Sealed inside the towering city walls of Acadia, magic users known as Wielders are feared and hunted for the abilities they have been blessed with. They're living in hiding, terrified of revealing themselves to the Authorities that hunt them.
But w...
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"You're something between a dream and a miracle."
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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The room spun as Soren stood from his chair, making him decide that he should sit back down if he wanted to keep his food in his stomach. Smoke drifted through the air, rising from cigarettes propped between the fingers of other drunk people. Their laughter echoed through the room, wrecking Soren's already throbbing head, making him regret ever picking up the glass of whiskey.
Earlier in the day, Raydon came home from his mission in the trading town of Frostgulch, deep in the Estrill Mountains. With him, came two Wielders – Elian, a time-turner, and Terrin an earth Wielder. The two were brothers and seemed like they would fit right in with Raydon and Grimm, but there was something different about Elian.
At first, Soren kept a close eye on Terrin. There weren't very many earth Wielders left after the Great War. Soren learned this after reading through bits of the Book of Time the night before. Many of the Children that could wield earth sacrificed themselves in order to trap the Foulings underground. Their power was immense. The earth Wielders that were left were praised for their ancestry. For this, he watched Terrin, until he noticed Elian and he couldn't look away.
Soren watched him like the way a cougar watches its prey. He waved away everyone who approached him from his seat in the corner of the room. He observed Elian as he spoke to Grimm and the others, and the way his eyes flickered with annoyance each time he turned away from them. Soren sensed the double meaning in his words.
His brother Terrin, however, had the same glint in his eye that Raydon did when Grimm brought him home for the first time. He would do whatever Grimm asked of him, Soren was sure. He would capture, torture, and kill without even hesitating, just like Soren had done when he was still completely under Grimm's control.
The air in the room shifted and shimmered for a moment, then everything stilled. Lacoria was frozen mid-drink, even the wine in her glass stopping at her lips. Grimm and his whore for the night were wrapped around each other, their lips glued together. Raydon and Terrin's heads were thrown back in silent laughter. Was Soren that drunk? Someone must have spiked his drink, put a spell on him, or something. He didn't have that many glasses of whiskey, just enough to make him numb and dumb.
