreading fog. The magic that had made it so powerful it went underwater, protected by a thick barrier so we remained as dry as we could get from the continuous rain.

We'd sailed under the water, in the dark, for hours that should've been weeks, alongside creatures that peered at us from their caves. Monsters and nightmares that guarded Eziara's lands from any unwelcomed outsider had coiled around us, had stared at each face, had sniffed and seemed to taste every lick of fear filling the boat.

Indeed, those hands that charmed this watercraft were to be feared.

And now, still rooted to the rotting wood of my seat, head resting on Sédil's shoulder—and hers gently on mine—I could see the far lands through the edge of my vision. But every focus had been on the platform as the three males in our company sparred and trained, throwing old knives they'd found in some forgotten kits, and trying the full extent of their claws.

Even in starving bodies so thin bones jutted from the skin, they still demanded attention with the precision they moved, with the swift, sharp punches, with glowing steel sprouting out of their fingers. Sédil, Leyath, and I had trained for days before, sometimes alone, sometimes all six at once. Each time, there had been an audience, hard, wrecked eyes on us—lascivious as they took in every inch of our bodies. The first time, there had been Luthian's—Veidor's—fists as a warring. The second, it ended with a treat to the monsters lurking under us. None dared a move ever since.

Leyath, who was standing to my immediate right, leaning her weight on the rails, seemed bored to the bones from the show that had been going on for hours. Her black eyes slid to mine, then snuck a glance at Sédil before drifting to that piece of land another good few hours to come.

She dreaded it.

We all did. But perhaps we had become accustomed to the bitter taste under our tongues, perhaps our body became used to the cold fear gnawing at our bones, licking at our blood and flesh after months of enduring it.

Nothing—nothing—of the horrors we'd seen underwater was enough to shake me. Nothing had been strong enough after the nightmares I'd read and glimpsed in the pages of the old tome. After I'd stared at eyes the color of blood and a mirror to death. Blake's eyes. It was the mere thought of going to his home, to stare for hours at that brutal coldness forged within a fiery passion to destroy locked inside those bleeding irises that had me awake for nights. That had me curling in an attempt to warm a coldness that was deeper than skin.

I'd wondered sometimes if Aedis dreamed of them, too, if he'd ever jolted awake in his bed in the Prelius Chateau looking for a pair of glowing, red eyes hidden in the darkness. I'd only known the answer last night, when I'd sought the cold air to ease my mind, and found him leaning against the same rail Leyath was pressed against, staring at the unending seas as though he could see him in his castle, could almost perceive those eyes. As though he saw them both, the man who had sired him and the king he served, at the far end and waiting for us. We held each others for hours, finding warmth despite the rain.

But I didn't tell Leyath this. Only said in our tongue, in its thick and ancient accent, "They should be the ones fearing our approach.''

A smirk lined those lips. The sister of the Shadow, and a Shadow herself.

"We'll wreck them, shatter them from the inside.'' Not a question, I noted. I still nodded and watched as that smirk grew wider, darker. "Then let's make it count.''

I smirked back. And it was Sédil, vision drifting from the continent we neared, who had voiced a whim we all had fed within us for months now. "A drop of blood for every one they took from us."

We'd all heard it, but only the six of us understood the words spoken in a hiss. The word inside them. Revenge—nothing but a burning revenge. At the demons who had taken our loved ones, who had brought down cities and countries, who had left nothing, spared no one.

For a heartbeat, I remembered the day at Ramos's office back in the Norm, remembered his words about her brother and mother that now laid dead. Remembered that day mere weeks ago, on the balcony of her suite as she told me a story I already knew—as she bared a face that was raw and broken and unlike the Mayra she showed the world.

That face had turned into Sédil—into the huntress who would hunt down the very king and queen she would serve. A wrath finally unleashed.

"It is the very first visit from our kind to theirs," said Dier, coming to stand along us, the sparring and training done for the day, the crowd dissolving to attend to the boat and its captain's orders to prepare for the anchoring. "We'll make them remember it, even when they are nothing but broken souls and judged bounders."

We would. We'd all vowed as much.

There was a moment of silence between us, even the shouting of men and tossing of ropes distant in my ears. The rain stopped. And we all stared at the approaching first bit of Eziara. At the barely visible minarets and towers that must have been behemoth up close. At our first battlefield.

"I've seen—with my troupes—over the years what they've done in the frozen continent.'' Not Rimelia, not when the name did not change in this language, not when it would capture attentions like a magnet. "I've witnessed the terrors they forced on those living there,'' Luthian's eyes slid to me, "there is no telling what we'll see. What we'll have to do."

To kill. I'd killed so many before—demons and their dogs. Had done it with such an ease at mind. But to prove a feigned loyalty, there truly was no telling what we would have to go through. They all had killed, both bloods on their hands because sometimes killing was more efficient a way at saving than anything else. And only I remained, hands cleaner than the rest, even with all that destruction I'd brought.

"Have you all sworn your oaths?''

The Fallens at my side all barely nodded. Kalazin demanded a price, a reason to be used, a trigger. An oath. Because taking one's own soul was the greatest, despised act to the Gods, and to do so with a poison Ramos's viziers and men of information believed, after long studies, had dropped from the hands of the Gods—or had been forced by their strength from the deepest pits of hell to our own grasp—was nothing to be set aside.

My eyes snuck their glances at Aedis. Who was staring back. He'd taken it the moment Leyath had placed the stone in his hand with no mild reluctance, with no wondering. He'd known what to say. And I'd heard his oath echo through and within me, had not liked it, had begged he could change it.

He knew that, too. Had caught my eyes when we'd got on the boat and had felt every bit of apprehension his oath had threw me into.

To fall, shall any be caught. To fall, shall it be a way to secure their safety. To fall, shall my queen be in danger, so she lives—her, and all of them.

