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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'Fuck,' said Elara, hissing the curse through her teeth as she looked in the mirror.
She was doing a terrible job of painstakingly applying a cosmetic to her face to try and conceal the bruises that persisted in haunting her skin and she now sorely regretted not visiting Bogan Zeal to obtain the salve that would have eradicated them.
While she had used the story of meeting with Bogan to distract Kelena from her true mission, Elara had planned to slip back and find him after the brogboar run, but time had not been on her side, nor luck it seemed.
How was this happening? When she was so close. When she'd literally stood in the sacred temple of her foremothers with the pendant around her neck, only to leave without achieving her aim and with the fear of her identity being revealed greater than it had ever been.
She'd always dreaded the tide would come when she could hide no longer. Her mother had warned her, urged her to keep safe, to never let down her guard, and Elara had always fastidiously done just that. How could her downfall be set into motion in the very caves in which she should feel protected?
The fact that the novice knew that she existed, but also that he'd stepped foot on the very rock upon which her foremothers had stood – where her own mother had stood – burned Elara greatly. The anger stung her flesh like the vilest of insults.
You are not my enemy, he had said.
It was an absurdity. That a Highguard could say such a thing to a Naiad was a wild falsehood. The Order had been instrumental in carrying out the King's instructions. They had hunted and slaughtered every remaining water witch in Druvaria. They were as guilty of wiping them from Druvaria, as was Ban-Keren.
Remain in the water, naiadani. Her mother had uttered those urgent whispers to her as she'd lowered Elara into the Setalah, trying to hide the terror in her eyes – the fear she felt, not for herself, but for her daughter. May the foremothers protect you. Blessed waters. Blessed child. Do not resurface no matter what you hear.
It was her mother's screams she now heard as she looked in the mirror, seeing not her own reflection, but the face of the novice, the determination in his eyes as sharp as a blade edge.
Concealed in the water, Elara had strayed closed to the surface, desperate to see her mother one last time but instead, saw only the backs of the Highuards as they descended uoon the stricken form of the woman who had kept her safe her whole life. The woman who had shown her how to apply the skin sealants behind her ears. The woman who had sung the lullabies of their foremothers to her at bedtime. The woman who smelt faintly of sea salt and the laceflower coral that only grew in the subterranean caverns below the citadel.
Elara saw as one guard raised his fist – a great, hulking brute with arms easily six times the width of her own – and saw the novice instead, the deadly scimitar in his grasp.
