“Easy now,” Parthenia’s lilted voice ordered as I fought to sit upright. “Your fever only just broke. You’re still weak as a new babe.”

I blinked in the candlelight and pushed back a lock of hair from my sweat-sticky forehead. “The Emperor . . .”

Parthenia sighed, her breath making the candle flicker in the early morning dark. “You know, it is rumored that the queen was often ill. Particularly after she displeased her husband.”

“He told me the wine was her favorite. I should have known I’d not be forgiven so easily.”

My attention moved to the bedside table. It was littered with charcoal and brown Calabar beans, which were poisonous, but useful in counteracting certain other toxins. A glass of cloudy black liquid was beside the mess. “Belladonna, then,” I surmised.

“Epione says it wouldn’t have killed you, but she mixed some strange concoction to shorten your illness. I had to force it down your throat.” Parthenia frowned. “Try not to think about it. And get some rest. You look like you’ve stumbled out of the darkest pit of Tartarus.”

I was too tired to tell her about my dream—about how close her words felt to the truth.

Before I even realized I was drifting, I fell back into a blessedly dreamless sleep.

The room was full of the bright morning sun. It lit the orange-red of Parthenia’s hair in a burst of sun sparked flames.

She stood over me, a simple blush gown draped over her arm. With her usual tact and gentleness, she ordered me out of bed. Soon, she had me up, though trembling at the knees, dressed and hair arranged. She dusted the gold Mark of a Korai on my brow, fastened a ruby necklace around my throat, and rouged my cheeks before finally deciding I resembled a living being. Then, she marched me from my chamber toward the morning room where Sibyl and my sisters waited for me to join them at breakfast.

An opulently appointed chamber on the topmost level of the palace, one side of the morning room opened onto a terrace that overlooked the gardens in a wide, tiered courtyard below. A long, low table surrounded by plush couches dominated the room. My sisters already sat there, plates heaped high with fruits and sweetbreads before them.

Elysa turned at my approach. “You look dreadful.”

As if I needed reminding. I hobbled towards the table, itching to give her a similar welcome. But the angry words died on my lips.

Always pallid, it was normally a kindness to describe Elysa as plain. Especially by the standards of the God-Blooded, who echoed the beauty of their divine lineage. Elysa may have had the coloring of her mother, but she held none of Selene’s luminance.

But today she shone.

Her lips, though still thin, were red as blood. Her eyes gleamed like ever-changing opals. A silky curtain of silvery-blonde hair flowed across her shoulders.

“She looks marvelous, doesn’t she?” Solara gushed.

The youngest of our order abandoned her plate of food to come and kiss my cheeks in greeting. Her curls tickled my nose, filling me with the orange blossom scent of her.

“I’m so jealous,” Solara said, pulling away with a sigh. “I can’t wait until Midsummer, so I can look like that.”

“Midsummer . . ."—a wave of vertigo washed through me. Carefully, I lowered myself onto a couch.

The mark on Solara’s brow crinkled. Elysa watched me, expressionless. Her own mark painted in silver was smooth as glass.

“You really are ill, aren’t you?” Solara asked. “We didn’t believe it, you know. We thought you just wanted to stay out of sight for a few days after . . ."

After I’d humiliated myself in the Trial.

I sat in silence, my thoughts dark, and allowed Solara to serve me from the table. “Eat,” she said, pushing the plate of pears powdered with cinnamon into my hands. “You’re going to need your strength for tonight.”

“Tonight?” I tried to count the days but they had all run together. “What’s tonight?”

Elysa’s plate clattered against the marble tabletop. “What. Is. Tonight. You must be joking?”

Then it hit me. Of course. No wonder Solara had mentioned Midsummer—it was the height of her father’s power. As tonight was the height of Selene’s.

“With everything happening . . . I forgot about Nemoralia.”

“Of course, you did. Nemoralia is only my mother’s holy day. Hardly of any importance to you.”

“Elysa—”

“Girls,” called a hard voice from the doorway behind me.

Sibyl entered the room, the silver and gold jewelry she favored clinking as her hands moved to her hips. “We have more to worry about today than your bickering. If we want to keep your parents’ favor, we must make sure all the holy days are celebrated appropriately. It is hardly right to start the day on the wrong foot.”

In an endless cycle, the three celestial titan’s powers waxed and waned. When the nights grew longer with the autumnal equinox, Selene’s powers peaked. We celebrated this as Nemoralia.

Elysa looked so well. I should have known the moment I saw her that the holy day was the reason. “I’m sorry I forgot. But you must be excited. With everyone here for the Trials, Nemoralia will have quite the crowd.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Elysa’s thin lips tightened. Anger and the bitter bile of jealousy flowed down the bond between us. I cringed. Bringing attention back to my Trials was the last thing I should have done if I wanted peace between us.

