“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m doing all of this for you, Magnus. Together we will find the Kindred—it’s been my life’s goal from the time I was a boy and first heard the tales. To find all four will give us ultimate power. We can rule the universe itself.”

A shiver moved down Magnus’s spine at the maniacal look in his father’s eyes. “I can’t say that my father doesn’t have scope.”

“Clear and precise. Now”—the king moved toward the entrance to the large and luxurious tent—“let us inform the people of Auranos and Paelsia that their leaders are dead and they now must bow before me. Or die.”

“Just once,” Brion said under his breath, “I would have liked you to be wrong.”

Jonas glanced at him. “I’ve been wrong lots of times.”

“Not this time.”

“No. Not this time.”

They stood at the edge of the forest and watched as the chief’s blood-covered body was strung up for all to see. The Limerian king flaunted the murder as a symbol of the chief’s weakness. He was no sorcerer or god as his people had always believed. He was only a man.

A dead man.

After his death last night, the Limerian army had turned their blades on the same Paelsians they’d previously fought with side by side. Those who refused to bow down before King Gaius immediately had their throats slashed or their heads severed completely and put on spikes. Most bowed and pledged allegiance to Limeros. Most were afraid to die.

With every moment he’d been forced to witness this atrocity, Jonas’s heart grew darker. Not just Auranos, but Paelsia had fallen to these greedy and deceptive Limerian monsters led by their king of blood and death. It was everything he’d feared.

He’d grabbed Brion just in time. His friend had been faced with a Limerian’s sword, and by the fierce and insolent look on Brion’s face, he wasn’t going to bow before King Gaius. As the knight raised his blade, ready to remove Brion’s head, Jonas killed him, grabbed Brion, and fled.

He’d killed many since this war began. He’d considered himself a hunter before this, but of animals, not men. Now his blade had found the hearts of many men. What little inside him was still a boy of only seventeen years had hardened to compensate for this. Each time he killed, it became easier and the faces of the men whose lives he took became less distinguishable from each other. But this was not the path he ever would have chosen for himself had he known where it would ultimately lead.

Together, Brion and Jonas had found other boys they recognized from their country, those who refused to surrender to this madness. There was now a group of six of them, all gathered in the protection of the forest.

“So what now?” Brion asked, his expression grim and haunted. “What can we do but watch and wait? If we go out there again, we’ll be slaughtered.”

Jonas thought of his brother. Since his murder, everything had changed. A life of hardship and squalor in Paelsia paled in comparison to the horrors that lay ahead. “We need to wait and see what happens next,” Jonas finally said.

“So we’re supposed to stand back like cowards?” Brion growled. “And let King Gaius destroy our land? Slaughter our people?”

The idea of it made Jonas’s stomach clench. He hated feeling powerless. He wanted to act now, but he knew that would only get them all killed. “The chief made many mistakes. He’s gone now. And, if you ask me, he was a lousy leader. We needed someone who was strong and capable, not one who would so easily be fooled by someone like King Gaius.” Jonas’s jaw was tight. “Basilius’s defeat sickens me. Because of his greed and stupidity, the rest of us must suffer.”

The other four boys gathered around grumbled about the unfairness of it all.

“But we’ve always survived despite the odds stacked against us.” Jonas raised his voice to be heard above the others. “Paelsia has been dying for generations. But we still live.”

“It’s King Gaius’s now,” a boy named Tarus said. The kid wasn’t much more than fourteen and was the older brother of the boy Jonas witnessed die on the battlefield. “He’s destroyed us and now he owns us.”

“Nobody owns us. You hear me? Nobody.” Jonas remembered his brother’s words all those years ago. “If you want something, you have to take it. Because nobody’s ever going to give it to you. So we’re going to take back what’s been taken from us. And then we’ll create a better future for Paelsia. A better future for us all.”

“How?”

“He hasn’t a clue,” Brion said, actually smiling now for the first time in days. “But he’s going to do it anyway.”

Jonas could help but grin back. His friend was right. He would figure out how to fix this. There was not a doubt in his mind.

Jonas cast a look toward the Auranian palace. While it glittered golden under the sun, part of it still burned from the explosion at dawn yesterday. A black cloud of smoke rose up above it.

He’d heard the reports. The king was dead. The eldest princess, Emilia, was also dead. However, Princess Cleo hadn’t yet been found.

When he’d heard this news, he was surprised at the lifting of his heavy heart.

The girl whom he’d blamed for his brother’s death, the one he’d fantasized about killing to gain vengeance, the one who’d cunningly managed to escape her own fate, her shackles, and a locked and guarded shed.