Chapter 1

Erin

The world is made of blood and iron.

The stink of it clings to my skin like a second layer of flesh, a mix of rusted metal, open guts, and smoke that burns the inside of my nose. I’ve stopped gagging. You don’t last six months on the field if you still gag. That smell becomes part of you—seeps into your pores until the gods themselves can’t tell where the battlefield ends and you begin.

Chains rattle against my back, the thick iron winch locked into the metal hook between my shoulder blades. I shuffle forward, the heavy harness biting into my collarbones. Every few steps, the chain tugs without warning, pulling me like a disobedient animal. I’ve learned not to resist. The one time I did, I lost three teeth and a chunk of ear.

The spiked bit in my mouth cuts deep when I breathe wrong. It’s hooked behind my molars, clamped in place with a rusted band. I haven’t spoken in months. I don’t remember what my own voice sounds like.

Mud squelches under my bare feet, but it isn’t just mud. It’s thicker. Slicker. Pieces of flesh cling to my ankles. A hand, severed at the wrist, lies half-buried under a snapped spear. Someone’s entrails spill out of a shattered cuirass, curling like fat worms in the sludge. I step over them without blinking.

Another Retriever screams behind me. I don’t turn. Turning gets you pulled. Crying gets you whipped. Dying? That gets you peace. I’m not sure what sin I committed to be denied it.

The sky is the color of old bruises, gray and purple and clogged with ash. Screams rise from the Pyrthos line. Arrows hiss past, some cracking into shields, others punching through skin. One lodges in the throat of a soldier in front of me. He drops like meat from a hook. I wait a second, then dart forward and yank the arrow free. It's still warm. I tuck it into the crude leather pouch slung at my hip and move on.

Trog’s laugh cuts through the noise like a butcher’s cleaver. He’s standing on the back of a cart, his massive half-troll frame wrapped in leather dyed with blood. One of his eyes is gone—lost, I heard, to a rebel’s boot heel—but the remaining one is bright with cruel amusement.

He yanks a winch crank. The chain attached to a young Retriever—too young, really, her limbs still coltish—jerks hard. She sprawls face-first in the filth, the spiked gag knocking against her teeth. Trog hoots, dragging her slowly, slowly, across the battlefield until she’s sobbing.

“Lazy bitch,” he shouts. “Move or I’ll drag what’s left of your face back!”

Nobody helps her. Not even me.

I grab another arrow, this one snapped at the tip but still usable. I don’t know why they want them back. Probably cheaper than making new ones. Orthani logic.

Six months I’ve done this. Six. It’s a miracle and a curse. Trog calls me his "lucky runt." Says I’ve got the devil on my shoulder. That no Retriever’s ever lasted so long. I think he keeps me around just to see how long it takes me to break.

The wind shifts. The ash blows sideways. Something screams overhead—not human. A wyvern, maybe, or a summoned beast. I hunch low, cover my head. My feet slide in the mud, and I nearly go down. My chain goes taut. I freeze. The metal grinds in my back. If I fall, Trog’ll yank me back through a wall of corpses.

A shadow moves in my peripheral vision.

Something's coming fast—an arrow, I think, aimed too low to miss.

I flinch. I don’t even think. My arm jerks up, palm out, like I could somehow bat it aside.

And it stops.

Not slows. Not misses.

It stops midair. A foot from my face. Then veers—hard—like something swatted it away. It clatters to the ground beside me.

I stare at it, heart slamming. I can hear my own breath rasping through the spiked bit. The world slows down. No one else seems to notice. No one’s looking.

I reach for the arrow. My hand trembles.

I didn’t do anything. I didn’t mean to.

But I felt it. Deep down. Like a heartbeat behind my ribs. Something inside me pushed back.

My stomach twists. I drop the arrow like it burned me.

Did anyone see?

Trog’s still tormenting the girl. His laughter echoes through the clash of blades and screams of the dying. His attention is elsewhere.

I don’t move. Can’t breathe.

What did I just do?

I’m not magic. I can’t be.

Magic means they cut you open. Magic means the Thirteen get your soul. Magic means death.

I shake, every muscle screaming at me to run, to scream, to collapse—but the chain tugs again, and I stagger forward, back into the hell I can’t escape.

I don’t look back at the arrow.

I don’t want to know if it’s still watching me.

Trog’s voice cuts through the battle noise like a cleaver through bone.

“Move, ya shitslick bastard! I said move!”

I don’t need to look to know who he’s yelling at. His tone’s different when it’s just cruelty for fun—there’s a bite to it, a kind of breathless glee like he’s about to make someone bleed. And when Trog’s having fun, someone always bleeds.

The chain beside me jerks. A boy—no older than fifteen, scrawny as snapped bowstring—is too slow getting over a splintered helm half-buried in the mud. His harness catches on something, and I see it in his eyes—the split second of raw, stupid fear.

