The only thing more foolish than hope is despair.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  Regret stabbed his chest. Dragos wished that he hadn’t pushed the zmeu away. His bones moaned with every step, rent flesh throbbed, and his left eye was still sealed shut by a thick crust of blood. The forest was a smear of colors, nothing more.

  All he’d had to say was yes. He’d be free.

  Instead, he let his bitterness and despair ruin the only rescue offer he had.

  The irritating knight had his lead that morning. The one he wounded. The cavaler left the rope tether long, letting Dragos pick his way through the brush without being dragged. Probably didn’t have the arm strength.

  That thought gave Dragos some vengeful solace as he fumbled his way behind the march of men headed for the road. He never noticed how much he needed free arms to keep balance until that day.

  The underbrush grew dense, the ancient trees more sparse, and then the road stretched before them, startling in its breadth beneath the clear blue sky. Interlocking stone slabs stretched into the distance toward Sigovara, a barrier through which little green could cross. The Great Trade Road, built by ancient hands, had been kept in service by the princes, a self-serving choice that coincidentally supported all the subjects of Calruthia.

  A mere mile down the road, a wooden palisade edged the stone. A sigh of relief echoed through the knights. A cheer of greedful joy rose from the other bounty hunters. Chatter erupted over what they’d spend their cut on.

  Contempt boiled Dragos's blood. When they gained the long shadow cast by the prickly walls of the barracks, the whole party halted. The farmers and hunters gathered to sit along the shaded line while the dozen knights formed up before the gates.

  “Julianos!” The cavaler’s captain barked.

  Dragos's good eye squinted at the man’s volume beside his ear.

  The jangle of gear preceded the knight’s appearance. The man who’d given him water the night before slapped a fist to his chest in salute and responded, “Suta? Venox.”

  “You’re not afraid of it. You keep watch over this Unspoken filth.”

  “Sir,” Julianos replied, his fist tapping his chest again. His expression remained flat, like all the other knights.

  And yet, the small exchange drew a twitch of a smile on Dragos's cracked lips. They were afraid of him? Excellent.

  Venox handed Julianos the rope. He walked toward the gates and barked orders to gatemen, who opened the smaller, human-sized door. Venox strolled into the postern. The monk followed. Dragos's attention turned to the cavaler beside him.

  Taller than himself by a few fingers, broader by a few stitches—though that could have been the sweat-soaked leather armor—the young man was a similar age.

  Dragos glanced at the plume of black hair pulled through the top of his leather and bronze-plated helm like a proud horse tail; the flaps to protect his ears and the back of his neck gleamed with ancient symbols. His armor was the same, useful protection against some Nerostit?.

  They’d been in Fantana Rece. He hadn’t imagined it. Had they tracked him this whole time?

  A few moments later, a woman in Luminatori monk’s garb exited the door with a sack in her hand. The gatemen waved at the civilian rabble sheltering from the sun. “Line up! Come get your pay!”

  Dust puffed into the air as the crew hurriedly pushed up to gather in a line. Even through a blood-clogged nose, his breath thickened with dry earth and horses. He’d been in the forest long enough for it to taste foreign to his pain-dulled senses. That Dragos could taste at all despite his tongue being less cracked than the sunbaked ground beside the palisade impressed him.

  Julianos gave the line a tug and moved for the door. Dragos had little choice but to follow on wobbly legs.

  One eye swiveled, peering through dirty hair to take in what it could as they staggered through. One of the outer walls supported a stable. The other, a thatched stockade with men, women—a whole family locked away within. All miserable wretches, a few beaten within an inch of their lives.

  Julianos took his elbow when he faltered, held him upright when he stumbled past the well, where the Palisades civilians stared in the midst of their chatter and chores. The knight walked him right past the stockade and toward the main doors of the squat stone building at the center.

  Beyond the wall, in the courtyard’s heart, an ugly but serviceable monastery crouched; the only building made of stone. The other structures were two-story barracks. The medallion of the Luminatori Order of Knights, the Cavalerul de Lumin?, embellished the door; a sun with an eye in the center.

  Tattered banners hung at the twelve cardinal points of the massive timber walls, prayers to the Light all but faded and unreadable.

  The Palisades existed as a bastion of law and morals, stinking of horse piss and brimming with silent, guarded stares. Dragos had heard of it, but never seen it. Until that day.

