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.

“Our
greatest glory is not in never falling, but in

getting up
every time we do
.”

Confucius

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My
thanks to my husband, Gordon, who got us lost in Sproul State Forest, Clinton
County, PA the day this story dropped into my head. A tale given in such
agonizing detail is a gift from the Almighty Muse, and I hope I got it right.

To
Kerry Hynds of Hynds Studio for your amazing cover art, bringing the map of
Calari to life, and your patience.

To
Kelly Jesberger for your excellent editing skills and for listening to my
ridiculous ideas with a straight face.

To
my beta-readers Amy Tiracorda, LaDonna Pigg and Jamie Russler. I could not have
done this without you.

And
to those who continue to read the stories I write – I appreciate each and every
one of you.

As
Kymber Oryx once said, “Not giving up is the key to everything.”

1:
MAGNUS
TYRIX

I
f the damned summer heat didn’t kill me, the
memories surely would.

Kymber Oryx had haunted my thoughts since I
left Adamar. She’d never been one to take no for an answer, so I allowed it for
two reasons. One, I thought she’d leave me alone if she could have her say.
Two, I wanted to see one of those heart-stopping smiles again.

I wasn’t disappointed. She was running away,
though. Yes, running away but looking back, daring me to follow.

Gods, how I longed to follow her, but I could
only watch. Her neatly braided hair was the dark brown of rich earth. It caught
the sunlight as she ran, throwing golden-amber sparks, as though an unseen fire
burned within her.

Her winter-blue eyes were the most startling
contrast – like thick ice on the deepest lake. I reached out for her, but she
lingered just beyond my fingertips.

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought it:
If
I could touch her, hold her, I might be able to stop her.

I clutched my chest and doubled over, barely
able to breathe. Fitz, my horse, came to a halt, snorting and stamping his feet
against the gravel trail.

“Why?” I groaned. “Why am I doing this?”

Even as I said it, I knew I couldn’t turn back.
Jalartha was only three or four miles away. I was close. So close.

The letter from my sister Karia had nearly
broken what was left of my heart.
Please come to Jalartha. It’s been eight
long years. You and I are the last of our family. I want to see you again,
while we’re both living. Can you put the past behind you long enough to come
home?

I’d crumpled the letter up in my hand and
stared out at the ocean after I received it. Go home, after all these years?
Unthinkable. The pain of loss was not so sharp at Seacrest, my home near the
sea in Adamar. Hundreds of miles separated me from the life I’d wanted, now
beyond my reach.

But I loved my sister, my only remaining
sibling out of five. Life is, after all, for the living, so I’d penned a return
message, telling her I’d see her midsummer. I needed to honor my promise, but
the closer I got to Jalartha, the more I regretted planting my ass in the
saddle.

Agony held me in her arms for a moment then
eased off, as she always did, leaving me trembling and weak. The mighty warrior
I’d been would’ve forged on. The miserable shell I’d become wanted to die where
I stood.

I’d heard the stream off to my right as I travelled.
I saw it now, running fast and hard parallel to the road. Perhaps a drink and a
short rest were in order. I needed to collect my thoughts before I faced the
mean streets of Jalartha.

Fitz held perfectly still as I slid to the
ground and pressed my forehead against his warm, damp withers. As wave upon
wave of nausea assailed me, I tried to focus on the wind in the treetops, the birdsong,
and the sound of the small waterfall nearby. Anything to turn my mind away from
the past.

“Help me,” I whispered to no one. “Help me put
it behind me.”

It was the foolish plea of a broken man. I’d
never be able to put Kymber’s death in any kind of perspective that made sense.
My heart would forever remain buried in a grave outside of Jalartha.

If only I’d stayed with her instead of trekking
halfway across the Marilian battlefield.

If, if, if. Pointless. I wasn’t there, and I
couldn’t go back.

Slow, steady breathing helped with the nausea
but not the whirling dizziness, the sense of running headlong into a future
where I had no purpose.

I stumbled through the trees, slid down the
embankment, and dropped to my knees in a sand bar along the edge of the stream.
Scooping up a handful of water, I drank deeply, then poured the rest over my
head.

It helped a bit. I was able to calm myself
enough to note the peace of this place. If I hadn’t been so close to the city,
I would’ve pulled the blanket from my saddlebag and settled against one of the
old pines nearby for a quick nap.

Fitz nickered softly, a warning. My scattered
wits focused instantly. “What is it, old boy? Catamount? Wolves?” I rose and
pulled Bloodreign, my sword, from its sheath.

My gray gelding tossed his head and shuffled
backward several steps. He couldn’t speak, but I understood him nonetheless. I
ran up the embankment, expecting to see thieves or highwaymen.

It was a woman’s voice I heard, carried to my
ears as soon as I hit the trail.

“No. No! Stop that!” Her piercing scream echoed
off the trees, making it hard to pinpoint a direction. I tipped my head at
another scream, and another, my gaze darting over the landscape.

“Let me go, damn you!” She sounded
panic-stricken. My feet refused to move for a moment. Another shriek stiffened
my spine. I pulled Fitz off the road, taking shelter under an ancient oak. Male
voices – more than a few – soon drowned out the woman’s screams.

Off the road, the forest now acted to focus the
sound. She –
they
– were farther down the road. Near the Hoakum caves.

I sheathed my sword. Thieves were probably
accosting a carriage full of travelers. Scattering the miscreants – or killing
a few – wouldn’t take long.

“Keep calling, woman.” I tugged on Fitz’s
reins. “Help me find you.”

No worries about that. She did plenty of
shouting, followed by a string of curses so foul they’d have made a sailor
blush.

