Gathering Darkness

“Does it hurt yet?” the young man asked calmly. “If not, just give it a moment. It will.”

The flames spread until the guard’s legs, torso, arms, and, lastly, his confused, fearful face were all ablaze. The fire then turned from orange to blue.

That was when the guard began to scream.

The other guard stood frozen in place with horror, watching as his friend blazed like a torch in the early morning light. Suddenly, the flames grew wilder, leaping up thirty feet into the air and taking the guard with them. Finally, the guard stopped screaming.

Like a glass sculpture landing on a marble floor, his body shattered into a million pieces.

He turned to the guard he’d spared. “Run.”

Eyes wide with terror, the guard turned and fled.

With what little energy he’d had now depleted, he collapsed to his knees. The symbol on his hand faded to only a trace, a mark resembling an old scar. The ground still smoldered where the tall guard once stood, although there was nothing left of him but an already fading memory.

Finally, his pain eased. His thoughts became clear, and a small smile lifted the corners of his mouth.

“Only the beginning,” he whispered as darkness rose up to cover him like a thick cloak.

Soon he’d make them all burn for what they’d done to him.

CHAPTER 1

JONAS

PAELSIA

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Rufus’s voice was as distracting as a persistent horsefly. Jonas sent his fellow rebel an impatient look through the darkness.

“Really. Which part?”

“All of it. We need to get out of here while we still can.” Rufus craned his thick, sweaty neck to scan the line of trees surrounding them, guided only by the light of a single torch they’d shoved into the loose soil. “He said his friends would be here any moment.”

He was referring to the Limerian guard they’d captured after discovering him straying too close to the edge of the forest. He was currently tied to a tree, unconscious.

But an unconscious guard wasn’t any use to Jonas. He needed answers. Though he had to agree with Rufus on one thing: They were swiftly running out of time, especially since they were so close to a village infested with the king’s red-uniformed minions.

“Of course he said that,” Jonas said. “It’s called a bluff.”

“Oh.” Rufus raised his brows, as though this hadn’t occurred to him. “You think?”

A week had passed since the rebel attack on the road camp in eastern Paelsia beneath the Forbidden Mountains. A week since Jonas’s most recent plan to defeat King Gaius had gone horribly awry.

Forty-seven rebels had descended upon the sleepy campground at dawn in an attempt to seize the road engineer, Xanthus, and the Limerian heir, Prince Magnus, to hold as hostages against King Gaius.

They’d failed. A flash fire of strange blue flames had burned everything in its path, and Jonas had barely escaped with his life.

Rufus had been the only other rebel waiting at the meeting spot later that morning. Jonas had found him standing there with tears streaming down his dirty face, trembling with fear and rambling about fire magic and witches and sorcery.

Only two of forty-seven had been accounted for. It was a crushing defeat in far too many ways, and if Jonas thought about it too much he could barely see straight, could barely function beyond his guilt and grief.

His plan. His orders.

His fault.

Again.

Desperately trying to push aside his own pain, Jonas had immediately begun to gather information about other potential survivors—anyone who’d been captured alive and carted away.

The guard they’d found wore red. He was the enemy.

He had to have answers that could help Jonas. He had to.

Finally, the guard opened his eyes. He was older than most other guards, with graying hair at his temples. He also walked with a limp, which had made him easier to catch.

“You . . . I know you,” the guard muttered, his eyes glittering in the meager torchlight. “You’re Jonas Agallon, the murderer of Queen Althea.”

He threw these words like weapons. Jonas flinched inwardly, but showed no sign that the most heinous lie ever told about him caused him injury.

“I didn’t kill the queen,” he growled.

“Why would I believe you?”

Ignoring Rufus’s squeamish expression, Jonas walked a slow circle around the restrained guard, trying to determine how difficult it would be to get him talking.

“You don’t have to believe me.” He leaned closer. “But you’re going to answer some questions for me now.”

The guard’s upper lip drew back from his yellow teeth in a snarl. “I’ll tell you nothing.”

He’d expected that, of course. Nothing was ever easy.

Jonas pulled the jeweled dagger from the sheath on his belt. Its wavy silver blade caught the moonlight, immediately drawing the guard’s attention.

It was the very same weapon that had taken his older brother from this world. That vain and pompous Auranian lord had left it behind, embedded in Tomas’s throat. This dagger had become a symbol to Jonas, representing the line he’d drawn in the sand between his past as the son of a poor wine seller who toiled every day in his father’s vineyard, and his future as a rebel, certain he would die fighting for what he believed in most: freedom from tyranny for those he loved. And freedom from tyranny for those he’d never even met before.

A world without King Gaius’s hands wringing the necks of the weak and powerless.