  Dragos should have had an escape idea. Might have, if his head hadn’t been abused to the point of craving death to avoid the pain. Once it cleared up. He’d sort something out. Time was on his side.

  They wanted him alive.

  A handful of men sparred with wooden weapons in the side courtyard, but when Suta? Venox and his weary men entered the compound, they all stopped to watch. Dragos's skin itched, whether from their attention or from insects, he wasn’t sure. He hoped it was maggots.

  Venox took the peddler’s box from the monk who’d traveled with them for the manhunt.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Lavinia was dead. Viorica was at best insane, but perhaps also dead. A desperate sorrow threatened to squeeze his heart again.

  Why had he turned Zgavra’s rescue offer down?

  That box was all he had left from the school. His journals were in there, spellbook, recipes for curatives. All the things that condemned him gathered in one place. Delightful.

  The cool interior shocked his skin enough to draw a gasp. Nausea surged yet again as he stumbled past the door and into the small antechamber, where an austere granite staircase rose. A single stained-glass window glared down onto the floor, leaded and colored, like the ones Viorica had. A blazing orange sun with its glowing eye judged them from above and cast its ochre light to wash over prisoner, cavaler, and Luminator alike. The suta? pointed to a narrow corridor to the side of the grand stairs. He proceeded up with Dragos's box, dangling from his fist by a severed leather strap.

  It was a small mercy that Julianos did not shove him as others had. Instead, he was marched past a stone staircase and around into a room that the cavaler unlocked. The door was of thick, iron-banded wood, its aged facing covered in prayers of Light.

  Useless trash, those words. They didn’t resonate with reality’s truths. They were merely humanity’s wishes and held no power, no magic. Dragos flicked a look at the words, head swimming in a fog. Some script pre-dated the Calruthian lettering.

  His weary brain rejected reading.

  Julianos let go of his lead to unlock the door. A single iron cage sat in the center of the space, large enough for Dragos to sit in, but not stand. Barely large enough to curl up in. The stink of sulfur followed the snap of a match. Julianos lit a single candle to supplement the narrow band of sunlight from a long, squat barred hole in the wall by the ceiling. Barely enough for a rat to slip through.

  The numbness in his heart clenched. Just one more discomfort. What did it matter?

  The iron cage’s door groaned, flaking orange dust to the stone floor. The cavaler gestured for Dragos to enter. He inhaled the dank must of the room and, without struggle or protest, stepped in, bones protesting the crouch and the floor’s hardness.

  “Will you untie my hands?” Dragos asked, voice ragged from lack of water and speech. Even so, his body slicked with sweat, wasting precious liquid trying to cool the fever that trembled his joints.

  Julianos’ gaze drifted to the side, dark eyes taking on the distance of consideration, followed by a gesture of his hand. “Turn around, put your hands through the bars.”

  Dragos did as he was bidden. The knight didn’t take out a knife but worked at the knots with his fingers until the bonds fell away. Dragos considered the choice. Wise. A knife used is potentially a knife taken away.

  The young cavaler backed away and sat on a narrow stool. Above them, floorboards creaked, faint murmurs filtered down, but Dragos couldn’t pick out a word of it. He didn’t have to. They spoke of him.

  “What are they doing with my box? They must be careful,” Dragos rasped. He shifted enough to fix the knight with his one, unbloodied eye.

  “I’m sure they’re aware,” the man replied. His gaze had taken on the flat dullness of those waiting. “What evil do you carry, striga?”

  “Nothing evil.” Dragos swallowed, throat grinding against itself. “Remedies, mostly. Curiosities. Some medicines can be… dangerous.”

  He’d coughed out the last word. Too dry to continue. Julianos tugged his waterskin from his belt and tossed it through the bars.

  Dragos pulled the stopper and drank. Water coursed down his gullet and into his blood, thrilling his organs. A long sigh escaped him, head resting gently against iron.

  “It is said that you were a physic,” Julianos started. His teeth snapped, and he shot a glance at the closed, sigil-warded door.

  He listened for a moment, and then questions spilled forth, as if the first was a crack in the dam and the deluge that followed was inevitable. “Why did you forgo your training? Was it your strangeness? Are you truly Unspoken or just moroi viu? What pact did you make to gain your powers?”

