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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There was a small mirror in Juda's bedchamber at Roth's house that had a nasty habit of reflecting far more than what the room actually contained.
He'd looked into it a lot when he'd been younger—an act of foolish vanity, Roth had believed—but most of the time, Juda had been looking for her. Aleina. She'd read a story to him once, many moons before, a fairy tale of sorts about how, when the dark moon was at its highest and most radiant, you could look into a mirror and find all that you had lost. If you were one of the fortunate ones, the moon's magic would make it so you could reach out and touch that which you had found again.
But beware what you look for, Juda, his mother had said, for the price of the moon's power is an eternity on the other side of the glass.
Juda had never understood what could be so wrong in that. A lifetime inside the looking glass with her had always seemed preferable to a lifetime without.
He looked into the same mirror now. A tiny hairline crack fractured the glass in one corner. Reaching out, he smoothed his palm over the fine layer of dust smudging his view, ignoring the raw skin and mottled bruising that patterned his knuckles.
He tilted his head to one side, noting one superficial graze to his temple, a tiny patch of blood crusting in his side braids and he rubbed absently at it with the pad of his thumb until it was gone, the skin pinkening from the friction.
Sleep had come easily this morntide when he'd finally crawled into his bed at the novice quarters. The unrest in Grimefell had stretched the hours through to moontide, when all that was left was pockets of conflict soon quashed by the Order. Turmoil had bred blood and death. More than Juda could remember since he'd become a novice. He'd watched those he'd tossed into the Setalah rot before his eyes, their bloated, putrid bodies twisting around the oars of the cargo ships or hitting the moss-slick stone walls of the port on the rolling current. His fists had broken bones. His boots had crushed faces. His scimitar had sliced through limbs and throats with an ease that hadn't sickened him.
Everything he'd done, every horror he'd partaken in, he'd done it in the exact manner of his training.
By the blade.
By the blood.
By Ban-Keren.
When the time had come for him to return to the barracks, his bones had been weary, his skin and uniform covered in the blood of others, but his heart had remained just as it had during battle. Numb. Inert. Unmoved.
So, yes, sleep had been easy and much-needed.
Glancing towards the bed, Juda caught glimpses of Elara, her eyes closed in slumber, the blanket resting lightly on her hips. She'd looked beautiful, the moonlight giving her skin an ethereal quality, almost as if she'd been a reflection in the mirror and not the reality he knew her to be. He caught the scent of her hair then—sea salt and sweet musk—and the ghost of her here made his heart thump.