T
he Hoakum caves just
south of Jalartha were not caves, exactly. Part of the shale and sandstone
cliffs that stood behind them had collapsed at one point. It must have been
magnificent, that ancient fall of rock, heard for miles around as one long,
rolling roar of thunder.

The massive boulders had slid down the cliff
and piled up at its base, forming small, dark clefts and deep pockets in the
jumble of debris. Haunted, cursed, and inhabited by demons, if one happened to
believe in that sort of nonsense.

“Absolute silence, Fitz.” I stopped well back
in the foliage, kneeling to watch the scene unfold in the clearing before me.
It was never a good idea to intervene in a situation without first taking a
moment to observe. Moreover, I was outnumbered.

Seven . . . eight . . . nine men and a . . .
I’d thought I’d heard a
woman calling for help. The person struggling in
the grip of two men was a…

Hm. I had no idea. If it truly was a woman, her
brown hair was cut short, so ragged I thought perhaps a blind barber had taken
a blade to it. The clothing she wore was mismatched and too large for her: a
faded tan tunic riddled with holes, and gray leggings tucked into tightly laced
deerskin boots.

I narrowed my eyes. Were those small breasts
pressing against the tunic?

Yes, they were. A woman, then, though she was
slight and thin as a child.

After a time, the men grew weary of her
desperate struggles and began to shove her back and forth between them,
taunting her with words I couldn’t make out. She swung at them with closed
fists, quickly tiring herself. She fell to her knees, head hanging, shoulders
heaving with the effort of breathing.

“Ha! On your knees. A good place for the likes
of you,” a man in a brick red tunic and light tan breeches – the ringleader I
thought – said with a sneer. “Get her on her feet.”

Two men snatched her off the ground, wedging
her body between them, leaving her dangling several inches above the rocky
turf. Defeated, she went limp, like a mink pelt nailed to the wall.

Redshirt stood smiling, smug and cocky, his
hand on the hilt of his sword. The others busied themselves carrying things out
of the cave and tossing them onto a heap. I saw pots and dented kettles, wooden
spears, rusted knives, clothing, and half-tanned animal hides added to the
growing pile outside. The woman they’d captured had apparently been living in
the caves. How long had it taken her to amass the goods that now stood as high
as Redshirt’s waist?

There was nothing terribly valuable on that mound
of junk. What did they want of her? I moved closer in order to hear them better.

“Where are your potions, witch?” Redshirt
asked.

“I have no potions, you brainless twit.” The
woman kicked at him. “I’m not a witch, and you know it. You just want to steal
from me.”

Redshirt ran a hand through his dark hair, a
predatory smile on his face. “It’s not against the law to deprive a witch of
her things, and thus, her ability to harm folks. Is it, Gand?”

A blond man with a dreadful limp threw several
cooking utensils onto the pile and shook his head. “Lots of knives and weapons
in there. Wonder who she was plannin’ to murder?”

The woman clenched her fists. “Every single one
of you, if I get free.”

The thieves erupted into hearty laughter. “And
there it is, from the mouth of a witch,” Redshirt said. “An admission of
guilt.”

And then . . . then the woman executed a
maneuver I’d seen only once before, expertly done by another young woman who’d
been lifted and left hanging between her mischievous brothers. She swung
herself back, forward, back, forward, picking up speed and momentum.

A wry smile curved my lips. “That’s it,
sweetheart.” This would end badly for at least one of those men.

She used her legs and what little body weight
she had to pivot backward as fast as she could.
Last one
, I thought as
she began the forward arc.

When she was as high as possible, she flung her
legs outward and forced her heels back. I inadvertently cupped my testicles and
grimaced when the unfortunate bastards who held her each had a bare foot
planted firmly in his crotch.

Predictably, they dropped her like a hot rock.
She landed nimbly on the balls of her feet and surged toward Redshirt, snatching
at the knife tucked into his leather belt with her left hand.

I jumped to my feet to watch, nearly bursting
out of my own skin. I’d seen that done before too, a thousand years ago in
another lifetime. She missed the hilt of Redshirt’s blade by less than an inch
– I heard her curse as her fingers brushed over it – but she tucked in, spun,
and went after it again.

Mouth open, I stared. This woman had seen
combat training. There was no doubt in my mind, but I knew of only one who
could claim that honor. Shaking like a leaf in the wind, I whispered her name. “Kymber
Oryx.”

No. No, it
couldn’t
be her. She was
dead. Dead these past ten years, and I should know, for she’d taken my heart
with her.

Redshirt jerked to one side as she flew by. She
was as lithe as a cat stalking along a narrow ledge, but she missed again.

Oh. Her right hand. There was something wrong
with it. It didn’t seem to want to cooperate with her.

“Come on, woman, you can do this,” I murmured,
but the effort had clearly worn her out. She sagged, stumbled, giving her tormentors
enough time to catch her.

Redshirt pulled his sword. “I’ve had just about
enough of you.”

“No. Don’t do it!” I watched, horrified, as he
lifted the hilt high over his head and dropped it, slamming it against her left
temple.

I winced as her head snapped to one side and
her knees buckled. Inexplicably, our eyes met across the distance, a mere
heartbeat before the half-starved woman collapsed into the dirt and lay still.

“Gods,” I breathed and blinked, then blinked again,
my flesh crawling. I dug my fingers hard into my thighs, trying to wake myself
up.

Was I dreaming? No, I knew those eyes. Those
icy, icy blue eyes.

There was only one woman in Calari who’d had
eyes of that color.

Mouth as dry as dust, I stood there and stared.
I didn’t care if they saw me. I didn’t give a damn if the whole fucking world
burned to the ground.

The woman they were tormenting
was
Kymber
Oryx.

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