Extraits

« Penance is pain. She never read the Holy Writ; it was full of scripture she didn’t quite believe in. But that much she remembered, drilled into her two years ago when the Djavul tested her strange magic.

“Do you wish me to spill myself open? Request bones from your ossuary, make them dance? Should I drive one into my heart for you?”

Alexander coughed, bringing a hand over his mouth, fiddling with the hilt of his knife, tucked into the waistband of his dark grey cloak, with the other hand. Emil stared at her with dark eyes and amusement. He had resented her quick rise to power, himself placed into the Order when he was a child by his mother, a Yuljan woman. Vrakans throughout the continent were persecuted in various gruesome ways; many parts of Yuljan were no exception.

“It isn’t for me, Scarko,” the Djavul said pleasantly. “But for your gods.”

She rarely gave penance. But when she did, it consisted of getting on her knees, alone in her room, closing her eyes, letting the nightmares of her time in the Warskian palace take her to a place so dark she remembered what she fought for.

« She had not been born when the first Holy War came to pass, but she had heard of it throughout her life, from both Vrakans within the Order and people within the Royal Palace, and from her parents before they died. It had been bloody, invaders from the Marazan lands proclaiming the virtue and blessings of their new god, Krys, come to convert the Vrakans, to save them from their wicked ways, their pantheon of gods. The stories diverged here, as history often did. Those loyal to the king believed Krys a savior, believed that killing in his name was right. Lauded, even. When the Marazans from the west, who became the Warskian royals, took over the lands and encountered resistance at the hands of the Vrakans, they enslaved them. They dulled their magic with a powerful plant and used them in their own military, against the royal Vrakans. Those who survived the bloodshed fled to the Order, looking for safety, finding it with the Djavul, with Vojtech himself.

The king launched many attacks on the Order, all of which failed. Scarko had witnessed only a few bands of Warskians.