The Maleficent Seven

by Cameron Johnston

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Dark Fantasy; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

When you are all out of heroes, all that's left are the villains.

Black Herran was a dread demonologist, and the most ruthless general in all Essoran. She assembled the six most fearsome warriors to captain her armies: a necromancer, a vampire lord, a demigod, an orcish warleader, a pirate queen, and a twisted alchemist. Together they brought the whole continent to its knees... Until the day she abandoned her army, on the eve of total victory.

40 years later, she must bring her former captains back together for one final stand, in the small town of Tarnbrooke - the last bastion against a fanatical new enemy tearing through the land, intent on finishing the job Black Herran started years before.

Seven bloodthirsty monsters. One town. Their last hope.

File Under: Fantasy [ Heroes or Horrors? | Flames and Faith | Blood and Guts | Hell Demons ]

Release date: August 10, 2021

Publisher: Angry Robot

Print pages: 424

Sample

PROLOGUE

Fortress of Rakatoll, day twenty-three of the siege. Seven hours before it all went to shit.

Fifty-one wooden posts were hammered into the ground, forming a line just out of bowshot from the fortress walls. Just before sunset, roaring braziers were placed before each one so both sides could witness the coming atrocity.

The captured nobles were stripped naked and dragged kicking and screaming from their pens, then bound to the posts as their men watched, helpless and cowering behind the crumbling walls of the fortress.

After five years of war, Black Herran had finally trapped most of the remaining royal families of Essoran and the remnants of their armies in Rakatoll, and she was eager to display the horrors she had in store for them. The disparate rebels, outcasts, bandits, mercenaries and monsters that made up her army were every bit as keen to watch their one-time oppressors suffer.

Black Herran, dread demonologist and supreme general, surveyed her army and smiled as any who met her gaze flinched and looked away. As dangerous as they were, it was good to remind them that she was far worse. They pushed and shoved and cursed one another, but did not dare draw steel. Only their bowel-loosening terror of her held this army together.

She stood with two of her captains, as thirty thousand bloodthirsty men and monsters scrutinised the captives struggling against their bonds. Coin changed hands as bets were placed on who would last the longest.

Black Herran ran a bejewelled hand through her short, red-tipped hair and looked to her fair-haired lover, who had refused all bets.

“Come now, Amadden,” she said. “You are not usually this squeamish. Will you not choose one of their highnesses and make a wager with me?”

The warrior scowled and flicked a speck of dirt off his bright and shining breastplate. “Most might be corrupt, but some fought bravely for what they believed in.”

“Do you always have to be such a prig?” Amadden’s older sister Maeven said, her long dark hair wild and untamed in the wind. She was a powerful necromancer, and Black Herran’s right hand – far more important to the general than a bed warmer like her brother, and she knew it. She shoved past him and flipped a gold coin into Black Herran’s waiting hand. She pointed to a slender man in the middle of the line. “I choose that one. He is saving his strength instead of wailing and struggling. He will die well.”

“I have the far left then,” Black Herran replied, picking one at random.

With that, the night’s festivities began.

As the sun sank below the horizon, the general’s shadow demons slipped from cracks in the earth to pool at the feet of the captives. By flickering firelight, her army watched liquid darkness rise up the wooden posts and form razor-sharp teeth and claws. They cheered as the devouring began, jeering as their once-overlords screamed their throats red-raw. Her demons started with the toes and slowly ate their way upwards, stripping off skin and fat before gnawing on muscle and bone.

The little sister of her two captains, Grace, chose that moment to slip through the cheering throng towards her siblings. In one hand she carried a platter of cheese and cured meats, while the other clutched a much-patched brown sackcloth horse with one eye. She was golden-haired and beautiful despite the plain dress and sooty smears. None of the hardened killers in the army dared to even look at her in case Maeven’s dark magic rotted the offending eyes right out of their sockets.

Grace tutted. “You forgot to eat, my sillies. You have to keep your strength up to fight the bad people.”

