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Greyham didn't flinch. “You are not known for your honor, Sebastian.”

  Xander tried again to interrupt. “Please, everyone, let's be seated and begin. We are accomplishing nothing here.”

  Sebastian ignored him. “Honor, Greyham, does not slink into a country, hiding behind smiles and promises, and slide onto a throne that was not empty. Honor does not play games by setting a betrothal as a peace endeavor and then snatching it away before the marriage can take place. Honor does not sit in the chair across the table and speak of peace when there can be none.”

  He swung his hard gaze back to Nicholas Erlane. “My Council tells me I should parley, but I do not accept parley. There is no parley that could ever bring an accord between our nations. No restitution will recompense for the betrayals of this sniveling, conniving creature who purported to be a friend to our family and then brought destruction on us all.”

  “Destruction?” Nicholas Erlane asked calmly. “Surely, you misremember, Your Grace. Or were the reports of the palace coup you incited simply a children's story?”

  Sebastian leaned forward, taking the table in an iron grip. “The Lismarian crown has been in my family for generations, dating back to the treaty between Dragonkind, Seer Fey, and my ancestor, Aarkan the Firebringer. Every drop of blood that has run through the veins of the kings since then has carried that same lineage, and every upset, conspiracy, or coup, whether great or small, has been within the familial bloodlines of Aarkan the Great. Never had Lismaria been without an Andrachen king until Nicholas Erlane of Sanlia imposed himself upon the Lismarian people.” Sebastian dropped his voice to a whisper, but each word, he enunciated, clear, separate, distinct. “You stole my throne, you whoreson.”

  Xander leaped to his feet at the same time as Nicholas Erlane's men, outrage twisting their expressions. Greyham shoved his chair aside and started around the table. Sebastian's guards caught his arms and wrestled him to the wall, where hatred darkened his glare. Nicholas Erlane's face did not change from his imperturbable calm, which made Sebastian even angrier.

  “One moment, if you please, gentlemen,” Xander called. “Please, let us have order.” He spread his hands as Erlane's men slowly sank into their seats again. Greyham nodded to the guards, and they allowed him to return to his seat. His jaw was still hard, but he said nothing else. “Now, it is true that Lismaria and West Ashwynd have been embroiled in tension for nearly two decades, but peace will never be reached without some compromise on both sides. Your Grace,” Xander turned to Sebastian.

  Sebastian tilted his chin, waiting for the words to come. He knew what was on the parchment; he'd read the treaty several times over, knew it would only take the set of his seal on wax to finalize everything, knew that the Council pleaded silently with him to do just that. They feared war; he did not.

  “Your Grace, the treaty states that if Nicholas Erlane is permitted to rule in perpetuity the eastern portion of Lismaria, from the Northern reaches of the Sand Flats all the way to the Southern delta of the River Trifecta where it winds through the Midland Ridges, he will return to you ClarenVale, your former home and the Capital of Lismaria, while he shall then rule between the Marshlands of Cayne and the Dreadwood Forest.”

  “Essentially splitting the kingdom of Lismaria between you two,” Greyham said. Erlane smiled at his commander's peaceful tone, and Sebastian gritted his teeth.

  “Aye.”

  Sebastian said nothing. His jaw throbbed where he'd screwed it so tightly shut; he was uncertain he would ever speak again.

  “So, then Your Grace, in exchange for this rather large portion of land, along with the benefits it brings to our country, crops, soldiers, and creatures, they ask only one thing.”

  Sebastian merely nodded for Xander to continue.

  “The Amulet of the Ancients, Your Grace. Nicholas Erlane has been told that it is in your keeping.”

  Sebastian sucked his breath in an angry hiss. The Amulet had been his downfall four months ago when the silver-eyed young man had laid it into his own palms, palms that had been crusted with ice and pain ever since. The boy's image burned into his mind; if he ever saw the lad again, he would kill him without thought, without mercy, and without guilt.

  The white-haired Lismarian King's gaze fastened to Sebastian's, the indigo alight with interest and ... greed, perhaps?

  Pain shot to Sebastian's temples, his jaw was so tight. “And what would you want with the Amulet?”

  Erlane leaned forward, spreading his thin fingers across the wood grain. “My interest is my own.”