Sibyl sat down beside me, oblivious to the spike in tension. “Yes, the timing is excellent. Though I must say, I’m less than pleased about certain guests we will have this year. I’d hoped the mongrels would be long gone before the celebration.”

I tried to ignore the pointed words and the dull shadow of accusation that flowed down the bond from both my sisters.

The rest of breakfast passed in a fog. I only half-listened to Solara’s excited chatter about the night to come. Most of the conversation seemed to focus on what she would wear. Sibyl needlessly repeated instructions to Elysa, as if we didn’t all have the routine memorized by heart. We’d each been enacting the rituals since we could toddle down the temple aisles.

Solara continued, prattling on about Elysa’s gown, which had only just arrived from the dressmaker in Hyperion. But only one word in the rest of the conversation caught my interest.

“Varian. What about Varian?”

Elysa flashed me a pitying glance. “Oh, you didn’t know? Well, I suppose you wouldn’t. He was called away on urgent military business after the feast. He has yet to return. What a shame it would be if he missed the next Trial.”

My stomach clenched tight.

Sibyl scoffed around a buttered roll. “Don’t be ridiculous, Elysa. I’ve chosen the events and I control their timing. But whatever business the General Prince had, I’d bet all the gold in our coffers it is to do with the Shards. Why else would Myridia be meddling in our affairs? The Shardian Alliance must be up to some mischief.”

Solara stifled a yawn. “I really don’t understand why everyone thinks those tiny islands are such a threat.”

“Those tiny islands,” Elysa explained, “are perhaps weak on their own, but together they have the strongest navy in the world. They’ve defeated us once before.”

Solara shrugged.

But I remembered our aborted conversation from the carriage. “You said it was decades ago . . .”

Sibyl took an unnecessarily long time cleaning the crumbs from her lips before answering. “Varian brought the war to Myridia—to Aidoneus’ very doorstep. This was before he was their lord, of course. Aidoneus had disappeared two decades before the Shardian War began, when he was still only a young student, training to be part of the previous ruler of Myridia’s Seven. Many thought him dead.”

“Dead? Where was he?”

She shook her head. “Who can say? But then he suddenly appeared, just as we were on the cusp of winning that final battle, leading his mother’s people—the Sirens—into battle behind a shield of his own dark power.”

“That is why he is called the Butcher of Brigand’s Bay,” Elysa—the only one of us who’d ever paid much attention to history lessons—added.

Sibyl nodded. “The Dorians killed there . . . Well, the number was staggering. Gifts born of Hades, coupled with hundreds of Sirens . . . How could any male stand against such a force?”

Elysa scowled into a cup of tea. “The answer to that seems simple enough.”

“What do you mean?” Solara asked.

Blood red lips split into a rare grin. “Don’t send a male to do a female’s job.”

Sibyl’s full cheeks flushed. “That is hardly appropriate, Elysa.”

I arched a doubting brow. “Oh really? You’d take on the Sirens, were you queen?”

“Oh, I’d do a great many things, were I queen.”

The challenge there was clear. Light flickered at my fingertips. “Varian is competing for me.”

She straightened, lips pulling back—

Then the door opened with such force it slammed into the wall.

A lower priestess dressed in the gold-trimmed robes of the Celestial City rushed into the room, breasts rising and falling fast with her panting breaths. “High Priestess,” she gasped, doubling over and holding a cramp in her side. “You must come.”

Sibyl stood. “Good gods, what is it?”

“One of the acolytes is missing. And . . . blood has been found in her room.”

“Who?”

“Leda of Skyy.”

Elysa shifted in her seat, her anger at me forgotten. “Her father is Governor of the Westerlands.”

Sibyl ran a hand through her frizzled curls. “When was she last seen?”

The other priestess shrugged. “After her . . . behavior in the Trial, the Governor wanted to reward her. She has been exempt from her duties since. We only realized she was missing when one of his messengers arrived looking for her. It seems she never made it to his villa.”

“You said there was blood,” I cut in.

“A small amount found by her window.”

I tried to grasp for reason. “Perhaps she scraped herself climbing out of it. There are plenty of young males here. It isn’t uncommon for novices to run off with a lover. Have you checked the inns and taverns? The barracks?”

The priestess nodded. “No one has seen her. But there is more . . . All of her things are accounted for. Down to her last pair of shoes.”

“Well,” Sibyl said, “there is nothing for it. I must go and see what can be done.”

“The blood . . ."—I said, standing.

No longer simply Sibyl, but instead the High Priestess, she turned to me with a hard look. “If she is hurt, I’m sure it will be nothing the High Healer cannot handle.”

Sibyl followed the priestess out and I settled back with an annoyed sigh. When she was gone, Elysa stood and made her way toward the door. She paused there and glanced over her shoulder. “I hope your Myridian had nothing to do with this.”