Amadden hissed and moved to block her view of the fortress and the ongoing atrocity. “I told you to stay inside our tent.”

Maeven rolled her eyes. “I asked her to fetch us food. Stop coddling her – this is the world Grace lives in, and she is capable of dealing with a little blood.”

Her brother’s face flushed an angry red and he reached out for his older sister’s throat. Grace shoved the platter into his hand instead.

Maeven smirked, knowing he would never truly lay a finger on her in front of their sister. Losing Grace’s affection would destroy him. As much as they disagreed on what was best for Grace, both would die before they let anything else hurt her – and they had ensured that everybody who tried had died.

The necromancer yelled encouragement to the screaming captives and grinned, her eyes unblinking as she took in the spectacle.

Amadden’s face twisted in disgust as he watched his sister. His hand twitched around the hilt of the sword sheathed at his waist. “If Grace didn’t love you…” he muttered through clenched teeth.

Grace’s eyes were blank as they scanned across the horror of dying, devoured nobles, then flickered back into life as she met Black Herran’s gaze. “Make sure you eat too. Keeping this army in line must be tiring.”

Black Herran sighed. Grace always had a way of seeing the truth of things. She was so weary of their constant squabbling, requiring her constant intervention to keep them all from murdering one another. If it wasn’t the bandits or rebels fighting over ideology and gold it was the ogres trying to eat the orcs, and her selfish captains were even worse – every one of them had their own agenda. Black Herran knew if she got up and walked away here and now, it would take less than an hour for them to be slitting each other’s throats, Amadden and Maeven included.

In a similar way, only Grace kept her family together: she had taken it upon herself to look after her siblings by caring instead of killing. Amadden and Maeven only suffered each other’s presence for their sister’s benefit, and at Black Herran’s command. The three siblings had never been the same after witnessing the murder of their parents and grandfather: Maeven had plunged into an obsessive study of death and necromancy, her brother into war and the search for some universal truth to reveal the purpose behind his pain, and their sweet and innocent sister had retreated almost wholly back into happier childhood memories. Grace’s vulnerability had made her brother and sister easy to recruit, and their fierce protectiveness enabled Black Herran to mould them into deadly weapons.

The nobleman that held Black Herran’s bet soiled himself, enraging the demon below him. It surged upwards and into his mouth, his screams muffled as it ripped its way down his throat.

“Alas, a poor selection on my part,” she said. “Maeven, you have command. Ensure the attacks resume once the troops are done with their games. At first light, I intend to lead the final assault.”

Black Herran headed for her command tent, and Amadden followed, his eyes filled half with adoration and half with fear. Just the way she liked her men, but not what she needed right then.

She slapped a hand on his breastplate. “No. Go and see to the army, and your sisters.”

Back in the command tent, Black Herran slumped into her chair and savoured the relative peace and quiet. It didn’t last. Atop the small table to her left, a silver hand mirror looted from a king’s bedchamber, then enchanted using his blood and torment, trembled and spat sparks – the owner of her soul demanded her attention, and he was not forgiving of delay.

She took a deep calming breath, picked it up and held it at arm’s length. Her reflection rippled and faded as another took its place, this one far from human.

Furnace-hot winds blew through the mirror, carrying the brimstone stench of Hellrath and the cries of tortured souls. Atop a throne of glistening bone and stretched, still-living human skin, lounged a bloated toad the size of a war horse, with eyes and tongue of flame: Duke Shemharai of Hellrath, the mighty demon lord who had granted Black Herran immense power in exchange for her soul. His sheer presence hit her like a hammer to the face, but she endured and hardened her expression – it was never wise to show weakness to a demon. Behind the throne loomed his fearsome general Malifer, a titanic armoured monster covered in red scales, something between man and crocodile that was ever ravenous.