Trog snarls. I hear the winch crank scream.

The chain rips taut, yanking the boy’s arm with a wet snap. He doesn’t scream right away. His mouth opens, eyes huge, before the pain catches up and tears it out of him like fire. The sound is high and shrill, carried on smoke and panic.

Trog just laughs. A thunderous, ugly noise, echoing off the wreckage of shattered wagons and crumbling fortifications. I keep my eyes low. Keep my face blank. Don’t flinch. Don’t twitch. Don’t look.

The boy is dragged backward, his feet scrabbling for purchase, one arm flopping useless, the other clutching at the ground like it might save him. He disappears behind the corpse-strewn wagon line, still screaming.

Another Retriever turns her head, just slightly.

Trog sees it. “You wanna join ‘im, whore?”

The girl jerks her head back forward so fast I hear her neck pop. I don’t know her name. I don’t want to.

Names are dangerous here. Names are how you remember people. Remembering hurts.

My fingers shake as I dig another arrow out from the ribs of a Pyrthos soldier. The shaft is slick with blood. It slips, and I nearly lose it. A fragment of bone juts from the corpse’s side, pale against his deep red uniform. His face is gone—half melted by something magical, I think. His eyes are open.

I don’t look at them.

The hunger’s worse today. My stomach twists like a knotted rope, gurgling loud enough that a nearby Retriever gives me a sideways glance. I bare my teeth through the spiked bit—what’s left of them—and she turns away. That’s right. I’m not prey.

Not today.

We pass over a heap of bodies, Orthani and Pyrthos tangled together like lovers. The ground’s soft here—bloated with rot. My feet sink deep, cold muck crawling between my toes. I almost slip but catch myself on a dead man’s thigh. He twitches. No—just gas. I swallow the bile in my throat and keep going.

Don’t fall.

Don’t draw attention.

Don’t flinch.

I spot another arrow—this one buried deep into the temple of a soldier. He’s young, probably still fresh from whatever shithole the Pyrthos train their fodder in. His face is slack, mouth parted just enough to remind me of a baby bird waiting for food.

I reach for the shaft, fingers wrapping around the bloody fletching.

That’s when it happens.

The air splits with a shrill, bone-itching whistle.

My heart skips.

Incoming.

There’s no time to think. No time to drop or duck or dive. I throw my arm up, useless and stupid—what the hell’s that gonna do against a flying death-stick?

But it doesn’t hit me.

The arrow twists in the air—twists, godsdamn it—and sails wide, like someone reached down and flicked it away mid-flight. It clatters into a cart behind me and sticks in the side with a thunk.

I’m frozen. My arm’s still up. My hand’s buzzing like I stuck it in lightning.

I can feel something. Deep inside. Not pain—something else. A warmth, but not gentle. It’s a living thing. Coiled. Humming. It stretches out along my nerves, makes my skin crawl like I’ve been wrapped in spider silk.

Magic.

Real, godsdamned magic.

I drop the arrow and press my hand against my stomach. It doesn’t help. The feeling’s in me now. Awake. Alive. Like it’s been sleeping all this time and just yawned for the first time in years.

I can’t breathe. Can’t move.

All around me, the battle churns on. Arrows, screams, blood, mud. Trog’s laughing again somewhere behind me. Another Retriever sobs, coughing up black phlegm.

No one saw. No one saw. Please, gods, let no one have seen.

I curl my fingers in tight. The buzz fades, just a little, but the warmth doesn’t go. It’s there—settled behind my ribs like a sleeping dog with one eye open.

Magic means death. That’s the rule.

If the Orthani find out what I just did, they’ll do worse than kill me.

They’ll tear me apart. Use me. Feed me to their gods. Or bind me to one of those infernal shrines I’ve only ever heard whispered about, back when my parents were here.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

No.

Don’t think about that.

Don’t remember.

Just keep moving.

The chain tugs again—hard this time—and I stagger forward, barely managing to scoop up the arrow from the dead boy’s skull before it drags me off my feet. My hands are slick with blood. I wipe them on my thighs without thinking, smearing crimson streaks into the canvas rags they gave us to wear.

I don’t look back at the cart.

I don’t look at the arrow that swerved.

I don’t look at my hand.

Because if I do—if I acknowledge what just happened—then it’s real. Then I’m dead.

So I walk.

And I pretend.

And I pray to gods who don’t answer anymore that the feeling inside me dies quietly before anyone else notices it’s there.

Panic lances through my veins, sharp and fast, like someone poured molten iron down my throat. It burns in my chest, clutches my lungs, makes my breath shallow and ragged. The chain rattles behind me—just a whisper over the screams—but loud enough to make my stomach clench.

Trog.

I don’t have to look. I feel his gaze like a brand on my back. Heavy. Suspicious.

Gods, please no.