He was still holding my gaze when I whispered to his mind:

Promise me, now and here and until the end of the world we know—to never put your soul for mine. To never give yours for me. No matter what happens, no matter the cost.

A contradiction to the one he'd taken, a piece of salvation. No, he would not die for me. None of them would. Even if I had to bargain it with the Five, to give whatever bit of chance of surviving there was.

I waited for long for his reply, his words only caresses to my mind.

Promise me to believe, and to survive. Only then you can hold me to your promise, and I hold you to mine.

Those words still echoed as the ship reached Eziara's first port.

The guards' eyes were on us. Sharp and focused on every movement, and not only ours, but everyone who roamed the barracks.

The ship had rested in the port about an hour ago and no one had uttered a word in our direction as we took our own path. Only those eyes stationed every here and there, spies and guards, observing.

The habited cities were still a good few hours away, the capital more to the north than the port had been, built on massive lands and ending on the lip of a stretching beach into the Beheaded, the name of the sea it overlooked. Rumors claimed all the dungeons' dead were thrown into it, more than hundreds of thousands piling in its bottom, thus the deep, red waters that stretched for miles, growing a bit each year. Even on the maps, in the old class books, the Beheaded was painted red.

A rattle reverberated from our right and we turned, Fallen and dispersed guards, towards the source of the sound, weapons in hands. But it was nothing more than a boy—not older than nine—dressed in training clothes and swinging two old buckets of water hanging from a long piece of wood thrown on his back and shoulders. He squinted in the dark, noting the split, iridescent irises from beneath our hoods. Then the gleaming claws ready to claw and carve him at the mere wrong footstep.

So young to be training in empty lands, only dotted by crumbling buildings and endless training yards. So young to be able to perceive and seize warriors so easily. But we shrugged him off, watched as he carried the buckets to the nearest building, struggling against their weight, and kept on moving. We were no more than shadows blurred in the night. The rain had at last stopped, but the clouds remained, and the moon behind them didn't send all his might. It was the same moon overlooking Cantelot, but there, it seemed bigger, brighter. The Ardorian moon was perhaps twelve times bigger than the one Earth knew, but here in Eziara, it seemed as though it tried to shriek away from this hell, saving its light to where most needed.

The barracks were not lighted, either. No fires, nothing past the candles lit inside the buildings. But in the far lands we still needed to reach, there were lights. Warm and flickering and bright—so bright we could see them from here. And next to those lights, there were the minarets, barely visible, the black stones they were made off scarcely catching and reflecting the silent moonlight. So massive, even from so far.

Leyath had told us they were the Infinites, named so because of the endless swirls of stairs that led to the top. None used them unless they wished to waste half of their lives ramping up the old steps. Only winged demons could access the rooms blessed with windows as wide as doors. Watching towers, fifteen scattered all over the capital—Evanor— and the nearby cities, meant to represent the fifteen guard and shadows at the king or queen's command. And from the shores the barracks were built on, we could only make four out of them all.

Around the capital and its encircling cities, Leon's sister had told us as we walked, was built a siege. A colossus wall made of the same black stones as the Infinites and rounding Evanor, protecting it. It was where life throbbed here, where everything emerged from, and anyone living outside of that barrier was unlooked at, forgotten. It was a way, keeping everyone secured in confines. But it would have brought more troubles than good if we ever used it in Cantelot, if we ever told our people just how hopeless we'd became.

We all listened as Leyath kept on sliding information, her mind as sharp a weapon as the knives and swords she wielded so perfectly. Two warriors forged in one body, one brutal and deadly, one keen and thriving for knowledge. There had been whispers in the castle, even before I'd met her, where so many believed Rhiannon Prelius might be the youngest to earn a golden cloak amongst Ramos's—and the Armdeses's—viziers and all-wise men.

Those viziers were who we returned to should we seek old knowledge and information, when researches were months long and tiring. Some were a thousand years old, some only a couple hundred, all directed by Ramos, all obeying to him and the Armedes name only. And Rhiannon had been one of the Court Leader's favored mind, a perfect arrow in our arsenal; one who he'd followed every record since she was in the Fifth Norm. She would be the youngest and the first one in a long while to ever obtain a seat on the Mind's seat should she survive the upcoming years. Should any of us do after the war. But I never knew if she truly wanted that seat. I doubted she knew the answer herself.

We kept on walking, striding the long paths ahead, taking turns and turns, only stopping to breathe every now and then and discover the surroundings. I constantly made sure my hood was intact in its place, careful not to let my hair be seen, not after it had gleamed under the caress of the soft moonlight like silver rendered silk on my scalp and caught everyone's attention on the boat.

At times, presences alarmed the hidden bit of my spirit, trailing cold fingers down my skin. But I couldn't orient my magic yet, couldn't discern from where they came, who and what they were. I felt as lost as I had been after first arriving to Ardoria.

I was staring at the Infinites that only grew bigger as we approached, the buildings seeming to stretch into the Thrones—and perhaps diving equally this deep into hell—when a flash of magic ran through the world around us.

It had felt like fire as it lashed at my skin, had burned flesh and bones and magic all at once. Then, we were pushed to the dirt-covered ground, faces pressed against it hard. Coldness bit at my skin. Fire burned in my throat, smoke in my lungs. I could barely make out the echo of the coughing around, of the approaching footsteps. It crashed down on us, lash after lash, invisible and swift. So swift and foreign by the time my own new magic riled to fight, it had receded only lightly, standing in long, tick bars ahead and around us. A cage.

The world blurred, the faraway lights morphing into long and sleek fiery creatures. The clouds swallowed the moon.

And from behind that cage, a wicked smile greeted us. And a pair of red, currant-colored eyes.