“My precious mortal puppet,” Shemharai said, purple lips smacking and spraying spittle. “Soon you will have all that you desire. You will finally uphold your end of the bargain and open the ways to Hellrath, and my conquest of your world. You may keep the continent of Essoran but all the other lands and seas of Crucible shall be mine – do not dare to disappoint me, wretch.” His burning eyes dipped towards her belly and his misshapen nose twitched. “I smell you are with spawn.” He licked his lips. “A delectable morsel. Should you wish to sell it…”

“You will get everything you are due, mighty Duke,” she replied, eyes lowered. “That, I promise.”

The Duke wheezed a laugh and waved a webbed hand. The image in the mirror rippled and reformed into her own sour expression. She sagged into a chair, relieved his overwhelming presence had departed.

Duke Shemharai was greedy for blood and souls to fuel his never-ending war with the other great powers of Hellrath, and that had made him easy to manipulate. Now that it was time to deliver what she had promised, she found she had other ideas in mind.

Being with child complicated many matters. Nobody but her had known, and while she had yet to discover any shred of maternal instinct, it had got her thinking about a future beyond this brutal war of hers. She had been blind, obsessed with revenge and conquest for so very long that she had not stopped to consider anything past her victory. What would she actually do after becoming Empress of Essoran? A mortal ruler in a world that would become a feeding ground for the demons of Hellrath…

She sat in the darkness of her command tent nursing a goblet of cooling blood, listening to the raucous music of the siege as it entered the final few hours. The distant screams of dying men did not hold the lustre they once had, and the prospect of imminent victory roused little joy in her heart. The entire continent of Essoran lay like glittering jewels in the palm of her hand… and she felt nothing. She was just going through the motions. This wicked world of Crucible had not seen might like hers in an age, and yet it all seemed so petty now.

Beyond flimsy walls of red canvas, her army’s barrage continued through the night: the thunk of heavy catapult arms and the whoosh of burning balls of pitch sailing through the darkness. Magic crackled and boomed to the cheers of blood-mad warriors who lusted for a dawn that offered death and gold and glory.

She grimaced and upended her goblet. The blood didn’t hit the ground; instead, it disappeared into a pool of deepest shadow that slicked out from beneath her seat. Invisible tongues lapped up the blood and the darkness vibrated with pleasure.

Black Herran looked to the living darkness pooled around her feet – her beloved shadow demons, summoned from their home by pit-born magic. Considered weak by the other inhabitants of Hellrath, they were her servants of choice, raised on her own blood and power. Unlike her mortal forces, they would never turn on her. They were all that she trusted, in this world or the other. The demons stroked and comforted her, relieved that the mighty Duke had turned his burning eyes from this place.

“What an arrogant prick,” she growled. After a moment’s thought she slammed the mirror down onto the table, shattering it.

“I want more than this,” Black Herran said, rising to her feet. “Shemharai and his bargain be damned. I deserve more than the eternal servitude his path offers. As do you, my shadow sisters. Do not fear, for I have ways to ensure he never finds us.”

The shadow demons stilled, shocked that their blood-sister would forsake her bargain and betray such a great and terrible power.

She whispered of futures yet to come, of plans already under way for a better life.

They understood. They feared. But they trusted too.

Black Herran took a moment to think of all her captains, including her lover Amadden, and his sister Maeven. “Fuck them,” she said.

The shadow demons enveloped her. When they drained back into the cracks in the earth there was no sign of the dread demonologist.

Her captains, loyal veterans of five years of brutal battle, marshalled her squabbling army and continued the siege, unaware that their general had abandoned them on the eve of total victory.

CHAPTER 1

The imp kept its horned head low and crawled over the rocks, hissing as frozen spikes of granite stabbed its scales and numbed its feet. It found a vantage point overlooking the miserable human village of thatched roundhouses that squatted in the mouth of the winter-bound valley below. It hunkered down to keep watch, shivering and wrapping its leathery wings around itself to keep in what meagre warmth was left.

