PROLOGUE

  Trials, quests, journeys – the paths to manhood can be described in many ways. But in the end, for those of Seung and Aldare lineage, it was always the same.

  Killing and conquering.

  Capable of both, Ulric had long since proven he was more than just a man. Not since Hannar the Maker had a king's story become myth at so young an age, and now his war efforts were legend. He was feared across all ten kingdoms with just one remaining and soon, they would join the others in hailing his name as the Rakáhn Emperor over all…

  So why was he still here, with her?

  Phaedra, the woman who, if she wanted, could cost him the entire war with a word.

  With his head nearly touching the ceiling of her secret little dugout, Ulric gazed at the woman he’d longed for, relieved to have her so close again with that smile as coy as the first time he’d fallen under her spell, only there was a sweetness to it now.

  Stay.

  Let her say it and he would. Enemy or not…

  Sometime between his arrival and finishing a cup of the wine she’d made, he’d placed her on the table and now she sat, skirts hiked up to her hips, bare legs rising to wrap around him. Wondering how she’d come to be so soft, he admired her thighs– warm and thick in his hands. Every curve and beautifully made muscle more enticing than the last.

  The king spoke in desperate, quiet awe of her. “Your skin is the color of the earth you tend.” He squeezed just above her knee. “And the deep red of a holy sunset.” As he sighed, Ulric felt the heat of embarrassment before he could take it back. Some declarations are better left unsaid.

  Glancing up from under his brows, he tried to conceal the shame, but her smile softened to a look of pity, and she drew her bottom lip in, biting with anticipation, not an attempt to stifle laughter.

  Coming very close to kissing her, Ulric hesitated, aware yet unsure of the other sensation tingling at the back of his skull. If her magic was this raw and unfettered, he'd never make it back to his army. Every muscle tensed at the thought by force of habit. Sabotage and suspicion had been ingrained in the mind of the king from a very early age. In fact he was certain that from her first hello, he'd been under a spell. What other explanation could there be for him to have followed her underground without stopping. No sooner had his boot met the packed dirt did he forget why this hovel had ever felt menacing. Surely there was no place more safe than this he reasoned now, looking around for a moment.

  There was no pressure to prove himself down here. His subjects, all of Vail, remembered him as a rebellious prince with a temper. He was a man now. He was king, and that was how she knew him; crowned and conquering the world.

  I will give her what she expects of me.

  Running his hand up the side of her thigh and around to the curve of her hip, Ulric was certain a weaker man would have dropped to his knees. He’d had every sort of woman over the years and still he had to close his eyes and take a breath so as not to become a giddy boy of sixteen again.

  I am king… and here is the woman who has bested me.

  Without moving her lips she spoke to him, implying he forget the world beyond the eastern forest. Let anything outside these walls of mud and stone slip away like a dream. He could practically hear her voice, soft and kind, there and gone like a whisper.

  She held knowledge beyond either of their years, and in her wise gaze, Ulric felt more like the warrior he’d become than he ever had on the battlefield. With her, he was truly king— never mind her refusal to say so.

  “I’ve known the names of many kings,” she’d said the day he first discovered her woods. “They lived and died without my devotion. Are you not capable of doing the same?”

  “No. I’ve seen you. I’ve stood in your clearing with the sun on my face and the heat of your judgement putting it to shame. My lady… I’d dare any man to rule without your fealty. But given the… condition of the aforementioned kings, I believe we both know that is not possible.” By default he’d spoken through the filter of ego, and etiquette. She’d heard the affection suppressed beneath, and in that moment Phaedra’s smile had changed forever.

  In the present, she leaned away, one hand braced on the table, the other reaching. “Jin-Sueng.” She scolded him using his own name, his true name, and her fingers were warm as she stroked the outline of his face. She cradled his cheek and he melted against her touch. “Your mind wanders.” The attempt to brush a thick wave of his hair away, failed and slipped back around the smooth leather shoulder of his doublet, concealing half his face again.

  “You, are distracted.”

  Ulric disagreed and casually raked his fingers like a comb into his hair, shaking and tossing it to the other side. “Forgive me, my lady,” he said, with a mischievous crook to his smile.“I meant no insult,” Ulric yanked her close, their bodies meeting hard enough that she yelped and made him laugh. “You have my complete attention.”

  She was much better at hiding her emotions, however, the corner of her lips twitched with a smile as she spoke, and his heart soared. “I told you before. I am not your lady.”

