Devlin walked through the Silvan Forest, unknowingly following the same overgrown path his mother had taken on that fateful day sixteen summers ago. No snake reared up to bite him, but he felt bitten by a different kind of enemy: self-doubt. Up till now, he had always felt an unshakeable sense of destiny when he thought about competing in the Deadly Reckonings. Now only three sol days away, a sense of foreboding had settled like a shroud upon him. It irritated him. This was his time. The throne was his for the taking. Self-doubt had no place in his thinking. And yet his cat was unsettled, keening mournfully within him like some kind of banshee. He had hunted like a starving man, but no amount of killing could appease his animal.
He ended up visiting the small shrine near his home, hoping
