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CHAPTER ONE

ENDINGS, THE POET Tanja Duhr once wrote, were deceptive things No story truly came to a final stop, no poem described the last of the last—they could not, not until the world and the gods and ti was a literary device In truth, the end of one story, or one life, carried the seeds for the next

The idea of seeds and new beginnings offered Ilse Zhalina little consolation

It was late su over into auturay Six weeks had passed since she had abandoned Raul Kosenhting off an io, Leos of Károví, once called the i, had died, and she had witnessed Lir’s jewels reunited into a single alien creature, who then disappeared into the s, to be sure, and soun to comprehend And yet she lived on, she and Valara Baussay

Ilse crouched over the ashes of their ca to war of sweat and sht, Ilse had been convinced they would never survive Inadequate clothing, inadequate supplies She had since acquired a knitted cap and a woolen coat, once the property of a man much taller and heavier than she He was dead now A sword slash, ringed with bloodstains, marked where she had killed him Underneath, she still wore her own cotton shirt froination take flight, shepast, of that brief interlude with Raul Kosenmark

Raul My love

She pressed both hands against her eyes She was hungry, hungry and cold and consureater than any physical need She wished … oh, but to wish for Raul was irant herself the luxury of grief, not yet Not until she and Valara Baussay had escaped this hostile land

Her breath shivering inside her, she wished instead for a scalding hot fire A perfuht of scented baths in this wilderness, she alh, and she had to pause and recover herself before she could continue her list of wants and desires Clean clothes, strong coffee, a book to read in warmth and quiet A feast of roasted lareen peppercorn

Her iination failed her at the subsequent courses There could be no fire until daybreak, not unless she wished to signal her presence to any chance patrols frohtened with the approaching dawn, but day caht, here in the far north of Károví It would be another hour before she could risk a fire She shuddered froht of enemies in pursuit

Her cohtly in a blanket, and as close to the fire as possible In the diest of her tattoos, at the outside corner of her left eye, was visible—an elaborate pattern of interlocking squares, drawn in reddish-brown ink, that formed a diamond A second, siuishable in the shadows Syh Valara had said nothing of theirin the few months of their acquaintanceship It was difficult to remember, when Valara slept, that she was a queen of Morennioù Awake, it was iet

We have never been true friends, not in any of our lives But froood allies

Not in every life They had been enemies as well, or if not true eneo, in one of those past lives, Valara had been a prince of Károví As Andrej Dzavek, he and his brother had stolen Lir’s jewels from the emperor, then fled to their homeland, in those days a princedom of the empire In that same life, Ilse had been a princess betrothed to Leos Dzavek in a political e

Andrej Dzavek had regretted his treason He had led the iainst Károví and his brother, only to die on the battlefield Ilse Zhalina had attedoic, lived on for centuries At some point, Ilse and Valara Baussay would both have to confront all the complications of their past lives

Her hands were as wared her knitted cap low over her forehead and drew her hands inside the sleeves of her ill-fitting coat Moving as quietly as she could e, she crept up the slope and peered between the two slabs of rock that overshadowed their ca plains They had made camp, such as it was, in a narrow fold of land, its banks streith rocks Pine and spruce once grew here, but now only a few dead trees remained At the bottom of the fold ran a stream, fed by summer rains and meltwater from the western rateful to have wood for fire, water to drink, and a shelter to hide in

All was quiet Rain had fallen in the night, and a cool da of rance, and the earthier scents of rass and wildflowers Even as she watched, a thin ribbon of light unfurled along the eastern horizon, changing the black

expanse into a pale ocean of grass, bowing in wave after wave, like those fro mass of shadow to the ould be the Železny Mountains, which divided the Károvín plains frodom’s westernmost province of Duszranjo Within a day’s march here she and Valara were to meet with Duke Miro Karasek

A flicker of shadow caught her eye—a blurred speck of rass Ilse unhooked the buttons of her coat and checked her feeapons—the sword at her belt, the knife in her boot, and the one in her wrist sheath All ithin easy reach She stared at the point where she had sighted the shadow Not a patrol, she told herself It was too small and swift a movement A solitary rider?

Then the light ticked upward, and she sahat it was—a fox, gliding through the tall grass A breath of laughter escaped her She eased back toward the banked fire Valara stirred andof past lives?

I’ve drea since Leos died

She rubbed her forehead with the back of her wrist

… Leos Dzavek’s hand tightened around the ruby jewel, its light spilling through his fingers like blood … Magic burst against ain, she saw Leos crushed beneath the marble pedestal, his eyes blank and white, like a winter snowfall He was dying, dying, dying but he would not release his hold upon her, and she felt her soul slipping into the void betorlds …

No! Dzavek was dead, his soul was in flight to its next life, and the jewels had returned as one to the ods She pulled off the cap and raked her fingers through her knotted hair The lurid iht of sunrise