  “Neither subject nor lady, is what you said.” Ulric reminded her. “Forgive me, I will learn to address you as preferred,” and like a common knight or some idiot lord, he bowed his head. It was a blasphemous thing to do, but here, deep inside these dark and twisted woods, hidden behind her skill and sat towards the back of a beautiful clearing, her little home that barely afforded him room to move gave him the space to breathe. None but the woman in his arms saw the gesture. None but the woman he longed to call lady, who everyone else called witch.

  TEN YEARS BEFORE THE CONQUEST

  “Awaken my prince! Open your eyes and see all that is yours. See these many rooftops and courtyards. This vast stretch of land and the people who inhabit it. They bend the knee to you.” The holy warlock smiled for the first time, pleased with his own words.

  VanUlric, Prince and future king of Vail cast a cold gaze towards the horizon. With a god’s eye view from the very top of the Rakáhn altar, Ulric was removed from it all. From here the city was silent and still, nothing like the busy hub he knew so well.

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  “Now, look beyond, and see that which you shall acquire.” The warlock-priest spoke gently and pressed his long nose to the king's smooth temple, inhaling as he spoke. “Rise and fill your lungs with the breath of this new and most sacred day, for you have completed the final test, and proven yourself worthy.”

  Ulric forced himself from a seated position on the meditation dais. Every hour that he’d sat that way could be felt in the muscle he flexed and stretched. If not for his determination to complete the ritual, his legs would have given out. Instead he focused and stood tall under the weight of the moment.

  His walk from the dais was mercifully short; the stone pool waiting to reward him with that cool, clear water motivation to succeed.

  “Remember the days of your training. The words that fed your spirit,” the holy one advised. He was careful to stay close and watch over the weakened man.

  As the breeze touched what was his normally pale cheek, Ulric smiled. After six days of taking in little more than light and water to survive, his spirit had been cleansed. Fresh mountain air mingled with the sweet choke of ahsa wood from the village cook-fires below, and it seemed to him even the winds blew differently on this day of his anointing.

  “Let us begin.”

  Gritting his teeth, Ulric lowered into the water which was both far too cold on his sun baked skin and quite possibly the most pleasurable sensation he’d ever felt over these past nineteen years of life.

  Holy Father —Eulen-Pahre , Cephus— as Ulric was now free to call him, smiled at his king and pupil. “I too have felt the relief of these waters, my liege. It is alright to enjoy what the universe has given to us. Now, lower your head.”

  It took all that he had not to cry out. Where such a bottomless pitcher of ice water had come from was beyond the prince. But the Eulen-Pahre seemed all too happy to drown the man. By the time Cephus lowered his arm, Ulric’s skin was covered in prickling rejection of the drastic change in temperature, but the king-to-be never wavered. He opened his eyes, blinking against the droplets that clung to his lashes as pride for all that he was and all that he would become consumed him.

  When first he'd arrived at the temple, Ulric had been nothing more than a headstrong prince, a child really. Now, after years of training and tutelage under pahre Cephus, he would leave a man and a king. A Knight of the Rakáhn, like his father, his father’s father and back no less than five generations.

  “Hail! VanUlric,” Cephus continued, pacing just outside of the pool. “First of his father. Hail! Jin-Seung, first of his mother and ruler of Vail.” The words were spoken with that pious reserve the pahre was known for. It was rare for a warlock to immerse themselves in the old ways so completely, but Cephus was an exceptional man. With his voice rising above the wind, the pahre spoke on, happy too toss the weight of his baritone's echo across rooftops and beyond to shake the distant mountains. “The sound of your name will strike fear into the hearts of any who stand against you. They will fall to their knees and swear themselves to you.” He made promises over the younger man's shoulder, filling the prince's head with endless possibilities achieved through no more than his divine right as heir. “Generations of greatness, knowledge, and ancient power live in you, my liege. Remember this as you make your way out into the world and claim those territories that call themselves kingdoms. Many have bathed in the pool of re-birth, countless kings and priests since the Great Founding. Now, it is you, VanUlric Aldare whose true name is Jin-Seung, who stands in its center. The eye of the coming storm.”

  It would take an act of the gods to undo what was done today.

