How could two siblings be so utterly different from each other?
Magnus had no true friends, apart from his sister. No one knew him—not really. Even during the past summer on the Isle of Lukas, where many royals and nobles from around the world sent their children to hone their skills in the arts, few went out of their way to speak with him in a manner that felt truly genuine. Which was fine with him. He preferred to be alone whenever possible.
The only thing he gained from that summer was a sketchbook filled with useless scribbles. Lucia, however, thought they were great works of art, especially a portrait he’d done of her from memory.
“All right,” he mumbled to himself, his eyes still shut. “Let’s pretend to be a proper prince who has the love and respect of the infamous King of Blood, shall we?”
He drew in a sharp breath of frosty air and turned around to return to his father and the others.
But it wasn’t Gaius’s steely gaze that met him. A woman stood only a couple of feet before him. The black hood of her cloak hung heavily around her deeply wrinkled face. Her mouth turned down at the sides in a frown, her jowls hanging like saddlebags. Her eyes, a faded green and cold, peered down at him with distaste.
“So you’re the one I will send this time,” she rasped out.
Magnus’s surprise turned to disdain. “Step back from me, old woman. I have no patience for beggars today.”
She pursed her thin, colorless lips. “I’m no beggar. But I do get what I need, by whatever means necessary.”
“Really.” He pushed up against the stone statue, his height now dwarfing that of the hunched woman. “Do you know who I am?”
“Prince Magnus, son of King Gaius Damora.”
He raised his chin. “Then you should know not to bother me.”
The woman smiled at him, a cold smile that matched their icy surroundings. “You don’t believe, do you?” she asked.
“Believe in what?”
“Magic.”
He shrugged. “I have yet to see proof of magic, but many claim its existence.”
“You watched a witch die today. You heard her screams as clearly as I did until they finally ceased.”
He cringed as the memory returned to him, fresh and raw. “She was put to death for her crimes.”
“Crimes,” she scoffed. “Accusations only. If she was a witch, she was too weak even to help herself in the end. Someone like that isn’t any threat to your father’s kingdom. He prefers his victims like that—those who can’t, or won’t, defend themselves. Those he can hold up as an example, so others will fear him. Your father has mistaken fear for respect. But a discussion of your father’s shortcomings is not what I’m here for today. No, today, Prince Magnus, you are going to do me a favor, and in doing so, you will come to fully believe in magic.”
He scanned the garden, looking for a sign of one of the palace guards who might have been sent to check on the errant prince. “Is that so?”
“Try as you might, you can’t fool me with your seeming apathy toward everything. I know that you feel. I know that you hurt. I know that you could be brave if you’d allow yourself the chance. And I know you will be of value to me today.”
Her words were painful, like small pebbles pushed up under his fingernails. “Like I said before, old woman, I have no time for beggars.”
“And like I said before, I am no beggar.” She drew her hands out from beneath her cloak, and Magnus felt his stomach drop to his knees. In her right hand, she held a sharp shard of shiny black rock. Her left hand wasn’t a hand at all—it resembled the foot of a hawk, bearing pointed, curved talons.
Magnus’s stunned gaze snapped to hers. “What are you?”
She raised her wrinkled brow. “Nothing you’ve ever known before.”
Before he could move or speak again, she clasped his left wrist with her talons and, moving so swiftly he didn’t have a chance to pull away, sliced the tip of the black shard into the palm of his hand. The pain was swift, and the blood dripped from the wound she made: a circle with a jagged line through the middle of it.
“What—?” Magnus yanked his hand back from her, staring at her with horror. “Are you insane, woman? My father will have your head when he learns of this!”
“Your father won’t learn anything of this, because, my dear prince, when this all over, you won’t remember what has happened here today. A pity, really. I see great potential in you.”
He fisted his wounded hand and stared at her in shock.
“That,” the woman said, “was the last bit of magic left within my obsidian blade.”
“You will die for this,” he promised her.
“No I won’t.”
He attempted to storm off, or to shout to alert the others, but he suddenly couldn’t seem to move or speak.
“Something to say to me?” she asked calmly, after watching him struggle for a few moments.