Ice and Fire

Prologue: Vows

For six hundred years, the Bellona have patroned the city of Olympia. The hubristic spires that soar dauntlessly and daringly into the clouds themselves, the lavish promenades that snake around Loch Esmerelda, the botanical and arboreal ornaments in perennially artificial bloom that lend glittering iridescence to the city's metallic silhouette from afar, the stately halls adorned with commanding statuary of my kith and kin, the labyrinthine plazas that serve as nexuses of vice and virtue—all of this, klicks of majesty and munificence, expresses my family's impeccable taste.

I didn't pay enough attention to the ravishing Violet who taught me the civic history and architectural thesis of my inheritance. But clearly, we favor glass. Perhaps because it is reflective of our greatest love—ourselves. We are renowned for our beauty, of course. But it's our blood that we truly cherish.

From where I stand on my terrace, leaning awkwardly against the low balustrade, tall as I am, I have a clear view of the higher strata of the bustling city that yawns beneath me—no less lively because of the late hour, although it cannot rival the sleeplessness of Agea. The meticulously trimmed vines that encircle the balusters gleam emerald and silver as pale moonlight dances across their luxuriant bodies. The winter bluster, made rarer by altitude, ruffles my curls, feeling deliciously crisp against my skin, feverish from the roaring hearth that overheats my quarters.

Although Olympia's glare illuminates the surrounding terrain for kilometers, providing the vastest of three glimmering scars that mar the otherwise pristine wilderness of northwestern Cimmeria, the omnipresent hum of its metropolitan activity is barely audible from here, the lower reaches of Eagle Rest, my family's ancestral estate. Sprawling upon the broad wings of an appropriately colossal eagle carved ostentatiously from weathered stone, it perches defiantly higher than Olympia, ribbing the escarpment of the Mons as it ascends—still the largest mountain in the known worlds, despite centuries of grandiose terraforming across the gamut of civilization.

(Some things, I suppose, are beyond even the power of Gold to imitate.)

Although the Lune rule the Society and the Augustus rule Mars, in Olympia, we Bellona have neither equals nor rivals. Here, as the name implies, we are like gods. Even I, sixteen and Scarless, feel like one.

I am always sad to leave her—my city. But this is different. I'm not going to Agea to test the new merchandise at Temptation with my sister Ariadne and her quick–smiling friends, to harass one of its innumerable pleasure–clubs with my cousins and make wagers on who'll pay our outrageous tab, to stalk the dueling rings of the Agean Martial Club for unwitting Bronzies to conquer, to suffer through some garish Violet opera for my sister Phaedra's sake, to trade barbed insults on horseback with fawning Politicos jockeying for Father's attention, to drink alongside my brother Valerius at our family's estate as bask in the Apollonian sun and indulge the whimsy of his children.

No. This is the Institute. Everything I have in these worlds, all the comforts I've grown to expect, all the pleasures I've taken for granted... I will have none of it. I will have nothing. Because I will be nothing. Worth no more and no less than any other student—an almost sacrilegious concept. Denied even the dignity of Gold, so they say. Because at the Institute, there are no Houses, save the ones into which they draft you. And there are no Colors. The Hierarchy gives way to a simpler and unforgiving dichotomy: Gold and Bronze; Iron and Pixie; Scarred and Scarless.

And for the first time in my life, I will have no siblings or cousins at my side—save my twin. The thought terrifies me. Having only Julian for company is even more daunting than the prospect of being alone. Because although I love him more than anything else in these worlds, he treats me like an invincible Stained, one he can invariably cower behind whenever danger arises. And I'm not sure whose disappointment I fear more: his, or Father's. His, I think, if only because failing Julian will doubtless have a mortal cost. Which of us will pay it, I don't know.