The great gates of Instanolde’s palace rumbled back with a stone-shattering thud. The sound startled Prince Elerek, upsetting the open book in his lap, the tome tumbling beneath the wheels on his chair. He leaned down to retrieve it, his hand outstretched, when a tingling chill that had no place during high summer took hold of his fingers—a numbness that felt like death.

Something dreadful had happened, he knew it, and the deep, resounding blast of rams’ horns confirmed it. One long note strained across the palace’s stonework and up to the highest golden spire, announcing the arrival of royalty, of the king.

The king who ought not to be there.

Lifting his eyes, Elerek looked across the library, its gallery gilded in elegant arches, toward the window. Sunlight cast a pattern of equal parts light and darkness through the wood lattice. A second note, a third, and a fourth followed, their bellows ringing urgency.

A lump emerged in his throat, strangling his voice. “No, they can’t be back.”

Only four days, long and hot, had passed. Not nearly enough time to travel across the vast Sancen Desert with a company of soldiers.

Elerek had watched them leave in a clamor of chain mail and belts strapped with scimitars. Men in polished hauberks,  with bright orange turbans encircling their sallet helmets. Formidable soldiers of Instanolde, the strength of a people bold enough to make a life here among the sands at the edge of the desert.

And none stood taller than King Cormek, fierce in his countenance and bold in his young rule.

“Alert the prince—now!” A guard’s cry echoed.

Elerek’s heartbeat droned in his ears, one pensive beat after another. He gripped the rims of his wheeled chair, avoiding the fallen tome and wheeling himself out of the library and into the corridors beyond. Many of the passages he took belonged to servants and soldiers, and he’d memorized the routes where the floors were smoother and his chair rolled freely.

Before the steps of the palace, beneath the relentless noonday sun, a handful of men assembled alongside three cardants. The sides of the great lizards heaved from exertion beneath their leather saddles and they lowered their heads, encircled with long horns, to the sun-scorched stones.

Three—out of the fifty cardants and their riders that had ridden with the king.

Elerek caught his breath, searching the Sancen-scorched faces of the men. Sand, grime, and blood streaked their clothes.

Cormek. “Wh-where is my brother?” His hands trembled.

Two of the soldiers turned to the cardant at the back of their company. With tentative, almost reverent motions, they lifted a wrapped bundle from the saddle, blood soaking through the fabric, and laid it on the mosaic stonework before Elerek’s feet.

Silence fell across the courtyard.

Elerek blinked, tears falling down his face. A cold, dark void consumed him. An echo rattled in his ears of raised voices and harsh words. What had now become their last words.

An assembly gathered, pouring down the steps of the palace. Guards in stern severity, wide-eyed servants, and robed advisers with stunned expressions. Whispers of an ambush, an attack, buzzed through the air like insects.

“Were there no other survivors?” someone asked, desperate sorrow in their voice.

“Only Torra Lystra. We escorted her to her family home.”

Lystra of House Arghan. Cormek’s betrothed, the future queen of Instanolde.

She survived. Elerek closed his eyes, releasing a long exhale.

She’d ridden with Cormek to the desert, her skill with the cardants and knowledge of the Sancen enough to rival any soldier’s. Elerek remembered seeing her on the glittering morning of their departure, watching as she flung herself into Cormek’s waiting arms, her long ebony hair flying behind her. The ring of Cormek’s laughter as he swept her off her feet filled the courtyard. When they kissed, the intensity of their passion rivaled the dawn.

And now, Cormek was dead.

The soldiers who had laid out the body dropped to their knees, heads bowed. One by one, the rest of the crowd mirrored their motions.

A shiver crept up Elerek’s spine, his head elevated above the entire assembly.

“Your Highness.” A soldier spoke. “Gem of the Gungole.”

“Fire of the Sancen.” Another took up the refrain.

“Fierce as the dawn.”

“Mighty as the constellations.”

Elerek couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

As one voice, the chant filled the air. “Long may you reign—king of Instanolde.”

I can’t.

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