He was damned.

Sitting in his sparsely furnished tavern room, Amon vel Feyras hunched over a scarred wooden desk and cradled his head. The crumbling leather-bound notebook was splayed out in front of him like a taunting menace, and he didn’t know if it made him want to retch or heave the little damn book across the room.

He had told his mother he wanted nothing to do with it. There was no part of him that wanted to be curious about a man who was already gone, but the woman was cunning enough to bury the thing in his travel case, right under his last pair of clean trousers.

His leg jittered under the desk as his eyes stared through the wobbly scrawl inked into the brittle parchment.

Noah vel Feyras.

It was written on the last few pages. Five thousand one hundred and fifty times. He counted every single one of them.

The unending name of the man who had sired him. His birth father. The man who died before Amon could take his first breath.

He harshly ran his fingers through his silver hair. With the faint light of his burnt candle slowly dwindling into hardened wax, Amon rifled through the man’s personal mania again. His dreams. His obsessions.

He was a madman.

Someone who was lost and desperate for glory, who poured the lunacy of his twisted mind into senseless scribbles, pages full of ripped frustration, and insights that spiraled into nonsense. It was almost terrifying to see this small glimpse of his dead father.

But there were paragraphs he couldn’t neglect. Words that shook him to his very core.

The earth has infected me with the ore of its glow.

No one can control. They will never understand. It is separate. A being. One with a mind of its own that only allows me to move it.

I am drowning in this glory. I am water and nothing more.

I am afraid.

Amon read it to himself over and over again, his fingers clenched and bloodless. The untidy scribbles should have sounded like madness, but it spoke to him like a solace instead.

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Because it was a reflection of his own fear. The terror that had clawed into his bones when the earth trembled and blinded him, trapping him in flurries for days. He was alone and afraid and half convinced he had truly gone mad as the wind seeped into him like a poison.

It took days before he could finally move without a blast of air surging into him.

Amon quivered as a rush of wind swirled around him, shooting his palms open until a soft glow emanated through his veins — almost like it had an unstoppable urge to remind him just how bound he was to it all. To remind him that the wind wasn’t his reign.

It was an extension of himself, but individual. An entity that reflected his subconscious.

Just when he thought he had a hold on it, it was erratic. Right when he felt a breath of release, it was wild and reaching out despite his better judgment.

In times of anger. Agitation.

And lately, just for her.

It held a fondness and affinity for her.

Jovine.

Amon unclenched his opposite hand and watched her soft handkerchief flatten against his palm. It was a beautiful gold fabric that reminded him of her hair with striking embroidered songbirds stitched into the corners. Every inch of this traded beauty held her essence — in the intricate detailing from her steady fingers to the scent of citrus blooms that wafted into his nose.

The wind caressed the fabric, pleased with it as well.

She was too good for this world.

Too good for him.

Dread and affliction flooded him as his eyes traveled further into his father’s next passage.

This infinite earth has finally breached its hidden glow.

Bloodline and claim will survive it.

Mine.

Only mine.

The rest

I erase

You…

This time, a name was inked into the following pages nine hundred and ninety nine times before it streaked into broken pigment.

Tristaine. Tristaine. Tristaine. Tristaine.

Amon closed his eyes.

There was only one interpretation he could muster. One way to make sense of all the nonsense.

Magic had been buried deep within the earth, and a trembling unleashed its glow.

The infection was only for chosen bloodlines.

Royal bloodlines.

Amon vel Feyras clutched Jovine’s handkerchief with unease, hating himself for wanting the next few thoughts to be untrue.

If Noah vel Feyras was more than just a rambling madman — if he spoke a truth instead of illusions — Richard de Tristaine should have been infected in the trembling.

Just as he had.

His head pounded has he thought back to all the times he had scented dark magic on the Emperor. The potency of its stain always traveled through the wind when they were near.

What did it mean?

Was the Emperor corrupted by his own force of darkness, or was there another unknown claim who abused it?

He could never decipher if the scent belonged to the man himself or if the stench was foreign and invasive.

Richard de Tristaine... What was he?

A tyrant?

Or a victim?