The chill slowly sapped its hellish heat. Concentration began to drift and drowsiness set in. Nictitating membranes flickered as its eyelids drooped. Then, the fear returned, a red claw twisting in its guts. It bit into its hand and the imp hissed with pain, blood steaming where it met icy rock.

It had been forty years since Black Herran last summoned it from the cosy fires of Hellrath, but the imp’s terror was as fresh now as it had been then. Pretty words could never mask her ruthless ambition, worthy of the Dukes of Hellrath themselves – the imp was no fool; it knew beings far more powerful than itself had failed Black Herran and met fates far worse than death; were, in fact, still meeting it.

From its high perch, it waited and watched, invisible to feeble human eyesight. After hours of darkness the outer world’s sun began to rise. The imp’s keen eyes squinted as the first of the humans arrived, the ones it had been told to spy upon. At first it only felt contempt, but as they drew closer it tasted the power they carried. Horns trembled and claws dug gouges into stone. All thought of sleep fled. It kept very, very still.

The Falcon Prince and his men marched south past the snow-capped stone cairn he had erected so many years ago. He had almost forgotten this place. The pile of rocks marked the grave pit where he had tossed the bandits who had been the last ragged remnants of Black Herran’s army. He had dug the pit and laid their stones with the same two hands that had cut them down. It lifted his spirits to remember a deed well done.

He arrived at the outskirts of Borrach with the coming of the dawn, riding his proud white warhorse through a foot of pristine snow. He wore shining silver battle plate and the gilded visor of his helmet was wrought into the fearsome image of his predatory namesake. His eyes were no longer human, but orbs of holy golden fire. He was the chosen of the Goddess, the bringer of light and the holy truth.

He topped a rise and studied the crude village below as the last snowfall of winter began to peter out. His breath misted the air as he ordered his followers to begin the purge.

Three holy knights, inquisitors bearing the Bright One’s greatest blessing, moved up to flank him, riding white stallions that were the brothers of his own powerful beast. Grand Inquisitor Malleus, with his severe features and shaved head, marched a hundred footmen downhill in silence through the snow, the proud bannerman in the lead holding high the gold-on-white sunburst emblem of their Goddess. A dozen white-robed acolytes came with him, shaved and serene, murmuring prayers.

They advanced through the morning mist, silver armour and white fur tinted red by the sun rising over the hills. The footmen silently encircled the slumbering village, and in their twos moved to the door of each hovel, naked steel ready in their gloved fists. They looked to the inquisitors and their godly prince, waiting for the final command.

The Falcon Prince surveyed the thatched hovels of the heathens and shook his head sadly. His sword lifted and fell, shining blood-red as it cut the dawn-light. His men kicked in the doors. Where they found them soundly barred, they hacked through with axes.

Villagers screamed as they were dragged from their beds into the village square. They were stripped of furs and blankets and, at sword-point, forced to kneel on the frozen ground. One hovel resounded with the clang of steel and screams. Two footmen lurched out, one missing a hand and the other with a gaping ruin of a face. A burly farmer scarred by numerous fights roared and leapt through his doorway after them, hatchet swinging wildly.

The Falcon Prince scowled and levelled his blade at the peasant. “Oh, great and glorious Bright One,” he cried. “Strike down this servant of evil.”

The farmer looked up, mad-eyed and furious, eager to kill.

Golden fire lanced from the sword to burn a fist-sized tunnel right through the heathen’s chest. He crumpled to the snow, a gaping hole where his heart had once been.

All of the Bright One’s holy knights were able to channel a tiny fragment of Her burning power to smite Her enemies, but the Falcon Prince wielded vastly more than any mere inquisitor. He took great pride in being Her chosen, Her guardian, Her beloved.

After that unseemly display all resistance ceased. The prince and his entourage took up their reins and trotted down towards the square and the gathered villagers. Footmen bowed at their passing and kept their eyes lowered.

“What d’you want with us?” an old woman demanded, shivering in her nakedness in winter. She glowered her challenge at the armoured knights.