  Two of the sacred servants, the Eulen-Shai, ascended the steps from the anterior temple room below. They kept their heads bowed both in loyal subjugation and under the weight of the gilded hoods they wore for the ceremony. The crimson robes that hung from their shoulders stood out in stark contrast to the white stone, making the Shai look like two pinpricks of blood on a pale finger as they came to stop at the edge of the pool.

  In their hands were two objects.

  A knife, and the crown.

  Ulric did not need to turn to know they were there. He kept his eyes forward and waited, his training in patience and calm keeping him still as he listened to Cephus.

  “Where there is nothing, you will bring life. Growth and expansion shall be yours. For you are the one who was promised. You, are the Young King and you alone will bring this world to heel as you take the lands that those before you dared not touch.”

  The old man stepped over and into the shallow water which turned the deep purple of his sacred robes black from the knees down. The pahre waded slowly, dragging his water heavy garment as he circled the prince and placed his long, gnarled hand on the back of the man’s head. Scented holy water dripped down Ulric’s shoulders as the pahre slicked his thick hair to the curve of his skull and neck.

  No one had ever questioned the nature of the Warlock-Pahre. Cephus was as cold and unforgiving as the stone beneath them, but today, there was a warmth to his voice Ulric had not heard since he was a child. These moments were rare and hard won, and perhaps, the king thought to himself, the less than preferable circumstances of his youth had been worth it as he basked in such praise. All the lonely hours of meditation, the scars from sharpened practice weapons he’d not dodged fast enough… the nightmares. All those times he’d held in his fear and anger— the devastation of being taken from his mother— had never been in vain. Ulric was now the living, breathing reality of his teacher’s great plan.

  Together, they looked out at the ancient kingdom before them.

  “You are wondering if I've had this capacity for kindness all along,” The pahre said, rather gently— Ulric said nothing, though he did relax as Cephus began to laugh. “One of the great mysteries, my liege.” The prince allowed himself to smile, as they shared in mutual amusement. “Take it in, dear Ulric.” Cephus went on. “The view from here is rivaled only by that of the immortals above. There are many stories of some newly crowned kings who have fallen to their knees weeping, they are so overcome by it. But not you dear one. You have stayed upright. You have fortitude; an unyielding spirit."

  It was true. He'd heard the stories of the ones who feared heights unable to complete the ceremony. He'd heard of the ones who fell. For this reason and other holy business, only the master priest or warlock, the king in training, and those few souls who served them had ever seen this level of the sacred tower. The altar had no walls or barriers to prevent those of little faith from falling a thousand feet to their death, and because of it, the tower of Rakáhn was feared but held in high regard. Ulric did not fear high places, the only thing he felt was respect for the danger to lesser men.

  In the eyes of pahre Cephus, this was proof that he'd been right in choosing the boy and not his cousin to learn the ways of Rakáhn. Ulric's capacity for pain was shocking, and the he could take it, swallow it and use it to fuel his unfiltered anger. Anger that Cephus had drawn from the king with a slow, delicate precision over the years until it was time to let the man loose on the world. There wasn't a soul alive who could stop such ferocity.

  Without a word, the warlock-priest turned and held out his right hand letting one of the servants place the dagger in it. Raising his left, Cephus made a shallow cut along his palm to draw blood and watched as it dripped into the clear water, symbolizing the sacrifice made by all priests to their kings. He said the ancient words that only holy men knew, cementing the lifelong bond between church, magic, and state.

  The servant accepted the knife when Cephus was finished, and stepped aside so that the other could hand him the crown.

  Forged in the deep mountains, created for this king and no other, it symbolized much to the people, and though it meant little to Cephus, it was a powerful tool for him to use wisely and he would treat it with respect.

  Cephus turned to start a new chant deep within his chest, a song unknown to all but himself as he lowered the crown, simple and elegant, onto the black hair of his new lord.

  “Arise now my liege and stand tall. Hail! King VanUlric Aldare whose true name, is Jin-Seung! First of his name and ruler of Vail!”

  Shoulders back, head held high, Ulric closed his eyes. His naked, god-like frame of imposing height and powerful muscle dripped with holy water and the sun cast rays to illuminate the man who would rule all twelve kingdoms.

  Once more Ulric took in the sight of his beloved city, and just beyond it, calling to him on the back of the summer winds —the remaining eleven Kingdoms.

  The land and people alike were crying out for the true king to raise greatness from the wasted dreams of failed men. It was his to conquer and claim and it sang to him, his empire, just waiting to be built.