To overthrow the cruel King who brutally slaughtered her foremothers, the last surviving water witch Elara Consuli must team up with novice warrior Juda Vikaris from the Serpent Order and realise an ancient prophecy, before the blood-thirsty ruler d...
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'Fair eventide, Vi-Garran,' Juda said, barely out of breath despite the climb to the balconette of Roth Vi-Garran's personal study, high in the Citadel Vault tower.
He'd been mastering the twisted turrets and moulded pinnacles since his mother had been transported to the dead fields and Roth had taken him in, and he knew every inch of the tower, as if it were a map etched behind the workings of his eyes.
The Master Librarian glanced at Juda from behind a stack of tomes and parchments that never seemed to diminish, although he swore he worked through every single one and merely replaced them with more.
'Eventide, Juda?' He scowled over the top of his reading glasses. 'You'll find it's closer to moontide, and you're fucking late, as always.'
Roth Vi-Garran was still the knot of muscle he'd always been as a Highguard of the Serpent Order, hardly weathered over the years even though his trade of bloodshed and death had been exchanged for guardianship of the Vault and books. There was not one part of his body left unscarred by his servitude to the King, however small or large the affliction. Not one bone, sinew or piece of flesh that hadn't borne the strain of his duty and obligation. Yet hand him a few flasks of ale, and he would tell you that it was his soul that was forever burdened by all that he had done in the name of King Aldolus Ban-Keren.
A mountain of a man, Roth often looked out of place with all the scribes and book-keepers of the Vault Libraries – like throwing a dragerine bear into an enclosure of snow hares – but despite all that he had been, it was in his new servitude he had found something akin to home, even if he didn't look like he should belong there. Devoted to the page since a young age, his brutal past had never dullened his love for books and for learning, and he now protected everything single item in the King's Vault, just as he had protected the King's life – with devotion, honour and a heart closed to anyone who dared to threaten the sanctity of his exalted task.
That was until Juda Vikaris had fallen, quite literally, into his life.
Hungry, alone and full of rage, Juda had thieved and tricked his way into the Regal Libraries, desperate to find the man he believed had abandoned his mother when she had been with child, condemning her to a life in Grimefell, and subsequently, a death in the dead fields. Having not known Aleina, his childhood friend and once thief of his heart, had been punished with such a fate, Vi-Garran had been bereft to hear of her passing, but not so much that he had not seen in Juda something of himself, despite not being the boy's father. The spitting firebrand that was Juda Vikaris had trespassed beyond every barrier, picked every lock, dodged the watchful gaze of every librarian, to find himself in front of the sleeping form of Roth Vi-Garran, slumped over his desk.
Roth had a memory of how every scar he possessed had been obtained, but the blade-width scar he had on his right hand, matched on both sides, front and back, from where Juda had pinned it to the desk with a dagger, was the one he carried with him at all times. It signified a new adventure, a new future, and, he could scarcely dare to believe, hope.
