“Clean yourself up, umagi, and come kneel before me.”

Dervas didn’t give his body the command, but his hands wiped a cloth across his face and his feet began walking. He tried to fight it, tried to make himself stop, but it was as if he were merely an observer trapped in some other person’s form. He circled the desk and crossed the room, then dropped to his knees before the Mage.

“You see?” The Primage shook his head. “Still you wish to rebel. You always do.” He sighed. “Very well. Go to the hearth—no, on your hands and knees. You are my dog, umagi, and I am your master.”

Weeping, but unable to refuse, Dervas crawled.

“Your right hand offends me,” the Mage said when he reached the stone hearth. “Put it in the fire.”

“No, please!” But his hand was already reaching for the flames. “Please!” Then, because now he remembered all the times before, the prices he’d paid for his attempted but never-successful rebellions over the years, he cried, “Please, master! Please, master, forgive your worthless umagi.”

His hand stopped moving towards the fire, but he was still close enough he could feel the heat licking at his skin. Unless the Mage released him, his hand would slow roast. And the Mage would make sure Dervas felt every torturous moment.

“Will you serve me, umagi, of your own volition, or must I force your obedience as I am doing now?”

“I will serve! Please, I will serve!”

“Then speak your vow, Dervas, son of Gunvar, and speak it with conviction.”

Dervas closed his eyes and spoke the mantra of surrender and obedience he’d been taught so long ago. “This umagi serves you willingly, master. Whatever your command, he obeys without hesitation. This life and this body are yours to use or destroy.”

“You may rise.”

Dervas dragged in a sobbing breath of relief and rose on shaking legs. “What is it you require of this umagi, master?”

The Primage smiled. “It is time for you to fulfill your purpose.”

Celieria ~ Kreppes

27th day of Verados

The hooves of a thousand horses thundered in the night. An army of men, outfitted for war, rode across the fields and woods of northern Celieria, Great Lord Dervas Sebourne at the lead. The army moved swiftly, covering the miles between Dunbarrow and Kreppes without stopping.

You will ride to Kreppes with your army. You will beg an audience with the king and throw yourself on his mercy, pleading with him to forgive your anger on the day your son died. Grief and your distrust of the Fey drove you mad, you will say. Remind him of his own son and how he would feel should Prince Dorian perish.

But you have had time for that first rage to pass. You are a Celierian, and loyal to your king. You request the honor of fighting by his side. Above all, you beg to be near because you do not trust the Fey.

Remind him of how they lied to him, how they manipulated him into believing what they wanted him to believe. Are those the actions of a loyal race? Trusted allies? No, they are not. Lord Barrial may trust the Fey implicitly, but would it not be better for the king to keep at least one advisor by his side who is not so blind to the possibility of Fey duplicity?

Lord Sebourne’s army reached the perimeter encampments around Kreppes before the tower watch struck nine silver bells. Campfires burned across the fields around the fortress, illuminating the rows of neatly ordered tents, both Celierian and Fey. Amongst the Celierian tents, pennants from the King’s Army fluttered alongside those of the Border Lords who’d sent troops in answer to their king’s call, Great Lord Barrial, the new Great Lord Darramon, all of the lesser lords from hundreds of miles around.

Dervas noted the familiar crests as he left the bulk of his army waiting at arrow point on the outskirts of the encampments while he and a personal guard of six men rode, under escort, towards the city gates.

And if the king does not grant me an audience?

You’d better hope he does, umagi. Else you will cause such as scene you will get thrown in the castle jail. One way or another, I want you inside that fortress where you are supposed to be. Where you would be had you not ridden off in a fit of pique after the Fey killed your son. Yes, master.

Good. Now, Primage Nour gave you a necklace when he visited you in Old Castle Prison, did he not? Fetch it.

Torches burned on the sides of Kreppes’s great gates. Bowmen stood at attention on the tower, their arrows nocked and aimed at Dervas as the gatekeeper and his companions approached.

“I am come to see the king,” Dervas informed the gatekeeper with cold command. “Tell him Great Lord Sebourne requests an audience.”

The guards at the gate made him wait. Two pikemen blocked the way while a runner went for permission to admit Great Lord Sebourne and his entourage into the castle.

Dervas sat tall and proud in the saddle, staring down his nose at the king’s men. He had come garbed for war, but that did not stop him from looking as resplendent as a Great Lord ought. His armor gleamed to a mirror polish. A thickly furred cape attached to his epaulets, flowing back in regal splendor over the scale-armored rump of his mount. A thick gold chain circled his neck, the heavy, jeweled links carved with symbols of protection, each link growing larger and more elaborate as it neared the jewel’s set piece—two gleaming white stones, one round and a smaller, crescent shape to symbolize the Mother and Daughter moons, set above a sparkling amber crystal surrounded by a ring of stylized waves suggesting the radiance of the Great Sun’s corona.