  “So you would take the Amulet that came to my family as a result of a centuries-old treaty?”

  “Rumor has it, Sebastian, that you wish to destroy the Amulet.”

  “And why,” Sebastian asked, “would I destroy the very thing that gave such power to my family in the first place?”

  “Because,” Nicholas answered, “that power never came to you; it ran only through your brother's blood.”

  Xander turned frost-white as the words blistered Sebastian's ears. The treaty dropped from his lifeless fingers, and his mouth hung slack.

  Nicholas Erlane remained unaffected by the pall of silence. “So, Sebastian,” he dragged out the name, “shall you sign the treaty?”

  Sebastian's answering smile was not a friendly one. He finally parted stilted lips. “I'm afraid we can have no accord,” he murmured, and any movement around the table died. “The Amulet of the Ancients is no longer in my possession.”

  Sebastian shot a glance at Commander Lanier, and the dark-haired man turned his attention to his fidgeting hands.

  Nicholas Erlane's false smile froze on his face. A tumult of whispers circled the Lismarian Council members, and Greyham pulled away from the rest, reaching for the furled parchment in the middle of the table. He unrolled it as if to assure himself of its contents. “If it is no longer in your possession, Sebastian, what may have become of it?”

  Sebastian smirked. He couldn't help it. They all looked so lost.

  “I have sent it to its destruction.”

  Nicholas Erlane jerked to his feet. “The Amulet of the Ancients cannot be destroyed save by blood ritual between Dragons, Seer Fey, and Man!”

  “Indeed,” Sebastian replied calmly. “But it can rest comfortably on the floor of the Northern Sea, out of reach of mortal man, fodder for fish and sea monsters alike.” He shrugged. “I had to be rid of the thing that was dragging my house into ruin. It was a matter of honor.”

  Greyham flinched beneath Sebastian's last dart, and Nicholas Erlane's indigo gaze blazed a fiery path across the table. Without a word, the Lismarian king strode toward the exit, his diplomats doddering behind him.

  * * *

  In his dreams, Sebastian could never flee fast enough. Tonight, he raced across uneven, damp ground, the mud oozing around his boots with every impact of his foot. Behind him, he could hear the steady jog of a pursuer’s even pace. Sebastian lengthened his stride, charging through the mist that rose into the darkness, but the pursuer's tread grew closer and closer.

  Sweating, gasping, terrified, Sebastian ran headlong into a wall, a cliff that rose high above him, so high that he couldn't see the top. Even if it had been daylight, even if the sun had blazed onto that cliff, he knew the top would be forever beyond reach.

  A stick snapped behind Sebastian, and he whirled, watching the dark shapes moving toward him. There were two, no, three, no, no, there were more. They wore dark robes, cowls hanging low over their faces. Sebastian glanced to the right and the left. More figures moved through the mist, their hands folded in front of them, their lips straight, hard gashes across their shadowed faces.

  “Stop!” Sebastian tried to say, but his tongue felt thick. No sound escaped his throat. He tried again. “Come no closer!”

  The black-robed figure in the front stopped first, and then the others ceased their forward movement. Stillness smothered the scene, a thick shroud that didn't even allow the sound of insects swarming over the water. Slowly, the
leader lifted his cowl, dropping the material around his neck.

  Sebastian dug into the rock wall behind him as he recognized the boy, the one who had broken his curse, given him the Seer Fey's Amulet, riveted him with constant pain. “You,” Sebastian croaked. Behind him, the other figures removed their cowls, one by one.

  Cedric, Kinna—Liam's whelps. To his right, a slender figure threw back his hood, and Sebastian immediately recognized the silver-tipped chin and deep-set eyes of Nicholas Erlane. The man's indigo gaze blazed through the mist.

  Sebastian whipped to the left, and the last figure removed his hood. “Lanier,” Sebastian whispered. “What are you doing?”

  As one, the robed figures drew daggers from the folds of their mantles, and holding them out before them, they advanced, slowly, still in the measured tread they had employed before.

  “Wait!” Sebastian held up his hands, palms outward as he pleaded with them. “Please, I am unarmed. Please!”

