Empire of Dust by Eleanor Herman Page A

beach. Because that’s all she is—jetsam coughed up from the sea of fate and spat in front of this man’s feet. The humiliation is worse than any physical torture.
    â€œTell us what you are,” the man says, “and this torture can stop. We only wish to understand the type of magic you possess. It is neither Snake nor Earth...so what is it?” There is something so coaxing, so persuasive in the voice that she considers telling him that she’s nothing as weak as Snake and Earth Blood, the kind of magic handed to people at birth. She is Smoke Blood, the only Blood Magic to be earned rather than inherited. The only magic so rare that none know of it except for the royal house of Illyria, her mother’s line. She has never found any mention of it in scrolls, and she’s heard about it only once, when she was eight. She stood in the hallway outside her mother’s room listening to Audata arguing with someone, begging for help against mortal danger coming her way.
    Sobbing in desperation, Audata wanted to know what act of true betrayal was vicious enough to reward her with Smoke Blood. When Cyn entered, she found her mother alone, and Audata angrily refused to talk about her solitary conversation.
    The next day, Cyn found her mother dead in her bath, eyes and lips open, skin white as milk, black hair floating in bloodred water. She had been stabbed in the heart, the gaping wound like a ragged scarlet mouth.
    Though Audata had not found the blood of true betrayal in time, Cyn vowed to earn it herself. She had plotted and schemed to have Alexander’s best friend Hephaestion betray his master. When he had proved loyal, in desperation Cyn had killed a beggar thief and used his blood in the ancient ritual, hoping to seal his betrayal to her soul so that she might use its power.
    At first, she didn’t think it worked, but when the flames licked her body in the library fire, her wounds healed almost immediately—though the magic did nothing to stop the pain. She’d never had an injury so grave before—only scratches and bruises that were fleeting at most. Some did leave scars...but these burns should have killed her. At that moment, in the midst of her capture, she knew: she was Smoke Blood.
    When she escapes the Aesarian Lords, she will be an invincible general leading armies, and she will chop off the Lords’ heads, one by one, starting with this giant black man who speaks to her of betraying her secret inheritance.
    â€œTell me,” the High Lord coaxes again. “Tell me what you are.” Again, some part of her wants to tell him everything, to please the being behind the deep ringing richness of those words.
    Then something inside her hardens, and Cyn feels a flicker of white-hot rage in a stagnant sea of limp exhaustion.
    With the last of her strength, she spits at him. She’s too weak and too dehydrated to call up any saliva, so she only succeeds in blowing air at the man. But it is enough. He gets the message. He slaps her across the face with an enormous paw, and her right cheek smarts in pain.
    â€œWhy don’t we just prepare her for the ritual?” asks the huge Gaul with long blond braids and burning blue eyes. Lord Ambiorix, they call him. He’s one of the Lords who breaks her bones with an iron rod. “Her blood might buy us some time.”
    â€œNot until we know what she is,” High Lord Gideon replies, his voice carrying all the warning of a sword slowly scraping out of its hilt. “She is not Earth Blood, nor is she Snake Blood. Nor is she a witch or sorceress or oracle. She is nothing we have ever found before. And because of that, she is far more valuable than any of King Philip’s treasures or even the most priceless artifact in King Artaxerxes’s hoard.”
    â€œI understand, my lord,” Lord Ambiorix replies.
    The dark one crosses his powerful arms and says, “Very well. Phaedron, Gaius, unchain her and