“Aidoneus is not my Myridian.”

Well, at least try to keep any more embarrassing outbursts from ruining the evening.

A rare pulse of anger flowed from Solara. We know what is expected of us, Elysa. Worry about your own part to play.

Elysa turned, silvery hair flicking over her shoulder. Only a friendly reminder.

After her cool presence had left us, Solara retreated to her own chamber to get ready for the night and I was left alone. I sat on the low couch, staring out towards the courtyard. The thought of returning to my room had me sighing. Instead, I made my way toward the terrace and the tiered gardens below.

Slowly, my weakness still a heavy weight, I walked down the marbled stairs to the verdant oasis in the palace’s heart. It was a relief to have the sun shining on my skin, a relief that Nemoralia had arrived. It would be nice to have an evening when I could fade into the background, especially after all that had happened.

I made my way onto the quiet path, the silence broken by the call of gulls overhead and the tittering of larks hunting for worms and seeds in the garden beds. I strolled past dahlias of palest pink, russet helenium with their coppery faces turned up to the sun. Then I reached the roses. Red, white, pink, even a few purple blooms could be found here and there. I paused on the path, nose wrinkling at the cloying scent—too like Elysa’s favorite perfume to bring me any comfort. So I turned down a branching way towards the late-blooming, bloody-tasseled amaranth instead. But soon the heat of the sun grew too strong and a sheen of sweat beaded the back of my neck. I headed down another path that led to a small olive grove, where the walkway was shaded. The twisting limbs reached out knotty arms, beckoning me to welcome cover. But as I passed under their twining branches, the song of steel meeting steel suddenly rang.

The upper tier of the palace courtyard held the gardens, cultivated in carefully arranged beds and separated from the lower tier by the grove. But beyond its cover—enclosed by the guest wing of the palace and the barracks—stood the training yard used both by city guards and the visiting competitors.

I made my way further into the grove, voices drifting toward me. The trees parted and I found myself in a small patch of open grass bordered by a low, vine-covered wall. I crossed to it and leaned against the ledge to watch the action below.

The yard was full, soldiers in their red tunics, city guards in their white, and a few competitors standing throughout, separated into friendly groups. A gathering of guards stood to one side and practiced their drills as the remaining competitors trained. War Hammer sparred with his ax-wielding brother. Both were bruised and bloodied. Both grinned like fools.

Varian, of course, was absent, though a group of his men milled about, sizing up the remaining competitors as they trained. Most appeared to be focused on the space directly beneath where I stood.

I craned my neck over the ledge to get a better look. And was rewarded for the effort with a face full of water.

Sputtering, I stepped back just in time to avoid an even stronger spray that vaulted through the air, falling like rain to cover the trees around me.

Braving the ledge again, I looked down and found the water’s source. The Myridians.

Several stood back from the fray, watching, faces held rapt as Aidoneus and one of his followers dueled. Blond, his build tall and muscular, he stood out from the others like a sore thumb. Had I not known better, I would have taken him for a Dorian.

The Water Wielder’s hands wove through the air as if performing a strange, intricate dance. Droplets whirled before him, readying for a strike.

Aidoneus, dressed in the same fine leathers from the Trial, stood yards away, as still as death.

The Water Wielder’s hand shot forward and water speared towards Aidoneus like an arrow.

Darkness rose. Unlike the slow, trailing fog that seemed to dog his every step, these shadows surged forward. Locking into place before him like a shield of night, his magic deflected the spear of water.

Again, the water swirled, lifting in the air to circle Aidoneus, whose shadows only grew, cocooning around him until his form was no longer visible. The water spread in a dozen reaching tendrils. It probed Aidoneus’ curtain of darkness, testing for a way through the shadows. Then the gloom began to pulse. It pushed outwards, spreading from Aidoneus towards his opponent, driving back the attacking arms of elemental magic as it went until it overcame the Water Wielder, who vanished behind a wave of the dark fog.

The spray vanished, dissolving into a fine mist, and the darkness cleared.

Bent over, the blond male grasped his knees, face bloodless. But he smiled. Aidoneus crossed to his friend in a few easy strides. He threw his arm over the other male’s shoulder and gave him a firm, affectionate pat on the back.

The circle of Myridians moved in tight, all but Nerina, who hung back with her arms crossed over her chest. Noticing this, a wolfish-looking male turned to her with a frown. He reached out a hand to her and she shrugged him off and turned away toward the guest wing.

My attention returned to the others as they offered smiles and teasing admonitions, but something caught the corner of my gaze. Across the grassy field where the mock-battle had taken place lay a large circle of brown.

My heart stilled, frozen. Like brittle ice which bore too much strain, something within me cracked. Every inch of grass Aidoneus’ power had touched was now shriveled, brown, and dead.

His power was not only darkness, I realized. It was death.