  They did not stop. The lead boy was nearly on him now. Hatred burned his silver stare; the hand holding the dagger began to glow orange.

  Sebastian stared at it, fascinated, terrified, as the boy spun the dagger in his hand, and faster than speed, sliced downward into Sebastian's wrist.

  Sebastian screamed, jerked, and thrashed, the pillows behind his head hitting the stone floor of his bedchamber with a dull thump. Sharp pain shot through his arm, numbing his fingertips until he could no longer feel the furs beneath them, but only the aching, throbbing, frigid coldness that coated his skin and burrowed deep into his bones.

  He sat up, gritting his teeth, sweat standing on his forehead as he battled the scream in his lungs. He could feel it in his other arm, too, pain shooting to his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around his bare chest, tucking them under his armpits, but his entire body was cold. He stumbled out of bed, crossing to the embers that still glowed on the hearth.

  Their heat made no impression on his fingers. Desperate, Sebastian picked up a glowing ember, cradling it in his palm. He stared at the skin beneath it. His flesh blackened and then parted, peeling outward, glowing a line of orange along the skin as it melted.

  And he couldn't feel a thing.

  It should have burned; he should have writhed with the pain of it. His parents, his perfect brother, Liam—they were the Dragondimn, the ones who could hold flames in their fingers; he hadn't inherited any of it, so grasping a glowing ember in his palm should have been impossible for him to bear.

  His hands began to shake. He could hold fire. His father, his brother, even his mother had eyed him with empty dismissal when they'd realized he hadn't inherited the Dragondimn flesh.

  If they could see him now.

  Then another spasm of icy pain gripped his fingers. With a curse, he hurled the ember back onto the hearth. “Guard!”

  A moment later, the heavy door groaned open, and a sentry peered at him from the dark corridor outside. “Your Grace?”

  “Bring Lanier to the Council chambers and gather Xander and the rest of my Council together.”

  The sentry bowed and closed the door. Sebastian turned to the lantern by his bed. Turning up the wick, he studied the wound left by the ember. White, purple, and gray frost splintered from the heart of it, tracing along the lines of his palms.

  A different kind of pain throbbed in his fingertips and his arms—pain that had nothing to do with the burn of the ember—as he snatched the tunic and vest from his screen and clothed himself. He should have killed that cursed boy when he had been given the chance.

  * * *

  Sebastian swept into the Council chambers, nodding brusquely to the group of twelve that rose when he entered. Lanier stood beside Sebastian's accustomed chair.

  “Be seated.”

  They sat as Sebastian took his place. Lanier remained standing, his hands clutched behind his back. Sebastian made a concentrated effort to keep his voice even while he fought the pain that burned his arms. “Nicholas Erlane has departed in his ship, escorted by two of our bateaus, given free passage according to our rules of parley. But his navy still controls the Channel of Lise, threatening invasion now that the peace talks have failed.” Sebastian gave a tight smile. “This is the moment we must seize. War is upon us. Commander Lanier, you will leave for the Forgotten Plains today to take leadership of our amassed land forces. Our own ships are gathered in the waters west of the Three Maids, safe from enemy attack. They are ready to sail at a moment's notice. Though our water power does not compare to Erlane's, we will have surprise on our side.”

  “Aye, Your Grace.”

  “Lanier, you say Commander Jerrus will fall back into the Rues with a contingent of soldiers once you've arrived. Can you offer me the strategy?”

  Lanier sketched a bow as he spoke. “Your Grace, Nicholas Erlane's forces are, frankly speaking, large enough to overwhelm us, but we will allow his ships to land. If he lands even half of his ships, we will face difficult numbers. Commander Jerrus plans to withdraw and take the long way as the Lismarian troops advance onto the shore, so we can flank the forces by the sea and close off their escape routes. The Lismarian ships will be vulnerable to Dragon attack by air once they have landed, and we will attack them in harbor, destroying their ability to escape.”

  “You mean, if they should attempt to withdraw across the Channel of Lise?”

  “Aye, Your Grace. Already, I've dispatched twelve armored bateaus, six to sail up and around West Ashwynd to close the mouth of the Channel of Lise to the north to block any escape efforts, and six will sail through the Camaran Sea to the south and close the southern exit of the Channel of Lise. The remainder of our fleet will move to the southern waters for reinforcement, as the Channel exit is wider there than in the north and will take more coverage.”