Grand Inquisitor Malleus lifted a finger and a footman slammed the butt of his spear into her belly. She fell, gasping and curled up with pain. He glared down at her. “You speak to his holiness only when asked, filth.”

The Falcon Prince slid from his mount and handed the reins to a waiting footman. “We are holy knights of the Lucent Empire,” he said. “Which of you worships the Bright One?” None raised a hand. “A pity.”

He paced up and down before them, scrutinising each villager in turn. “Dark tales have reached us of what occurs in this accursed village: witchcraft and sorcery. Perhaps worse things. Which of you practise such abominations? Who among you bargains with monsters and demons? Speak now and mercy shall be yours.”

Silence.

He smiled coldly and moved to a young woman clutching a baby to her breast. She trembled with fear as he lifted his gauntlet. He slipped a cold steel finger under her chin and tilted her face up to meet his burning gaze. “Tell me, daughter, which of the others engage in such foul practices? Illuminate us and mercy will be yours, for you and your child. You will both be absolved of all sin.”

She clutched her baby tight. “There’s no dark magic or demon worship here. We follow the ways of the Elder Gods is all.”

“Your Elder Gods, like the Skyfather, are vile demons in disguise,” he said, regarding her child. “I do love children. So pure. So innocent. It would be a crime to allow their souls to fall from the path of righteousness into the corruption of your heathen ways. Tell me, has your child gone through the ritual dedication to your false gods?”

The woman swallowed and gave a shake of her head, then glanced to her right. A tear rolled down her cheek.

The Falcon Prince turned to face a wizened old man with a walking stick. “So, you are this village’s sorcerer.”

The old man’s stick snapped up, the tip clanging against the Falcon Prince’s breastplate. He scowled, brown teeth behind scraggly white whiskers. The tang of burning tin filled the air as his sorcery manifested – talons of darkness that burst from his stick to attack the Falcon Prince.

While his robed acolytes gasped and prayed for his protection, the Falcon Prince merely made a mental note to flog whichever naive soldier had allowed the old man to keep his stick. The dark magic touched his breastplate and blew apart like dust hit by a stiff wind.

The old man’s face fell, and the tip of his walking stick with it. He leaned on it heavily as blood drained from his face. “That’s that then, I reckon.”

“The Goddess protects the righteous,” the Falcon Prince said.

The old man spat at his feet. “Righteous? You lot of murderers are every bit as depraved as that Black Herran ever was.”

The Falcon Prince’s armoured fist rammed into the old man’s jaw. Bone snapped and teeth shattered as the man flew backwards.

“You dare compare me to the disgusting likes of her?” the Falcon Prince roared as he slammed the heel of his boot down on the man’s skull. “Nothing but lies and wickedness escape your lips. I hunted the last of her followers down and buried them in a pit only a short distance north of here. Lies.” He slammed his heel down again and again until bone crunched inwards and blood and brains turned the snow pink.

He stared at the mess for a moment, then took a deep, calming breath. “Deal with this,” he ordered. Two footmen dragged the dead sorcerer to a hovel and flung him in, then tossed the heartless corpse of the farmer in on top. Another knelt before him to clean the mess off his boots.

Grand Inquisitor Malleus pointed an accusing finger as his gaze swept the crowd. “Who else among you practise the dark arts?”

This time fingers were quickly pointed and denials fervently screamed. The Falcon Prince left the task of winnowing truth from lies to his inquisitors and instead faced the sun and murmured a prayer to the Bright One, asking forgiveness for the necessary bloodshed.

Once all the children were taken aside it did not take his knights long to separate the handful of merely tainted adult souls – those who had recanted their heathen faith unprompted – from the dozens of irredeemably corrupt. His men shoved the vilest worshippers of evil and the dabblers in evil sorcery into their hovels and blocked the doors up with wood and stone.

“The wicked must burn,” Malleus said, lifting his hands towards the red rising sun. The power of the Goddess flowed through him and the thatched roofs erupted into flames.

