Lady Rydainn held her infant son close as she approached the L glowing vein that, only days ago, had been a snarling fissure of black fire that cleaved the ground. With the two moons nearly as one, the chasm of violet lava had hardened to stone, leaving only the flickering remnants of that sinister flame. It was almost time to harvest the igneous rock, but they weren’t there for the bounty it held.

They were there for the fire itself.

The men who typically guarded the vein from thieves lay in diminishing piles of ash, their bodies and armor charred to useless lumps of soot that scattered in the wind. Burned alive by a flame so hot that she could feel its radiance a half-furlong away. Sablefyre. An ancient element of the gods, forged eons ago in Aethyria’s fiery heart. A single touch turned a body to ash and blood to stone.

And she had arrived to offer up Zevander, her second-born son, to it.

Not by choice, of course. Lady Rydainn would’ve sacrificed herself right then and there, if it would spare Zevander from such a horrific fate. Unfortunately, the mage who’d demanded the exchange wasn’t interested in her pittance of an offer. He wanted her youngest son and nothing less.

She forced herself to set her eyes upon the dark and corrupt soul, where he stood alongside her eldest son and husband at the edge of the vein, watching her every step. The most dangerous mage in all of Aethyria, he was one of a few who’d mastered the ability to control the otherwise chaotic sablefyre and discovered a means to harness its deadly and divine power. He’d once been the king’s highest Magelord, a member of the exalted Magestroli, disgracefully dismissed on accusations of demutomancy, a dark form of magic decreed illegal by the king.