Chapter Five: The Grand Sacrifice

On the night of the Blood Moon, the capital emptied of its people.

The Grand Sacrifice was held in the white-stone square before the palace. The white steps were laid with long cloths of gold and red, and on either side stood the Flame Guard in armor, spears in hand. Torches lined the square all the way to the edge of the sky, lighting the whole capital as bright as day. But the moon overhead was a thick, blood-red disc that swallowed every scrap of light.

King Ashfall the Third stood at the highest point of the altar, robed in black and gold, his face as still as deep water. Beside him stood the richly dressed Isolde Wain—the only daughter of the North, young and beautiful, yet with a cold, calculating shrewdness about brow and eye that belonged to no one her age. She wore a dark green gown, and at her breast hung a pendant bearing a dark flower.

Lia stood at the edge of the crowd, in the old clothes the cook had lent her, the Flame Seal hidden inside the cloth pressed to her body. She ought never to have come. But the black-clad man's words, Kaelric's words, the pendant her mother had left—three threads twisted tight together—had drawn her firmly here.

Halfway through the Grand Sacrifice, disaster struck without warning.

The shadows all around the square suddenly moved.

It was no trick of the eyes. Those shadows, all but banished by the torchlight, rose up one by one—from the ground, from the corners of the walls, from beneath the feet of the crowd. Like vines of ink, they crawled up the white stone steps, spreading soundlessly toward the altar.

The crowd exploded into chaos. Screams, weeping, and the clash of metal all blended into one. The Flame Guard drew their blades, only to discover, in terror, that the fire-embers kindled upon each sword were guttering out, one by one.

"The Shadow Tide!" someone shrieked. "The Shadow Tide is upon us!"

A hundred years ago, before she died, the Shadow Queen had said her shadow had not died—that it would sink into the earth and wait for the day of vengeance. On this Blood Moon night, a hundred years later, it had come.

The old king on the altar went deathly pale. He wrenched his head around to look at Isolde beside him. "You—"

Isolde smiled faintly. The dark pendant at her breast had, at some unknown moment, split open, and a thick black fog poured forth, a fog that all but swallowed the light. She raised her hand, and the black fog gathered along her fingertips into a slender, dark-blue blade.

"Your Majesty," her voice was light and cold, sharp as a needle cutting through the chaos of the crowd, "a hundred years have passed. It is time your Ashfall dynasty returned what it owes our shadow bloodline."

In the crowd, Lia stared at the black fog, as though frozen in place. She knew that flower—the flower revealed when Isolde's pendant shattered was the very same as the one on her mother's pendant.

Isolde Wain, the only daughter of Marquess Wain of the North, the Ashfall dynasty's chosen bride—she was the true shadow line.

Before Lia could think further, she saw Kaelric leap out upon the altar, golden-red flame kindling in his palm as he dove straight at Isolde. The two clashed on the altar, fire and shadow colliding beneath the black-red moonlight, bursting into blinding sheets of light.

And then, disaster struck again.

A shadow, near-pure black and thin as a hair, slipped soundlessly up from beneath the crowd's feet and coiled around Kaelric's ankle.

Lia saw it clearly enough—that shadow was not Isolde's sending. It had come from deep within the crowd, from a figure she could not make out.

Kaelric's form faltered. In that single lightning-flash of an instant, the dark-blue blade in Isolde's hand drove hard into his chest.

The fire guttered out. Kaelric grunted, staggering backward, a great patch of near-black blood welling through his chest. He dropped to one knee and raised his head, those deep amber eyes full of disbelief, a low, blood-streaked growl tearing from his throat.

"Who... who shot the shadow-needle into his back..."

Isolde gave him no chance to press the question. She lunged in, the point of her blade rising once more—

Lia, in the crowd, felt as though something had shoved her hard from behind.

She did not know how she had done it. All she remembered was her shadow suddenly swelling like something gone mad, spreading out from her feet and, at the very last instant, coiling around Isolde's wrist as the blade fell. From her fingertips gathered a darkness she had never seen before, so pure it was nearly transparent, and she herself stood like a new branch plucked from the blackness, between Kaelric and the blow.

The whole square fell silent.

Beneath the blood-red moonlight, a cookmaid in old clothes stood before the Flame Prince of the Ashfall dynasty, shadow that swallowed the light gathered at her fingertips, facing Isolde of the North from across the square.

"You..." Isolde stared at Lia, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks, her voice losing its pitch. "You are pure blood? Melaira's... direct line?"

Lia did not answer. She only felt Kaelric's hand, behind her, seize the hem of her dress—scalding hot, and bloody.

"Fool," he coughed blood, his voice raw, "I told you... to live."

That was the first time Lia Voss had heard the Flame Prince of the Ashfall dynasty speak to her in such a tone—woven through with hatred, and yet with a thread of tremor she could not name.