They watched and listened as the screams began, men and women clawing at wooden walls with splintered fingers, desperately trying to escape the smoke and fire while their children outside wailed in horror.

Some of his men turned away, sickened. “Do not dare avert your eyes,” the Falcon Prince demanded. “If we must end their sinful lives to purge this land of evil then we must also suffer the unpleasantness of doing so.”

They watched the houses burn until all the wicked were silenced.

The surviving adults huddled in a fearful clump, trying in vain to cover the eyes and ears of their children. Of the adults, only three women and two men of Borrach had proven worthy of the Bright One’s mercy.

He signalled his men and they lifted the villagers to their feet. The Falcon Prince himself assisted the young woman with her child, both exhausted from terror. “Fear no more,” he said softly. “Your pain is ended. Your tarnished souls now belong to the Bright One, and She will wash them clean of all bodily sin with Her own loving hands.”

They began escorting the terrified villagers towards the cliffs overlooking the shore, where they would kneel in prayer before Grand Inquisitor Malleus until just before sunset. The Falcon Prince prayed they would all pass their second test.

One way or another, the Bright One’s light would cleanse their souls.

The imp remained motionless until the inquisitors were all at the cliff edge and fully occupied with the remaining villagers. Only when its own safety was assured did it launch itself into the air, wings flapping with the might of terror. Those humans wielded the powers of a god, and not even the wicked magic of its summoner, the legendary Black Herran, could stand against that.

At least, not alone.

CHAPTER 2

Days later, an aging woman stood in the trampled snow at the edge of Borrach, surveyeing the smouldering remnants of the once-prosperous village. Waves crashed against a nearby rocky shore and a frigid wind blew in off the sea to throw her white hair into disarray despite the lacquered wooden pins set to control it. She leaned heavily on her walking stick, as much from emotional fatigue as taking pressure off her grumbling hip.

The demonologist once known as Black Herran had ordered her shadow demons to carry her north through the secret places below the earth, to witness the fate of this village. To understand what would be coming for her when the snows retreated and the road south through the mountains reopened.

Footsteps behind her, soft sighs on the ashen earth, and an old, familiar sensation came with it: a shiver crawled up her spine as the chill of the grave seeped into her old bones.

She did not turn to greet the woman who had once served as her vicious right hand. “Maeven.”

“Forty years without word,” the necromancer said. “And now my old general sends a demon to summon me to this wretched ruin. Has age addled all your wits, Black Herran?”

“I abandoned both position and name long ago. I am known as Dalia now. Call me that or call me nothing at all.”

The necromancer’s dank breath caressed her cheek as she leaned over Dalia’s shoulder. “I would prefer to call you a corpse. Because of you I lost everything. So, you had best explain why I should not rip your soul from your withered flesh and keep it as my plaything.”

Dalia turned and smiled. “I would wish you a hearty good luck with that. I fear the great Duke Shemharai of Hellrath would come to collect his property. Provisions have been made for such an eventuality.”

After forty years apart they were finally stood face to face once more. They locked gazes, each trying to take the measure of the other.

“You always did have an answer for everything,” Maeven snarled. The necromancer looked like a woman of thirty-odd summers instead of a natural age of over sixty. A closer look revealed she was well preserved rather than young, thanks to some trick of her magical arts. A puckered, ugly old scar cut across her face, only partially covered by a black tattoo that writhed up her neck and stretched across her cheek. The tendrils of inky black seemed to possess a life all of their own, moving through her skin like it was water.

“This is also your fault,” Maeven said, running a finger down her cheek. “When you abandoned us, my brother went insane. He tried to murder me and abducted my sister, Grace. After I stitched my face back together I fled the ruin of your army and sought out my family. But I have found no sign these past decades. My brother boasts little magic of his own, but what little power of manipulation he does possess makes him almost impossible to find when he does not wish it.”

