“What order would I give?” Sanlitun asked, his voice soft and unstoppable as the wind. “Thousands of people live between those two fires, Valyn. Tens of thousands. Many will have fled, but how would I reach those who have not?”

“But they’ll burn,” Kaden whispered.

He nodded slowly. “They are burning even now.”

“Why,” Sioan demanded, not sure if the tears in her eyes were for the citizens screaming unheard in their homes so far below, or for her children, staring, horrified, at the distant flames. “Why did they need to see this?”

“One day the empire will be theirs.”

“Theirs to rule, to protect, not to destroy!”

He continued to hold her hand, but didn’t look away from the children. “They will not be ready to rule it,” he said, his eyes silent as the stars, “until they are willing to see it burn.”

1

Kaden hui’Malkeenian did his best to ignore both the cold granite beneath him and the hot sun beating down on his back as he slid forward, trying to get a better view of the scattered stone buildings below. A brisk wind, soaked with the cold of the lingering snows, scratched at his skin. He took a breath, drawing the heat from his core into his limbs, stilling the trembling before it could begin. His years of training with the monks were good for that much, at least. That much, and precious little else.

Valyn shifted at his side, glancing back the way they had come, then forward once more.

“Is this the path you took when you fled?” he asked.

Kaden shook his head. “We went that way,” he replied, pointing north toward a great stone spire silhouetted against the sky, “beneath the Talon, then east past Buri’s Leap and the Black and Gold Knives. It was night, and those trails are brutally steep. We hoped that soldiers in full armor wouldn’t be able to keep up with us.”

“I’m surprised they were.” “So was I,” Kaden said.

He levered himself up on his elbows to peer over the spine of rock, but Valyn dragged him back.

“Keep your head down, Your Radiance,” he growled.