Prologue
Ash and stormlight moaned in the sky above the Morne estate. The clouds shifted like restless ghosts over the crooked spires of the ancestral manor, their edges rimmed by the sickly glow of a moon long forgotten by mercy.
Inside, the great hall of House Morne stood silent, candle flames flickering against the ancient stone, as if in mourning before the crime was committed.
Alistair Morne, head of the most feared bloodline of sorcerers in the realm, traced a rune in the air with a finger scarred by decades of wielding power. His breath was slow, his eyes dimmed by a knowing grief. He had cheated death three times, so he wasn't afraid of dying, but tonight he felt it breathe down his neck like a jealous lover.
Alistair whispered, "I should have told him."
The doors were opened.
"Father?" came the voice, soft, boyish still, though its speaker was long a man.
Caelum stood in the threshold, shadows coiled around his boots like hounds. With that familiar sweetness that never touched his eyes, he smiled, his lips quivering.
Alistair remained motionless. "Caelum, you shouldn't be here."
"I'd say the same thing."
In a single, quick stroke, the blade passed through his back and out of his chest, kissed by silence.
With a single gasp, Alistair fell to his knees, his robes leaking blood like a blossoming sigil. Behind him, his son knelt, breathing steadily. No rage, no sorrow. Just... precision.
The heavy body fell forward, and Caelum stood up.
"Valentine will arrive
From the shad
-----
He noticed the doors were open. The trail of blood. The dead hounds. The silence.
And then his father's lifeless eyes as he fell to the ground.
The guards surrounded him before he could scream, and Caelum's voice said, "He did this! He's mad! Look what he's done!"
He was taken. He was branded with a blood sigil that, like a dying bird, imprisoned his magic. He was stripped, chained, and sentenced.
Cloaked in forbidden sorcery, Valentine's mother Drusilla will stop at nothing to save her falsely accused son as they prepare the Hollowing.
She pressed trembling fingers to his chest and sobbed, "You must go." "You have to survive."
Valentine swore, his body weak from blood loss and humiliation, his voice raw, his chest burning with betrayal. "I'll come back for you," he said. He watched in horror as she dissipated into crystallized salt.
He fled under the veil of night, bleeding, panting, whispering his mother's name to the wind.
⸻
Somewhere... In the Pax home's gated silence.
With her fists clenched under her chin and Judith's laughter echoing through the corridors, Lilith Pax watched the flames flicker against the ceiling of her chambers. Isla and Kayla, her stepsisters, danced in the hallways, their happiness a purposeful insult.
Judith had ripped her letters, but her father had said nothing. Said nothing when she was slapped across the face for speaking too boldly. He signed the documents, which would send her to serve a God she no longer believed in, but he said nothing.
Too exhausted to yell and too furious to cry, Lilith Pax merely muttered to the night, "I will never forget this. I'll never be able to forgive you.
Outside her window, the wind howled.