Magic. Real, honest-to-hells power, and it came from me. From inside me.

I glance sideways, keeping my head low, vision darting from corpse to corpse, trying to gauge if anyone else noticed. Nothing but chaos: blades clashing, archers shouting, another volley shrieking overhead. But that doesn’t mean I’m safe.

Trog’s voice is lower now, not barking orders, not laughing.

“Oi,” he grunts. “What the fuck was that?”

My pulse slams against my skull. I drop hard to my knees in the mud, scraping at the filth with my bare hands like I’m searching for something—another arrow, a coin, anything. I press my cheek to the wet, cold earth, let it cake into my skin, hoping it’ll swallow me whole.

Please, let this be enough. Let this stupid act convince him.

The smell down here is worse. Sweet rot and something acrid, like burned hair and copper. The mud squelches between my fingers, warm in some places. Blood-warm. Something solid beneath my hand—bone. I don’t flinch.

Trog’s boots stomp closer, the ground vibrating with each step. He’s half-troll, which means he’s got a dozen stone plates fused to his skin and smells like something that crawled out of a grave. I hear his breathing first, harsh and wet. Then the clink of his rusted blade swinging at his hip.

The winch on my back groans. I flinch before I can stop myself.

Stupid. Stupid!

“Y’tryin’ to be clever, bitch?” he growls.

I shake my head violently, keeping my face down, praying he’ll see a scared Retriever doing her job, nothing more. My tongue presses into the spiked bit between my teeth, and I taste blood. Coppery. Familiar. Calming, almost.

It grounds me. Reminds me I’m still here, still alive. For now.

“Thought I saw somethin’,” Trog mutters behind me. I can hear him sniffing, like some damned beast. “Arrow shouldn’t’ve turned like that. No wind.”

A beat. The silence is worse than the shouting.

“You didn’t see nothin’, did you?”

I shake my head again, fast and hard. No, I mouth, though the bit turns it into a gagging sound.

I hear him exhale through his nose. Then a heavy thump as he squats down beside me, one meaty hand landing on the back of my neck. The pressure makes my arms go numb. My whole body locks.

“If I find out you’re holdin’ somethin’ back…” he rasps, letting the threat hang, “I’ll peel that pretty skin off and feed it to the dogs.”

He releases me.

Stands.

Walks away.

I wait. Count the seconds. One. Two. Five. Ten.

Then I breathe.

My limbs shake as I sit back on my heels. My fingers are coated in black mud and clotted blood, my nails chipped and packed with gore. The arrow I’d been pretending to search for is long gone, lost in the churned carnage.

I glance down at my palm. There’s no glow, no mark, no sign of the magic I felt—just mud and old bruises. But I know what I felt. That twist of energy, the strange warmth that bloomed and burst behind my ribs. Like something ancient and wrong stretching in its sleep.

It’s still there. I can feel it, coiled and waiting.

I want to run. Every instinct, every muscle in my body is screaming at me to bolt, to vanish into the smoke and ruin, to find a hole in the ridge and bury myself alive. But the chain yanks again, sharp and cruel, the harness biting into my shoulders. The bit shifts in my mouth and scrapes fresh blood from my tongue.

I’m not going anywhere.

A cry rings out nearby—someone else being pulled, punished, destroyed. It doesn’t matter who. That’s the rule here: don’t see, don’t listen, don’t care. Caring gets you dead.

I grit my teeth around the bit and force myself to move. One step. Then another. Just like before. Just like always.

But everything’s changed.

Because now I’m dangerous.

I’m illegal.

Magic among humans is worse than forbidden—it’s feared. We’re not supposed to have power. We’re beasts. Property. Tools. If the Orthani knew what just happened… if anyone saw it.

They’d kill me. Slowly. Publicly. Maybe after dissecting me in some stone-walled shrine to one of their horrible gods.

My skin crawls at the thought. I dig my fingers into the mud again, grounding myself. Feel the grit under my nails, the slick drag of flesh as my hand sinks past another body’s leg.

Don’t think. Don’t feel.

I’m not a girl. I’m not a slave. I’m not a mage.

I’m a shovel.

A Retriever.

I do what I’m told, and I live to see another sunrise.

I reach for another arrow—this one stuck through a tangle of chainmail and spine—and pull it free. Blood gurgles up from the wound, dark and thick. I wipe the shaft on the corpse’s tunic and add it to the bundle on my back.

The power buzzes again in my chest. Faint, like a memory.

No. I bury it deep, shoving it down where it can’t reach me. Where no one can reach it.

Where it can’t ruin everything.

My eyes flick toward the ridge. Trog is shouting again, some new victim in his sights. The battle presses on. The sun bleeds behind black smoke.

And I stay right where I am, face in the dirt, hands stained red, praying with every heartbeat that the mud and blood and death will be enough to smother the truth I can’t afford to carry.