  Sebastian held out his hand toward one of the Council members on his left. The man placed a scroll into his hand. Sebastian unfurled it, glancing over the markings that mapped out the southeastern portion of his country. “And where are you placing the creature groups?”

  Lanier moved closer, pointing at the Rifted River that split the Plains. “Rather than releasing the whole force of our Creatures in one place, we're splitting them into three groups per kind. Here, here, and here is where we're placing the Dragons.” His fingernail clicked neatly on points to the north, south, and along the southern coastline. “We'll mix the Dragons with some of the lesser fighters, the Dryads and the Valkyries.”

  A thought crossed Sebastian's mind. “With whom will you be placing the Pixies?”

  “Elves and Cerberuses.”

  The dark-haired youth who had won the Pixie's bracket of the spring Tournament and now stood at the head of one of his three Pixie Divisions disturbed Sebastian. Julian Pixiedimn had admitted his passion for Sebastian's niece, Kinna, the red-haired minx, and in a strange twist of power-mixed pity, Sebastian had betrothed the two of them, hoping to use the engagement to control Julian. Sebastian fully intended blackmail; the boy was talented, but Sebastian also relished the idea of entrapping his niece into a marriage where she could never escape.

  Since Julian had at last agreed to head the Pixie Division, Sebastian had revoked the betrothal; when his niece fled the Tournament with her Mirage Dragon, he'd determined to bring her before him, dead or alive, and one didn't grant marriages to fugitives. He'd sent a message to the Pixiedimn, impersonal and to the point: The Crown forthwith releases you from your betrothal to a traitor. The girl is now a wanted fugitive and should you receive word of her whereabouts, you are to report it to the Crown immediately.

  Sebastian wondered where Julian's loyalty really lay. Though Sebastian had promoted the lad in a world where it was excruciating to earn a living for a family, the Pixiedimn's passion for Kinna could cause havoc in his plans, and Sebastian wasn't sure he could bend this reed before his will.

  Uncertainty of anything soured Sebastian's mood. He ruled a kingdom, albeit a smaller one than was his rightful inheritance, and necessarily, he had to trust thos
e he put in leadership under him. But that didn't mean he couldn't lengthen his personal supervision incrementally.

  “I'm coming with you.”

  Lanier had been in conversation with another Council member. All talk abruptly ceased. “Pardon, Your Grace?”

  “I'm accompanying you to the Forgotten Plains. Are you deaf, Lanier?”

  Lanier straightened his offended spine. “Nay, Your Grace. I ... did not think you wished to place yourself so directly in harm's way.”

  Sebastian whipped to his feet. “Are you calling me a coward, Lanier?”

  “Nay, Your Grace.” Lanier dropped his gaze to the table.

  Sebastian stared hard at his Commander. Without turning his gaze even half an orlach, his voice rebounded through the room. “Council is dismissed.”

  When Lanier bowed to leave, Sebastian gripped the table. “You will remain, Lanier.”

  Quiet whispers accompanied the men as they made their way from the chamber, suspicious glances cast over their shoulders. Sebastian waited until the door boomed shut and he was alone with his Commander. He stepped around the table, standing toe to toe with Lanier. To his credit, the man didn't flinch.

  “Never forget, Lanier, you are what you are because I made you. I made you, have you forgotten?”

  “Nay, Your Grace.” Lanier's whisper was barely audible.

  “And you live because I have allowed it.”

  “Aye, Your Grace. I am grateful.”

  “Without me, the vultures would feast upon your bones and then defecate across the moors of the Lismarian plains, filth for the Trolls to feast upon, because I saved your sorry hide from the raider-infested streets of your village. Do you deny it?”

  “Nay, Your Grace. I do not deny it.”

  Sebastian's jaw tightened as he stared at the man. His left hand gripped the back of the chair next to him. “You will never, not ever, call my judgment into question again, particularly before my Council. I lowered your rank once, Lanier, in favor of a fresh-faced boy, and I can do it again. And next time, I will lower it so far that there will be no rank left and no head upon which to bestow it. Do I make myself clear?”