He watched her leave the balcony with narrowed eyes. “Good day, princess.”

CHAPTER 4

LUCIA

PAELSIA

He’d asked her to call him Kyan.

He didn’t look much older than twenty years of age. He had dark blond hair, sparkling amber eyes, and was taller than any man Lucia had ever known.

Immortal and indestructible. Omnipotent and fearsome. Able to end a mortal’s life in a flash of fire and pain with a mere thought. He was the elemental god of fire, previously imprisoned within an orb of amber for countless centuries.

And now he sat right across from her, slurping barley soup in a small public house in northern Paelsia.

“This,” Kyan said as he signaled to the barmaid for another bowl, “is absolutely delicious.”

Lucia regarded him with disbelief. “It’s just soup.”

“You say that as if this isn’t a miracle contained within a wooden bowl. This is sustenance that feeds both the body and the soul. Mortals could live off unseasoned meat and plucked grass and yet they choose to make concoctions that smell and taste divine. If only they applied their minds to everything in this manner, rather than wasting their time squabbling about mundane topics and killing each other for petty reasons.”

When they’d first met, she’d expected him to lay waste to Mytica immediately in his quest to assassinate his enemy—a Watcher named Timotheus who, according to Kyan, was the only remaining immortal who had the power to imprison him again.

At the time, she’d been so numb with grief she hadn’t been able to think straight. Her pain was so great that it was the only thing she’d wanted to share with the world.

Lucia wondered what her father and brother might say if they could see her now, sitting in a tavern, across from the soup-eating fire Kindred. The thought almost made her smile.

“Eat.” Kyan pointed to Lucia’s bowl.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Do you want to wither away and die?” He raised a pale brow. “Is that what you’re doing? Starving yourself so you can be reunited with your beloved Watcher?”

Whenever Kyan said the word Watcher, his expression darkened and his amber eyes flashed bright blue.

Anger. Hatred. The need for vengeance. They simmered just beneath the otherwise genteel exterior of this powerful being.

It was much the same whenever Lucia heard Alexius’s name. The pain of having learned that he, too, had used her for his own gain had faded in the days since she’d lost him. The scar tissue that wound had left behind had grown thicker, tougher, as protective as a plate of armor.

No one would ever use her like that again.

“No,” she replied. “Believe me, I want to live.”

“I’m very glad to hear that.”

Lucia stared down at her bowl and brought a spoonful of soup to her lips. “This is watery and tasteless.”

Kyan reached over and took some for himself to sample. “To you, perhaps. But that doesn’t make it less of a miracle.”

The miracle Lucia wanted to come upon most of all was a witch—the older and more knowledgeable the better. They needed one who knew where to find a very special kind of stone wheel used as a magical porthole leading directly to the Sanctuary, the legendary world of the immortals, where the Watchers had stood guard over the Kindred in their crystal prisons for millennia.

Lucia had wanted to know why neither she nor Kyan—as powerful as they both were—could sense this magic without outside help. He explained that there was no magic to sense, that such magic had been hidden to protect the Sanctuary from outside threats.

Therefore, they didn’t need a witch’s magic to find these stone wheels, they needed a witch who’d seen one with her own eyes and knew what it was.

Once they found one, only then could Lucia use her magic to yank Timotheus right out of his safe haven.

Lucia realized Kyan was watching her and she looked up from her bowl.

“You still want to help me, don’t you?” he asked, his voice softer now.

She nodded. “Of course. I hate Watchers as much as you do.”

“I highly doubt that. But I’m sure there’s no love lost between you after all that’s happened.” He sighed. Suddenly, he looked very mortal to Lucia. Very vulnerable, and very tired. “Once Timotheus is dead, perhaps I can finally find peace.”

“As soon as he’s dead, we’ll find your family, and then you can find peace,” she replied. “And anyone who gets in our way will be very, very sorry.”

“My fierce little sorceress.” He grinned at her. “You remind me so much of Eva. She protected us, too. She was the only one who understood what we wanted—what we needed—more than anything else.”

“To be free, and to be a real family.”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t common knowledge that the Kindred weren’t just magical forces trapped within crystals. They were elemental beings, with hopes and dreams and goals. Yet all who believed in their existence, including Lucia’s adoptive father, King Gaius, thought them to be nothing more than shiny treasures that would bring ultimate power to their possessors.

Once she and Kyan had summoned Timotheus from the Sanctuary, she would drain the Watcher of his magic until he became mortal.

And then Lucia would kill him, just as she had Melenia.

She had taken such pleasure in the death of that beautiful immortal—a woman who’d corrupted Alexius to the point he’d nearly murdered Lucia. She’d used Lucia’s blood to escape her own prison and awaken Kyan, her former lover.

But the pain in Melenia’s eyes, just before her death, when she’d realized Kyan had never loved her back . . .

Such sweet, sweet vengeance.

“What if we find a witch and she refuses to help us?” Lucia asked. “Will we have to torture her?”

“Torture?” He frowned. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Your magic will be sufficient to help get us what we need.”

She knew her magic was more powerful than a common witch’s, but she’d only started to scratch the surface. She yearned to know more. “What do you mean?”

“Eva had a golden dagger, which she would use to carve symbols into people’s flesh—both immortal and mortal alike. The wounds would ensure obedience and truthfulness in any subject she chose.”

This dagger had to have been what Melenia had used on Alexius to manipulate his mind, force him to do her bidding, and try to kill Lucia. Her greedy act should have ended with Lucia’s death, but instead, Alexius had taken his own life.

Lucia wanted so badly to forgive him, knowing that he’d been manipulated. But so much damage had already been done, and she didn’t have the strength to muster up any more compassion.

“So Eva had a fancy magical dagger,” she said now, shrugging. “How does that story help me?”

“Eva could compel truth and obedience from mortals even without the dagger. It was a combination of all of her magic, blending the elements together to create something new—something beyond what anyone else could do. Manipulating one’s very will and molding it into a different shape. Drawing truth from a reluctant tongue. The same magic that the dagger had been infused with at its creation was the magic she possessed naturally. You possess it, too, little sorceress.”