Oreg ignored my wrath and nodded at the bowl. “Try it again, Ward.”

He maintained the shield that separated me from Hurog’s magic, and the pain made it difficult to work what power I had left. Losing touch with Huroghurt .

“Concentrate,Ward.”

Over the past few years I’d grown to hate those words. But working magic with Oreg had become my refuge when the pressures of running Hurog grew too great. It’s not easy to rebuild a keep.

Technically, Hurog, lands and keep, belonged to my uncle, Duraugh. But four years ago, my uncle proclaimed me Hurogmeten in my dead father’s place. Ironically it was Hurog, not my uncle’s richer estate, Iftahar, that gave him power to do so—for Hurog, which had lain in ruins by my own actions, was the heart of Shavig, northernmost of the Five Kingdoms of Tallvenish Rule. If my uncle, Duraugh of Hurog, called me Hurogmeten, then all of Shavig was prepared to go to war in defense of that proclamation.

King Jakoven, unwilling to begin a civil war when his seat was so uncertain on the throne, ignored Hurog. I stayed on Hurog land, where ignoring me was easier.

But even if my uncle had not returned Hurog to me, it would still have been mine, by bond of blood and bone.

I looked at the bowl of water and envisioned a flame roaring from the surface. My world narrowed to the water in the bowl. Something shifted in my head, and the stone bowl cracked as flame rained to the floor borne by a sheet of water. Power roared from the soles of my feet through the hair on the top of my head, and I shook with the effort of redirecting it back to where it had come.

When at last I stood empty, I realized the sound I heard was Oreg laughing.

He waved at the fire and it dissipated, leaving only a damp spot on the flagstone floor of the guard tower.

“If you can break through my shielding,” he said, still fair hiccuping with laughter, “I suppose there’s a fair chance you can pull magic from Hurog wherever you happen to be.”

I felt a surge of triumph replace the emptiness, and I grinned at him. “I broke your magic?”

“Hurogbroke through my spell when you called it,” he corrected, and his humor gave way to bemusement.

I picked up the pieces of the bowl and set them on a small table. “Hurog’s magic feels different to me than it did before I killed you,” I said. I knew it sounded odd, but I never forgot that I had killed him. He just hadn’t died the way we both had expected him to.