The Shattered Circle

1. The Death of a Hero

It pleased me to crush their dreams, and yet, it was never a thing of beauty when I broke their prophecies. Such windings of Fate...they do not shatter like chains, but are cracked into pieces like the bones of the children bound to them.

Cold bit into my face with familiar fangs as the wind of a winter beyond natural swept through the battlefield. I undid the visor of my helmet and then lifted it from my head with one hand, coming face to face for the first time with the young man whom the gods of good had proclaimed would kill me.

He lay on the ground, shivering in a pool of his own steaming blood, his slick fingers wrapped around the blade that had punched through his armor and ribs like they were made of paper. Later, the stories would say it was a wicked enchantment. The truth was nothing so elaborate: I have a great deal of practice seeing the failures in armaments.

For a moment, it was only the two of us. Snow crunched as I took a knee before him only to have him flinch like a kicked hound. Ever so gently, I reached out and cupped his face with one gauntleted hand, swiping a steel-clad thumb across his cheek to catch the tears of fear and horrible pain. He couldn't have been more than eighteen, lantern jaw barely touched by stubble, hazel eyes like sunflowers edged in green.

Every time, it is the same.

My thumb left a streak of his own blood across his cheek. "Hush, little one. It is all over now."

"But..." Blood burbled from his lips as he gazed up at me, that disbelief and heartbreak written so clearly across his face.

"It is not your fault you failed. You did your best." I leaned down and pressed my lips to his forehead as the first snowflakes drifted down. Lingering there for a moment, I tightened my grip on the blade through his chest. "I am sorry." With a brutal twist of my arm, the sword cracked through the next rib, wicked edge sliding through his heart. A little sob of breath, blood gushing down his chin, and he was gone.

That. That is the sound of breaking Fate.

I rose to my feet, my blade sliding out of his body. He sprawled back across the snow churned by our duel. Behind him, that glittering army, all the pride and chivalry the powers of heaven could muster, suddenly froze in horror as their hopes shattered. Inside my chest, rage howled like a demon. Muscles in my jaw flexed as I looked at those hateful banners.

How dare they? How dare they place all their demands on him and him alone?

They deserved the death of their Chosen One, but he did not deserve to die.

"The rebels, my lady?" Thin and sharp as a razor, Vex's voice was as pointed as the workings of her mind. She stood behind my right shoulder, her favorite position. Even without looking, I could feel her eyes on me, clouded with death-sight. "We have them hemmed in like cattle. Shall we butcher them accordingly?"

I looked down at Woe, checking the edge of my beloved blade for damage. They called it evil, more sorcery than sword, quenched in the blood of a thousand infants. It was just simple steel, a gift from my mother that followed me for all of my life. I adjusted my grip thoughtfully on the worn rayskin grip, still looking at the army that was now receding like the tide. "You have the path of their retreat?"

"Snared and surrounded." Vex danced her bony fingers across my shoulder, her pointed nails lovingly caressing the mark of our liege worked into the smoke-darkened steel of my pauldron. "Something they are about to discover."

I looked down at the boy's body. "He was from Rusa, wasn't he?"

"Yes, the secret son of Lord Sidon, slayer of the great wyrms of Azov." Vex's voice dripped with relish, a delight in the pain of an old foe. No doubt Sidon would mourn his precious son immensely.