  Dragos huffed at the last question. They hadn’t sent the knight to interrogate. Dragos saw the burning curiosity in the man’s dark eyes, glittering, hungry. He was Light’s zealot, as they all were, but he hungered for deeper understanding.

  Not all humanity was lost. Not completely.

  “I did not forgo anything. My home was destroyed, and I was left rootless, a cursed oddity that makes his way in the world by what knowledge I gathered of herbs. I do what I can to help.” Dragos shifted, but no position would offer ease to his throbbing body.

  Another day, maybe two, and he’d be able to assess things. His body. Fitness. Escape.

  “Like you helped that child in Fantana Rece?” A sneer pulled at the knight’s lips.

  “That child was dying. The father came to Lavinia for help, but without seeing the child, there was no way to know what was wrong.” Dragos grimaced, a spark of anger that reopened a split on his lip. Blood tinged his saliva metallic. He licked at it and sighed.

  Julianos cast him a guarded look. “They say you’re a demon born of Umbre, claws and all. I saw them when you fought Suta? Venox.”

  “So you also know they are made of iron, same as pike or plow.” Smugness lurked in Dragos's words.

  This time, it was Julianos who snorted, as if suggesting it was all semantics.

  The cavaler went quiet, then asked, “Why did you turn away from the Light?”

  The Light. He didn’t believe in the faceless and immutable entity the monks spoke of, the people prayed to, and swore on. Still, for the sake of the knight before him, he’d speak of it that way.

  Dragos rocked his head carefully, a slow shake of denial. “I didn’t turn away from anything. I help people who need help. I avoid harming, and still, I am accused. What else does the light want from me?”

  “You claim no pact with Umbre, then?” Julianos pressed. He’d leaned forward with the creak of leather, elbows perched on his knees.

  The Light, the Umbre. They speak of such things as if they had a human conscience and intelligence. Fools.

  He didn’t have a pact, exactly. The magic he used was more complex than that, more a give and take. Still. The heart of the question was there, and that was one he could answer in good faith.

  “I’ve sworn nothing to anything. No other power has control of me,” Dragos said, the quiet steel of his roughened voice ringing in the small chamber.

  Julianos sat back. His helmet clacked against the wall behind him. Eyes turned toward the ceiling, he shrugged. “Well, now, one does. We’ll see what it wants to do with you. I heard you were to be taken to Sigovara tomorrow.”

  Dragos felt a stillness slip through him. It was as he guessed. The Sigovaran prince wanted to punish Dragos for Viorica’s fall with his own two hands. With a cold heart, he considered it. How ironic and typical, and yet. A piece of him longed for it.

  Disgusted with himself, he closed his eye. His own death would not erase the losses. That was not how he could atone for anything. The fires that raged under his skin, the beating he’d endured—wasn’t that enough to appease his sense of guilt?

  His eye snapped open and fixed on the knight.

  “The prince wants me. I stopped his favorite courtesan from completing a blood ritual in which she’d slaughtered her handmaid. She went mad from the backlash,” Dragos said bluntly.

  Julianos looked down at him, surprise dancing around the slackening of his features. A face that snapped back to a flat expression again. Emotions hidden. Judgment reserved.

  Dragos's eye eased shut again. He’d take what rest he could before the time came when he’d have to act. To his captor, he sighed with resignation.

  “We’ll see what fate desires soon enough.”

  Zmeu (zmyeh-oo): Shapeshifter Dragon

  Cavaler (kah-vah-LEHR): Knight of the Luminatori

  The Great Trade Road: Much like the Silk Road or the Royal Road. Used for military and trade purposes.

  Suta? (soo-TASH): Like a Centurion, a non-commissioned, professional officer.

  Nerostit? (neh-ross-TEE-teh): Calruthian word for all things unnatural or strange, synonymous with Unspoken. Places, events, and situations can be referred to as this, as well as beings.

  Striga (STREE-guh): All manner of creatures with wounded souls. It could refer to the undead, to witches, or ghosts, depending on the context.

  Moroi viu (mo-roi vee-oo)[rolled r]: A living person lacking a soul. Cursed or strange.

  (UM-bruh-grin) [rolled r]: Shadow

  Would you want to see pieces of Dragos' journal as an epigraph beginning every chapter?