Dalia shrugged. “He was unstable to begin with, and you were little better.” She thought the necromancer might once have been considered pretty. It wasn’t the scarring that made her ugly now: the callous look in her eyes and the twisted soul lurking behind them did that all on their own. The stink of death clung to Maeven like a lover’s embrace, and every bit as obvious as the grey wolfskin cloaking her shoulders.

“Tell me,” Dalia said. “Do you still carry that little box of bones with you? Some nights I heard you conversing with them, and occasionally I fancied something replied.”

Maeven snorted and looked away. “You expect answers after everything you have done? You are the one that owes me answers, hag. Your demon told me that you know where Amadden and Grace are, and that is the only reason I am here. It is the only reason you still live.”

Dalia nodded and turned her attention back to the village. “I know exactly where they are, and we will discuss that later. First we must discuss those who destroyed this village.”

There was nothing left for crows and carrion eaters here; a village of five-and-fifty souls reduced to heaps of bone and charred timbers. Wind speckled her cloak and face with fine ash.

Dalia stirred the debris of a house with the toe of her boot, uncovering a blackened human skull. The old woman’s expression didn’t change – she’d done far worse to far more in the past.

The necromancer gave the human remains exactly as much notice as she would a dead fly. “Such a charming place,” she said. “Explain why you called me here.”

It was as callous a response as Dalia had expected. Both of them gained power from death, and they were well-used to it. Necromancers siphoned power from the act of dying, the energy released as a soul fled its corpse. As for demonologists, they were more concerned with the power born of pain and torment, and the blood that bore a creature’s lifeforce throughout the body. The soul might be powerful, but only blood could open the secret ways to Hellrath. For demons, pain and torment were their finest of feasts. A demonologist’s only use for souls was as currency, bartering them to others for favour and power.

Dalia cleared her throat. “I am reforming the army.”

Maeven’s laughter shrieked out across the dead village. “Are you mad? On the eve of victory you betrayed your captains. You betrayed me! And left without a single word. When they learned you had fled the field, the army turned upon itself. Rakatoll could barely believe its luck as we slaughtered each other outside its walls. Why would those of us who survived that day lift a hand to do anything other than slit your throat? Some thought you dead, but I knew better. Death would not come so easily to the likes of Black Herran.”

Dalia shrugged. “Is it my fault none of you were up to the task? Were you little children needing your hands held every step of the way? I left you an army and an entire land ripe and ready to fall before you. And what did you do with that opportunity? You fell upon one another like hungry wolves. You could have been rulers, but you botched it.”

Maeven ground her teeth. “Why. Am. I. Here?”

Dalia gazed at the ruined village. “Come the summer, the Lucent Empire will march south through the mountains. The town of Tarnbrooke occupies the southern mouth of this valley. Once the Lucent Empire crushes it, they will have free rein to expand through all the lands of the south. They will destroy the old ways, purge cities, and enforce worship of their new goddess. That must not come to pass.”

“I am no damn hero,” Maeven said. “Even if I could stand against an army, why in all the hells would I do it for you? Where has all this new-found concern for others come from? You are up to something I wager.”

Dalia grinned, nothing pleasant. “Tarnbrooke is mine. It has been home to my family for forty years, and that is more than enough reason.”

Maeven stared. “Family? You?” She laughed, almost driven to tears. Her mirth faded as fast as it had come.

“Yes, family,” Dalia snapped.

“I pity your spawn.”

Dalia ignored her. “I have lived and loved in Tarnbrooke all these years, and the years wrought a change in me. Time tempers the rage of the young and holds up a mirror to expose how selfish we used to be. I was so full of fire back then, so set on tearing it all down.” She sighed and shook her head. “I can’t say it has all gone, but my fire has dimmed and the sharp edges long since filed off my claws so that I may better comfort those that I love. I have been happy.”

Maeven sneered at that. “You have changed beyond all recognition.”

“You are in no position to judge me. On anything,” Dalia replied. “To change is to live. Only the dead ever remain the same. And if you think I would not burn the world to save those I love, ...