She saw him first, standing like a sentinel, sword drawn and set, tip-to earth as he leaned on it for support. His armor and crimson surcoat were battered and smeared with dark stains and mud, his hair a tousled shock of black. She could see his hair, matted and filthy with blood, because his helmet, famed for its distinctive golden inlay and hawk-like visor, had been shattered off his face in the battle. The helmet had done its job before it fractured under the blow, saving his life— but he hadn’t escaped unscathed.

An axe had struck him, slicing through the metal just enough to cut his cheek to the bone and leave an ugly mess of blood that splattered across the left side of his face before running down his throat to soak into his tunic.

Too bad it hadn’t killed him.

The monster.

She felt the pins and needles of cold seeping through her armor, knees growing numb where they sank into the dewy grass and slushy mud beneath, mirroring the icy dread that constricted her heart. Her hands were growing numb as well, the rough hemp rope biting into her wrists like a slivery taunt, reminding her of her lowly place. She was a prisoner of war. One in a hundred, nameless in a row of kneeling prisoners, watching as their captor spoke to his advisors and fellow soldiers.

The King of the Cemryssänt. The one who had stolen their birthright.

She almost hadn’t believed it was him at first, when a murmur had gone through her companions, and his name had been whispered like a curse with breaths that misted in the air.

Without his distinctive helmet, his attire was rather filthy and unassuming, until one looked more closely and saw the elegant lines of elven craftsmanship in the charcoal silver pieces beneath the tattered surcoat. Until one saw his bearing. He carried himself like a king, with the quiet assurance of one who knows that when he spoke, be it ever so softly, he would be obeyed.

And yet— Haana felt a whisper of surprise prick the vitriolic hate she was focusing his direction as she watched the man.

He didn’t look like the soulless murderer she’d heard so much about and pictured. He was listening quietly to a mud-spattered scout with the same attention he’d just given his commander-in-chief.

It didn’t fit the image of a murderer. A thief of land and lifeblood. But maybe that made him all the more dangerous. An evil that calculated cooly and quietly was somehow more frightening than an uncontrolled irrationality.

She was still regarding him with bitter scrutiny when he glanced across the clearing towards the prisoners under guard and his eyes suddenly locked onto hers. And held.

It was like she’d been struck. With a sharp intake of breath, she jerked her chin back, and her pulse skyrocketed. It hammered in her ears, pounding painfully in her throat, and her vision faded momentarily before coming back sharper than before.

The eyes that met hers were so clear and bright a glass-green they seemed to glow in the orange half-twilight that filtered from the the incoming storm clouds that swirled and roiled in the stiff wind that was rising.

She’d seen those eyes before, she knew it. But she didn’t know where.

And the man they belonged to was wielding a weapon she hadn’t felt since she was a girl.

Magic.

The lifeblood of the land.